Prayson Pate, CTO, Edge Cloud, ADVA
Prayson Pate, CTO, Edge Cloud, ADVA
The world is rapidly changing, with new opportunities and new threats appearing every day. All companies must find new and innovative ways to advance. This means using innovation to address both opportunities and threats. In October 2021, EY published an article titled “How can risk foresight lead to fresh insight?” Here is our view of five of their top 10 risks for telecommunications in 2021.
Risk 1: Failure to ensure infrastructure reach and resilience
Innovation: Apply wireless technologies and edge compute
Fibre provides the highest bandwidth, but can be time-consuming and expensive to deploy in some locations. Using current long term evolution technology and the emerging 5G fixed wireless access expands the addressable footprint for telcos. Wireless access can be combined with fibre to provide resilient backup. Providing onsite hosting for end-user applications creates an additional level of resilience.
Risk 2: Underestimating changing imperatives in privacy, security and trust
Innovation: Apply encryption and edge cloud
Security is a growing concern for end-users, and telcos must have answers. One relevant innovation is quantum-safe encryption methods for data transport. These methods ensure that encrypted data captured today cannot be decrypted in the future using quantum computers. In addition, many governments are creating regulations for data sovereignty. Telcos must ensure that certain kinds of data do not cross international borders. The use of edge cloud for onsite hosting of applications can help address these new regulations, while capabilities such as trusted platform modules, secure boot and disk encryption ensure that edge cloud deployments are secure.
Risk 4: Failure to mitigate supply chain disruption
Innovation: Embrace disaggregated systems that enable substitution of suppliers
Traditionally, telco services have used closed networking appliances. A single supplier provides the hardware, software and support for these devices. This is great from the standpoint of simplicity – you always know who to call. But what happens when your supplier cannot get hardware platforms due to trade wars, disease or component shortages? And what happens if the supplier is acquired, and the new owner jacks up the prices? An open and disaggregated approach is the answer. Selecting the best hardware, software and support in a multivendor fashion gives you a path forward in the face of supply chain disruptions.
Risk 5: Poor management of the sustainability agenda
Innovation: Work with suppliers who are committed to sustainability
One aspect of this is reduction of greenhouse gases as defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Value Change (Scope 3) standard. Our biggest impact is on energy, and we are continually improving the energy efficiency of our products and processes. Further, our products support “greening-by-ICT (information and communications technology)” activities in other sectors, such as smart buildings, cities, transport and agriculture.
Other activities include our investigation of new business models such as product-service systems that better support a circular economy. This is a part of the C-SERVEES project, and we expect the first practical results in 2022.
Risk 7: Ineffective engagement with external ecosystems
Innovation: Engage with suppliers that embrace open ecosystems
ADVA embraces open and multivendor ecosystems. We support disaggregation of optical transport, packet switching and network functions virtualisation. Another aspect of disaggregation is how you assemble the parts. For example, success in the highly innovative and very fashionable open radio access network sector depends on open ecosystems and supply chain diversification for both hardware and software. Telcos can embrace an open ecosystem and still be at risk of being locked in with a single supplier or integrator who assembles the pieces.
Who can you trust?
In the preceding section, I cited some examples of innovation. But there is another important factor: trust.
At ADVA, we have been working for a long time to establish ourselves as a trusted partner for telcos and enterprises. We know that network infrastructure has transitioned from a commodity to a strategic asset, and that government stimulus favo-urs trusted suppliers. We have been delivering innovative solutions that are:
- Secure: Innovative technology with ConnectGuard™ security features. These include quantum-safe encryption and industry-leading crypto agility.
- Certified: Supplier credentials including country-of-origin certificates and government-approved design, manufacturing and logistics processes.
- Assured: Proven interoperability, monitoring and actions, guaranteeing trusted end-to-end performance.
Thus, ADVA is a trusted partner for telcos and enterprises all over the world.
