knowledge

REPORT

lessons
learned
on the journey
to cloud native
Author:
Mark Newman,
SPONSORED BY Chief Analyst

Editors:
Dawn Bushaus,
Contributing Editor
Ian Kemp,
Managing Editor
October 2021
inform.tmforum.org
contents

03 05 09
the big picture section 1: section 2:
the state of cloud M1, Verizon & BT
migration worldwide adopt cloud native
approaches for agility

13 17
section 3: additional
Three Ireland, features &
Antel and resources
Lycamobile take a
measured approach
to cloud migration

2 inform.tmforum.org
the big picture
Communications service providers (CSPs) worldwide are at different stages on their journeys to becoming cloud
native. Some are aggressively adopting a public cloud-first strategy and have already migrated more than half of
their IT workloads to the public cloud. Others are taking the first tentative steps away from on-premises systems
by adopting a hybrid strategy of private and public clouds. The majority of telcos sit somewhere in between.

T
his report examines the
cloud migration strategies
of six CSPs on four
continents: Uruguay’s Antel, BT
in the UK, M1 in Singapore, Three
Ireland, European mobile virtual
network operator (MVNO) group
Lycamobile, and Verizon in the
US. We have deliberately chosen
companies that are using different
business models and operating
in disparate markets to highlight
why the rate of cloud adoption
varies. M1 and Verizon are among
the most aggressive telcos in the
world in adopting public cloud;
BT, Antel and Three Ireland, on
the other hand, are taking a more
selective, pragmatic approach.
Sizing up providers
With 2020 revenue of $128
billion, Verizon is one of the
largest telecoms operators in the
world, and the company sees
itself as a technology leader.
It is quickly rolling out 5G and
has forged strong partnerships
M1 and Verizon
are among the
most aggressive
telcos in the world
in adopting public
cloud; BT, Antel
and Three Ireland,
on the other hand,
are taking a more
selective, pragmatic
approach
with Amazon Web Services
(AWS) and Microsoft to support
private and public multi-access
edge computing services. Using
cloud native technology for its IT
operations helps Verizon execute
on its strategy to buy and sell
companies, as historically the
ability to integrate operations
when two companies come
together has been a major drain
on resources.
Like Verizon, BT is a large
telecoms operator that is
enthusiastically embracing
new technologies. Its adoption
of the concept of “modular
infrastructure” in 2014 was ahead
of its time. BT’s strong presence
in B2B markets (its enterprise
and Global Services businesses
generated 43% of its $27 billion
in revenue in 2020) means that
the company sees first-hand the
benefits advanced ICT solutions
can bring to large enterprises.
The other three operators covered
in the report are much smaller.
Antel, the state-owned telecoms
operator of Uruguay, has annual
revenue around $850 million,
while M1, one of two challenger
operators in Singapore, earned
about $800 million in 2020.

3 inform.tmforum.org
the big picture
Three Ireland, which is the result
of the 2015 merger between O2
Ireland and Three, is a challenger
operator in Ireland with annual
revenue also around $800 million.
Lycamobile is a private company
which does not report its
financials, but is likely generating
revenues in excess of $160 million
per year.
Different goals
While the size of the smaller
CSPs is comparable, their market
positions and aspirations differ.
M1 was taken private by its new
owner, the Keppel Group, in
2019, and this team is embarking
on a journey of complete
transformation in a bid to revive
the CSP’s fortunes in the highly
competitive Singapore market.
4 inform.tmforum.org
By contrast, state-owned Antel
has a large base of enterprise and
public sector customers and is
Uruguay’s leading provider of ICT
services. It generates an estimated
$20 million per year from services
delivered from its own data center
launched in 2016.
Read this report to understand:
The status of cloud migration
worldwide
Differences between public,
private and hybrid cloud
How size, region and business
models affect the rate of cloud
migration
How each CSP is migrating
systems to the cloud
section 1:

the state of cloud

migration worldwide
Enthusiasm for public cloud is growing among CSPs and their suppliers, many of which are rebuilding product
portfolios to meet operators’ demands for cloud native software. But as a whole, CSPs are still in the relatively
early stages of moving IT applications into the public cloud. The graphic below, created using data from our
Digital Transformation Tracker 5 survey, compares the percentage of IT workloads that CSPs have moved to the
cloud globally and regionally.

Percentage of IT workloads CSPs have migrated to the cloud

4.1% 3.9% 10.0%

12.5%
21.0%
25.0%

34.7%
Western Central Northern
Global 39.3% 50.0%
Asia 30.0%
Europe 50.0% Europe
37.5%
22.6%
20.0%

17.6% 10.0%
11.8%

7.1%
28.6%

34.8% 30.8%

North Southeast
MENA
Asia
America 42.4% 57.1%
(including
44.9%

33.8% China)
14.3%

8.7% 42.1%
Indian
15.4%
7.1% subcontinent
9.0%

5.0% 16.7%
24.1%
25.0% 20.0%
31.3%

30.0% 40.0%
South Africa Australasia
America 25.0%
20.0%

18.8% 33.3%
15.0%
20.0%

0%-10% 10%-25% 25%-50% 50%-75% 75%-100%

TM Forum, 2021

5 inform.tmforum.org
section 1: the state of cloud migration worldwide

T
o get a better idea of CSPs’ approaches to cloud migration
operators’ future intentions
we also asked whether they
Africa 42.9% 57.1%
have a preference for public or
private cloud (see below for an
explanation of the differences Australasia 33.3% 33.3% 33.3%
among types of cloud).
Significantly, nearly two thirds Central Europe 25.0% 75.0%
said they prefer hybrid cloud.
This finding indicates a vote Indian subcontinent 58.3% 41.7%
of confidence in public cloud
Middle East &
because so few CSPs have moved 100%
North Africa
workloads into the public cloud
so far. The fact that they are North America 12.5% 75.0% 12.5%
bullish about hybrid cloud means
they intend to move workloads
Northern Asia 20.0% 60.0% 20.0%
presently in private clouds to
public ones. Nevertheless, a far
higher proportion of respondents South America 10.0% 60.0% 30.0%
still prefer private over public
Southeast Asia
(31.2% versus 7.2%). (including China) 83.3% 16.7%

Read the DTT 5 report:

Western Europe 7.1% 71.4% 21.4%

Global 7.2% 61.6% 31.2%

We have a public cloud first approach

We have a hybrid cloud (public & private) approach
We prefer private cloud

TM Forum, 2021

comparing the cloud options

Pool of IT resources that is
automatically provisioned and
allocated among multiple clients
through a sellf-service interface.

vs Deployed as part of
a heterogeneous mix
of environments that
leads to higher security and
Designed to scale out performance and wider

private
workloads to exactly availability of services
track fluctuations in and applications.

Dedicated solely to the end-user and is usually within a company’s firewall

public demand.

Runs on-premises or in rented, vendor-owned data centers

located off premises

Underlying IT infrastructure is dedicated to a single customer

with completely isolated access

multi-cloud
hybrid
vs
Incorporates some degree
of workload portability, Similar to hybrid with combinations of private
orchestration and and public cloud providers. So, a CSP could have AWS,
management across 2 Google and Microsoft clouds and move IT assets around them.
or more environments.

Includes at lest 1 private cloud, 1 public cloud,

and a bare-metal or virtual environment connected
to at least one of the clouds.

6 inform.tmforum.org
section 1: the state of cloud migration worldwide
First apps moving to cloud
Some clear trends have emerged
in terms of which applications and
workloads CSPs are identifying
for public cloud migration. Two
categories are priorities:
1. IT workloads to support new
products, services and lines of
business, which include new
digital (consumer) brands,
pay-TV services and IoT
2. Digital customer touchpoints
including mobile apps and
websites
Data processing is an emerging
category. As part of their strategies
to leverage the potential of
machine learning and AI, operators
are storing increasingly large
volumes of data in the cloud. For
example, in May 2021 Vodafone
entered into a partnership with
Google Cloud Platform to create
Nucleus, a cloud-based storage
and analytics portal which will host
Vodafone data.
Priority applications are likely to
experience significant growth
in usage over the coming years
and, as such, will benefit from
Customer relationship
management
Product catalog
Order management
Operational
support systems
compelling case
Mediation
Virtual evolved packet core
7 inform.tmforum.org
the elasticity of the public cloud.
By launching new services in the
public cloud, CSPs can reduce the
risk of underestimating demand
for the services and having to go
through a procurement process
(and potentially a budget cycle)
to increase capacity. They also This captures the
reduce the risk of overestimating essence of the choices
demand and finding that they
many CIOs are
are left with systems running well
below capacity. When it comes to struggling to make:
data processing, operators gain They can see the
access to other tools that public benefits of migrating
cloud providers have developed, application categories
particularly for AI. such as customer
Beyond these types of relationship, product
applications, there is no real and order management,
pattern in public cloud migration.
but the process of
The image below, which is based
on one shared by a CSP in disentangling legacy
southeast Asia, shows which kinds systems and deciding
of applications the company plans which applications to
to migrate quickly and which will discard is complex
be difficult to move. and difficult.
It’s telling that the CSP
characterizes some applications
as good for “selective public
cloud migration” or as “difficult
migration but big benefits”. This
captures the essence of the
Evaluating apps for public cloud
IoT/B2B
Difficult Migrate Digital channels
migration but as soon as (chatbots)
big benefits possible
Analytics/AI
Billing
Lack of a
Selective
Enterprise resource
migration
for migration planning
Revenue assurance
TM Forum, 2021
section 1: the state of cloud migration worldwide
choices many CIOs are struggling
to make: They can see the
benefits of migrating application
categories such as customer
relationship, product and order
management, but the process of
disentangling legacy systems and
deciding which applications to
discard is complex and difficult.
To make such decisions many
operators will need the support of
the rest of the business.
Attitudes are changing
The focus of this report is on IT
applications moving to the cloud
rather than network functions
because most operators are
starting with IT workloads. In the
past many CSP executives said
they would not move network
applications into the public cloud.
When we surveyed telecoms
operators in 2019, only 5% said
that they planned to migrate
8 inform.tmforum.org
all operational support systems
(OSS) to the public cloud,
although a third said that they
would transfer some. Most
operators want to keep their
networks and network operations
on premises or in a private cloud,
because they see the network as
a strategic differentiator and they
worry about latency affecting
performance and reliability.
Similarly, they are concerned
about the security of public cloud
applications.
But in the last two years some
telco execs have softened their
attitudes toward using public
cloud services in the network.
Examples include:
In 2020 Belgian CSP Telenet
announced Google Cloud as
one of the suppliers for its 5G
network alongside Ericsson
and Nokia. Telenet will be
using Anthos in Telenet data
centers.

Telefónica Deutschland also
announced last year that it
will use Amazon Web Services
(AWS) to virtualize its core
In April 2021, US 5G operator
Dish and AWS announced a
strategic partnership to build
Dish’s greenfield network,
which will be based on
open radio access network
technology, in the public
cloud.
All eyes will be on such projects
to see if their bids to deploy
networks in the public cloud
are successful. If they are, more
operators are likely to embrace
public cloud for network and
operations workloads.
In the next section, we’ll look
at companies that are moving
quickly to public cloud for their IT
operations.
section 2:

M1, Verizon & BT adopt

cloud native approaches
for agility
As noted in the report’s introduction, M1 and Verizon are two of the most aggressive adopters of public cloud
technology, while BT is a cloud-native enthusiast but continues to evaluate the benefits of public cloud. All three
companies expect moving IT operations to the public cloud to result in increased agility, shorter time to market
and cost savings. Following are short case studies explaining their approaches.

M1 goes all in on
public cloud M1 shifts everything but
Nathan Bell, Chief Digital Officer
of Singaporean telecoms operator
network to public cloud 90%of business
M1, is the most passionate public processes
cloud evangelist we spoke to in the
cloud
as part of our research. “I am
an avid supporter of the cloud
and of its ability to deliver in Self-service

25
terms of volumes and types of transactions to Estimates

85%
applications,” he says. grow from
M1’s journey to the public cloud 15-20% now components
to close to built into
began in 2019 after a company-
90% the cloud reduction in
wide assessment that identified human touch
100 initiatives necessary to take through
the business to the next level in automation of
terms of costs, revenue generation 6 million complex ordering
and diversification. The overall combinations of consumer & provisioning
goal of the transformation project plans are possible process
was the ability to offer instant,
TM Forum, 2021
hyper-personalized, made-to-
measure services for customers.
a different way of thinking about Bell explains. “This is fine for a
To drive this vision M1 decided
architecture, culture and spending. single $200k project, but when it
to become a cloud-enabled
“In the past everything was looked is repeated 30, 40 or 50 times, it
digital services provider. For the
at in terms of incremental cost,” becomes clear that this is not cost
company’s IT teams this required
effective. The business starts to

9 inform.tmforum.org
section 2: M1, Verizon & BT adopt cloud native approaches for agility
ask itself the question: ‘Why is my
support cost going up so much?’
There was a realization that
something needed to be done.”
The transformation of the
consumer mobile business
(the largest proportion of M1’s
revenues are from consumer
mobile) got underway in early
2019. The transformation involved
shifting almost everything except
physical network assets into the
cloud. Prior to the shift, around
10% to 15% of M1’s business
processes were in the cloud. Now,
the company is 90% cloud native.
M1 opted for a greenfield strategy
in going cloud native, building a
brand-new “house” next to the
existing one. The company has
outsourced all its legacy software
to its systems integration partner,
Infosys. This allowed M1 to
focus on building its new digital
platform in the cloud, from the
apps down to rating, charging and
the network-as-a-service layer.
Bell says there are 25 components
all built into the cloud.
Putting the right approach in place
for procurement and ownership
of the technology roadmap
was essential for successful
transformation, according to Bell.
“We need to own this – it can’t
be pushed on us by a technology
partner,” he said in early 2020.
As such, M1 leveraged the TM
Forum Open Digital Architecture
(ODA – see page 12) so that it
could make its vendor partners
accountable and simplify the
systems integration process. No
vendor was allowed to bid for
more than 50% of the total value
of the contract.
The transformation of the
consumer business was
completed in early 2021, allowing
M1 to launch a new brand,
new services and new ways of
interacting with its customers.
This includes enabling customers
to manage their products and
10
services online holistically and in
real time, rather than waiting days
for services to be provisioned.
“The sort of hyper-personalization
we built on our website means we
can technically have six million
combinations of plans that can
be built with the slide of a finger,”
says M1 CEO Manjot Singh Mann.
“Technically we can have a plan
for each Singaporean. And we
haven’t even yet started on other
services we plan to build onto
this platform to give a far more
holistic experience to customers
going forward.”
Verizon adopts
hybrid strategy
US telecoms giant Verizon
embarked on a five-year IT
ecosystem transformation project
in 2017 with three main goals:
driving efficiencies and CapEx
gains, accelerating time to market
and driving innovation.
The key to the success,
according to Verizon Global
CIO Shankar Arumugavelu and
Chief Cloud Architect Nanda
Kumar, was taking a holistic
view of the potential benefits
Verizon’s cloud
migration in numbers
Completed
in 2020
Network
Almost half systems and
of applications security stay
moved to the in the private
public cloud cloud
TM Forum, 2021
of transformation. It was not
only about cloud migration and
reducing the number of on-
premises solutions; the project
also required an assessment
of Verizon’s operating model,
software stack, and the time and
resources spent managing the
company’s data center operations.
As a result of the migration,
Verizon embraced a hybrid cloud
strategy, and was able to retire
nearly a quarter of workloads. The
company was able to migrate a
significant number of applications
to the public cloud, while
maintaining the rest on premise.
When it came to deciding which
applications and workloads
could move to the cloud, the first
assessment was whether they
would benefit from the elasticity
provided by the public cloud.
For example, applications that
support short bursts in traffic
and demand, such as the launch
of a new mobile phone model or
online shopping on Black Friday,
were obvious candidates.
Cost considerations were not
just based on hardware. “When
you look at the total cost of an
application, the software license
weighs into the equation as
Private
data center
rationalization
A quarter of
workloads
retired
inform.tmforum.org
section 2: M1, Verizon & BT adopt cloud native approaches for agility
heavily, if not more so, as the cost
of buying and maintaining the
hardware,” says Arumugavelu.
In deciding which applications to
move to the public cloud, Verizon
broke its entire IT landscape into
four categories:
Systems of engagement (for
customers and front-line
employees)
Systems of record (customer
profile)
Systems of insights (analytics)
The customer experience
platform
Systems of engagement
represented the “low hanging
fruit” in terms of public cloud
migration, while a more
selective approach was required
across systems of record and
systems of insight. Verizon has
a public cloud-first strategy
with exceptions, specifically
applications that require low
latency (mainly the network),
security systems and applications
that support government data.
Verizon also retains some
applications on mainframes.
BT’s journey to
cloud native
BT’s most recent cloud journey
started in 2016, says Group Chief
Architect Neil McRae. “Knowing
what I knew about where we were
going with 5G and future networks,
what was clear to me was that we
needed to radically rethink our
variety of platforms,” he says.
“The IT that we had was shaped to
our organizational boundaries. We
had a consumer business stack,
a wholesale stack, an Openreach
stack, a BT Global stack. In effect,
we had 50-plus stacks and
hundreds of applications and it
was really difficult to get anything
done. And not only that, we were
facing the pressure of maintaining
11
the complexity of those stacks,
in a world where compliance and
security and all sorts of non-
functional things were driving
costs to an insane level.”
Simplifying the stacks was central
to this transformation process.
“Why do we need five or six
big stacks for each business
unit, when each business unit is
launching more or less the same
thing?” asks McRae.
When McRae went to the business
with his vision for a new approach
to IT he made the case for a
radical change. He presented the
idea of a three-layer platform with
core infrastructure as the bottom
layer, network-as-a-service sitting
above it, and on the top layer new
use cases such as telecoms in
healthcare or taking telecoms into
drones. “This top layer was really
more about what we could offer
as a solution,” says McRae.
The vision that McRae had for the
business was to migrate to a more
“webscale” type of IT based on the
idea of metadata, and with data all
ideally in one place but at the very
least in fewer places. This involved
migrating to a workflow-based
platform using microservices
and “with a much bigger focus
on capabilities and reusable
BT embraces cloud native
Early adopter
of modular
architecture
Moving into
microservices and new
vendor relationships
TM Forum, 2021
capabilities”, McRae adds.
In terms of prioritization, BT
took the decision to build this
componentized platform first
and then to address customers’
experience, and more specifically
their digital experience, as a
second priority. In this first phase,
one of the company’s biggest
challenges was identifying
vendors that could provide them
with the individual components,
particularly in the areas of catalog
and inventory. BT also decided,
around this time, to invest in
its own platform based on a
microservices architecture.
Rather than starting with easy
wins, BT’s approach has been
to start with those parts of the
business that were causing it most
pain. The biggest single issue that
BT had, according to McRae, was
“sales agility” – being able to go
from having a product it wants to
sell to making it available and then
constantly updating it in terms of,
for example, pricing and bundling.
Throughout the whole
transformation process, BT has
sought to align the IT function
with the interests of the lines of
business. While the IT function
was prepared to make provision
for the differing requirements
Network is a
differentiator,
so private
cloud first
inform.tmforum.org
section 2: M1, Verizon & BT adopt cloud native approaches for agility
of the various lines of business,
in practice there was very little
difference between them,
says McRae.
When it comes to cloud migration,
McRae makes a distinction
between those parts of the
business where BT is seeking
to differentiate itself and those
where it is not. “We see a definite
opportunity for putting more of
our BSS in the cloud, or SaaS
[software as a service],” he
says. The network, on the other
hand, is a differentiator. BT has
consistently said that its strategy
is to have the best network. “So
Helping CSPs evolve to a cloud native architecture
TM Forum members are
collaborating on best practices
and standards to help CSPs with
cloud migration. The TM Forum
Open Digital Architecture, part of
the Open Digital Framework (see
page 22), is a component-based
approach that enables operators
to evolve to a fully automated,
cloud native operations
environment that relies on
analytics and AI to deliver zero-
touch services.
The ODA defines standardized,
interoperable software components
organized into loosely coupled
domains. These components expose
business services through Open
APIs, which are built on a common
data model. Importantly, the ODA
provides machine-readable assets
and software code, including a
reference implementation and test
environment.
While the ODA offers a blueprint
for migrating from legacy
support systems to cloud
native applications, widespread
agreement, collaboration and
contribution among many CSPs
12
from that perspective, we want a
lot more control and visibility of
the network,” says McRae.
In terms of the benefits of
public cloud migration, McRae is
skeptical of the claims that are
being made about cost savings.
“We had all these systems
integration companies come to us
and say you could save millions
if you move to the cloud, but
we measured it…[and] we just
couldn’t see it.” Rather than lifting
and shifting applications into the
cloud, BT’s approach has been to
build “cloud-style apps” that are
optimized for the cloud.
No
/R tific
re n ep at
Co ctio or ion
tin
u n
f
Man
/Op gemen
urity
Sec
Environment
Dependence/
Requirements
Required
Open APIs
TM Forum, 2021
and vendors is necessary to
advance it. An ODA Component
Accelerator project is developing
a reference implementation
that acts as the basis for testing
commercial ODA components.
It is a step toward the Forum’s
goal of developing a market for
standardized and interoperable
software components to run
service provider businesses.
The graphic below illustrates an
ODA component, which is an
independently deployable piece
of software, typically built out
of one or more microservices.
One area where BT is currently
evaluating its options relates to
the storage of data. BT wants
to move all its data to a single
location, but is not sure whether
this should be on-premise or in
the cloud. One of its concerns
about putting it into the cloud
is whether, at a future date, it
wants to move it back out or into
another cloud, or clouds. “Building
stuff in the cloud is really easy, but
extracting it once you build in the
cloud is hard,” says McRae.
In the next section we’ll look at
companies that are adopting
public cloud more slowly.
Components have an “envelope”
that provides metadata to
describe its core function and
specify which Open APIs it
g
exposes or depends upon.
The test platform’s roots
erat
stem from one of TM Forum’s
a
ion
award-winning Catalyst proofs
t
of concept called BOS – an
implementation of ODA Core
Commerce Management, which
Provided
Open APIs implemented a business operating
system that allows CSPs to
focus on innovation instead of
integration issues. To learn more
about this important work or to
get involved, please contact Ian
Turkington.
Read this report to learn more
about ODA and Open APIs:
inform.tmforum.org
section 3:
Three Ireland, Antel
and Lycamobile take a
measured approach to
cloud migration
Like the larger telcos profiled in this report, Antel, Three Ireland and Lycamobile are encouraged by public
cloud’s potential. But all three companies are taking a pragmatic approach to adoption.
Three Ireland’s
hybrid approach
Following Three Ireland’s
acquisition of rival operator
O2 in 2014, the company has
recently completed a multi-year
IT transformation program. The
project enabled deployment and
integration of new customer
relationship management
(CRM), billing, ecommerce, self-
service, order management and
rating systems plus a big data
platform that includes storage
infrastructure. Both B2C and B2B
stacks were modernized.
The new IT systems sit in Three
Ireland’s private cloud, but the
operator is embracing public
cloud for 48, its relaunched digital
brand. 48’s website, customer
self-care portal and application,
web services, communications
and databases are all cloud-based.
Legacy SMS and email notifications
have been replaced with cloud-
based push notifications.
13
Three Ireland’s hybrid
approach to cloud
Transformation of B2C and B2B to deploy
new CRM, rating, billing, ecommerce and
order management plus self-service
and a big data platform
Uses cloud native
Uses private technologies for
cloud and omnichannel
public cloud experiences
supported by an
integration layer
TM Forum, 2021
Three’s transformation strategy
more broadly has involved
Antel maps out
building an integration layer cloud journey
between legacy applications and
Uruguayan state-owned operator
customer-facing omnichannel
Antel is in the process of mapping
applications which sit in either a
out its cloud journey. The
private or a public cloud.
company’s IT systems are either
on-premises or in a private cloud,
inform.tmforum.org
section 3: Three Ireland, Antel and Lycamobile
take a measured approach to cloud migration
We see the benefits of
[putting some workloads
and applications into]
the public cloud, but we
are still defining our
next steps.”
and two of its vendor partners
are helping to drive migration of
ecommerce services, customer
order management, APIs and
fixed network OSS into the private
cloud. Antel is decomposing the
applications into microservices,
with openness and conformance
to open APIs, including the TM
Forum Open APIs, central to the
transformation.
“We see the benefits of [putting
some workloads and applications
into] the public cloud, but we
are still defining our next steps,”
explains a member of the
company’s IT team. “It makes
sense to put some customer-
facing applications into the public
cloud, but there has been no
decision yet.”
With no public cloud
infrastructure in Uruguay there
is a limit to which applications
could be candidates for
migration. Uruguay has adopted
stringent rules on security and
privacy based on Europe’s
GDPR. Furthermore, Antel is
concerned about being locked
into a relationship with a single
hyperscale platform provider for a
prolonged period. The company’s
vision is very much one of
adopting a hybrid cloud model.
The process of migrating
applications to the private cloud
has brought together IT teams
working centrally and in the
enterprise line of business. Antel
sells a range of cloud computing
14
services to businesses and to
governments across Uruguay. In
September the company signed
a deal to resell Google Cloud
services within Uruguay.
Lycamobile’s IT
migration
Lycamobile is a UK-headquartered
mobile virtual network operator
(MVNO) with businesses in 23
countries across Europe and North
America, serving more than 16
million customers. It specialises in
providing services to people “who
want to connect back home”.
The company was founded 15 years
ago, and for most of that time it
has relied on its own in-house IT
platform called Plintron. In recent
years Lycamobile has sought to
position Plintron as a mobile virtual
network enabler / aggregator and
to serve other MVNOs beyond the
Lycamobile businesses.
However, it has now started the
process of modernising its IT
systems and, potentially, reducing
its dependence on Plintron.
One of the first projects has
been to look at putting in place
Antel’s cloud
migration at a glance
Conservative
hybrid cloud
approach
Limited by stringent
privacy/security rules & lack
of public cloud infrastructure
in Uruguay
TM Forum, 2021
a postpaid service capability
– to date it only offers prepaid
services. This is seen as being
key to driving new revenues and
monetizing new services beyond
mobile connectivity.
“So far, we have put into place a
target architecture,” says a senior
consultant to Huawei working with
Lycamobile on the
IT transformation project.
Lycamobile is working with
Huawei on new software-as-a-
service-based billing and customer
relationship management (CRM)
systems, including a new online
charging system.
This new BSS will sit alongside the
existing Plintron prepaid system.
The Lycamobile IT transformation
is extremely cost-driven, says
the consultant. Projects tend to
develop independently without
an over-arching vision for what
might be achieved from a
broader business perspective.
There is no central IT function,
and responsibilities are divided
between different executives.
In the next section, we offer
guidance to help CSPs embrace
public cloud.
Moving
ecommerce, order
management, APIs
and fixed network
OSS first
inform.tmforum.org
section 3:
make it happen –
strategies to accelerate
cloud migration
Many communications service providers (CSPs) start the public cloud journey with a “lift and shift” approach
of first moving existing applications to the cloud and then deciding whether to refactor them or transition to a
componentized architecture. Other operators, however, prefer to adopt a cloud-native strategy before migration
begins. Following are steps and considerations that are important in either case.
Assign responsibility &
accountability before
starting the journey
Many stakeholders including
product teams, lines of business
(for example, consumer or
enterprise) and finance teams
will be impacted by decisions
to migrate to the public cloud
and adopt cloud native software.
Cloud transformation projects
are most successful when only
a small number of people need
to be consulted. We have found
examples of CIOs needing buy-in
from as many as 30 stakeholders,
which is far too many. Other keys
to success are the CIO having
15
oversight or responsibility for
digital services in various lines of
business, and both CIO and CEO
being cloud evangelists. One CIO
we interviewed said that while
his CEO endorses his approach,
he is not supportive if product
managers push back in fear of
losing revenue from customers.
Invest in FinOps
Migrating applications and
workloads to the public cloud
involves transitioning from
predictable costs (a budget for
a hardware infrastructure with
sufficient capacity for the next
two to three years) to costs that
vary based on consumption,
with no forward visibility of
public cloud pricing. Even public
cloud evangelists recognize the
challenges. CSPs need tools to
help forecast demand for and
usage of public cloud services.
Public cloud vendors provide
some tools to manage costs, but
operators should also consider
purchasing a cloud financial
management (FinOps) solution
from a vendor with specialist
knowledge of multiple clouds
carrying telecoms workloads.
FinOps solutions can fulfill
twin roles of providing forward
visibility of finances, which is
particularly important given the
transition from CapEx to OpEx,
and delivering tools to optimize
public cloud consumption. IT
departments should also be
prepared to address internal
resistance to shifting spending
from CapEx to OpEx.
inform.tmforum.org
section 4 make it happen – strategies to accelerate cloud migration
Develop a strategy that
truly looks beyond cost
Cost comparisons between public
cloud and private cloud or on-
premises solutions will always be
the most important consideration
for any operator. But companies
like BT, M1 and Verizon, which
are enthusiastically embracing
public cloud, also consider how
adoption impacts agility, innovation
and customer experience. Public
cloud also gives operators the
opportunity to attract new talent
and retrain existing employees with
outdated skillsets. These wider
benefits of public cloud should
also be factored into KPIs to judge
its success or otherwise. These
could include, for example, growth
in the percentage of self-service
transactions or measuring the
adoption of zero-touch operations.
Continue Agile
engagements with
vendor partners
Many CSPs have been
disappointed with the results
16
of efforts to adopt Agile European telco says, “If services
DevOps approaches to software such as Google Anthos had been
development and integration. available three years ago, we might
But in many cases this is because have done things differently.” CSP
their technology partners have leaders should maintain positive,
not been properly organized into transparent dialogue with IT teams
Agile teams themselves. This and build a strong culture of
leads CSPs to adopt DevOps training and adopting new skills.
practices only for internal projects
that don’t involve partnering.
However, we have identified
enough examples of successful
collaboration to recommend
that operators persevere with
partnerships, seeking out
suppliers that can demonstrate
maturity and experience in Agile
ways of working.
Embrace standards
The journey to becoming a cloud-
first company requires an open
architecture and use of standard
APIs. CSPs should work together
on development of the TM Forum
Open Digital Architecture (ODA),
which is a component-based
approach that enables operators
to evolve to a fully automated,
Keep an open mind cloud native operations
about public cloud environment. The ODA defines
standardized, interoperable
CSPs should not base their
software components organized
opinions about public cloud on
into loosely coupled domains.
what it could do two or three years
These components expose
ago. Instead, they should look
business services through
ahead to what it may be able to
Open APIs, which are built
do two or three years from now.
on a common data model. To
Public cloud platform providers
learn more, please contact Ian
are constantly adding new features
Turkington.
and expanding their developer
ecosystems, so CSPs should
stay aware of these changes.
Furthermore, when making
decisions about architectures
and capabilities that will be used
for several years, operators can
reasonably assume that the public
cloud will deliver improvements.
As the Chief Architect for a
inform.tmforum.org
additional features
& resources
18 | Why open BSS is the key to CSP future business

22 | TM Forum Open Digital Framework

23 | TM Forum research reports

24 | Meet the Research & Media team

17 inform.tmforum.org
SPONSORED FEATURE
Why open BSS is the
key to CSP future business
Feature author
Maurice Ma,
President of Huawei
software business
department
Five directions and three
advantages of telecom
carriers’ digital service
operations
With the sluggish growth of
traditional communication
business and the gradual
channelization of carriers, telecom
carriers are in urgent need of
new drivers of service growth
and improved service supply
to provide more diversified and
valuable services for customers.
From the perspective of global
carriers’ development, there are
five different categories of new
18
services: life service and mobile
payment service operations,
content operations, application
distribution operations,
enterprise-oriented new services
(such as cloud, security, and
AI services), and end-to-end
industry-specific solutions.
Carriers have the following
inherent advantages in the digital
transformation from traditional
telecom service operations.
First, the accumulation of years
of consumer base, which is
fundamental to building new
services and business models.
Ranking the barriers to digital transformation
Lack of clear,
aligned vision &
goals
Availability of
skills
Lack of top
management
support
Weak
governance
structures
No sense of
urgency
TM Forum, 2021
Second, extended and
comprehensive ICT accumulation,
including operations system
technologies and network
technologies (for example,
connection technology, customer
contact, and real-time credit control),
in addition to top telecom carriers’
influence on the ICT industry.
Third, omni-channel user
experience. Carriers have built a
large number of offline service
outlets to provide face-to-face
services for consumers and more
convenient online consumer
channels, in addition to customer
Inflexible legacy IT
1 technology
2
Cultural &
3 organizational
4
issues
Complexity (product
5 portfolio, processes,
etc.)
6
Availability of
7 budget/resources
8
Organizational
9 aversion to risk
10
Lack of an industry
11 roadmap
inform.tmforum.org
SPONSORED FEATURE

Evolution of Carriers’ BSS Construction Policy

Silos Best of Breed Best of Suite ?

1990-2000 2000-2010 2010-2020 2020-

Background: Carriers
emphasize on the setup of
communication networks
and utilize IT systems
to accelerate network
monetization.
Approach: Service-based
siloed systems are built. For
example, prepaid, postpaid,
fixed network, and 2B
services are supported by
different systems.
Keywords: functionality, UI
Cons: Such systems can
hardly be integrated with
each other, downplaying
the benefits of service
collaboration.
Background: With the rapid
growth of mobile networks,
the growing number of
subscribers brings rapid
revenue growth for carriers.
Only BSSs with flexibility
and rich functionality can
help carriers attract more
subscribers.
Approach: The selection of
products is determined by
domain, such as CRM and
billing. Service integrators
(SIs) are responsible for
integrating the selected
products.
Keywords: SOA, convergent
order, convergent billing
Cons: Data incoherency
between systems degrades
user experience.
Background: Mobile Direction: 5G 2B?
subscriber growth slows New business
down due to market possibilities?
saturation and over-the-
Approach: ?
top (OTT) services. BSS
construction shifts its Keywords: cloud
focus to efficiency, costs, native, agile, AI/ML,
smartphones, and fixed- CX, openness
mobile convergence.
Approach: A few vendors
that provide one-stop BSS
solutions are much sought
after.
Keywords: digital, cloud
Cons: Carriers have to pay
vendors high CR fees while
receiving delayed response to
changes.

channels through USSD and TM Forum ODA

SMS that are exclusive to
telecom carriers.
standard APIs
Component 2

Component 2
Component n

Component n
Interact with
Component 1

Component 1
Enhanced IT capability as Group n
Group 1

...

...
the key to achieving rapid
...

growth of new services
and creating competitive
advantages
On the one hand, telecom
carriers require flexible and rich
IT resources to support quick
service rollout and competitive
differentiation.
On the other hand, the inflexible
legacy IT system ranks the top
obstacle to overcome for almost
all carriers, according to TM
Forum statistics.
Along the evolution of BSS, what
new changes should carriers pay
attention to?
Evolution and challenges
of BSS
BSS is the core operations
system that supports competitive
differentiation and quick service
rollout for telecom carriers.
How the system is constructed
Best of
Suite
ODA: standard components
is tightly related to service and results of such new services
development. Since the 1990s, have not always been satisfactory.
the evolution of carrier BSS has Therefore, the upgrade and
gone through three major stages: reconstruction of the legacy
Silos, Best of Breed, and Best of BSS has become a pressing
Suite. The following figure shows issue. Standardization is now
the details. the most effective means for
carriers to address such issues as
Driven by the requirements
high customization costs, slow
of service development, IT
response to requirements, and
development, and architecture
vendor lock-in.
development of Internet
companies, carriers are seeking TM Forum launched the Open
to build more agile, open, and Digital Architecture (ODA)
experience-oriented BSSs. project at the end of 2018
to define more fine-grained
In the past few years, carriers
standard components, making it
have been trying to operate new
possible for carriers to purchase
services. However, restricted by
components from different
the product capabilities of the
vendors in the near future.
live network, the rollout pace

19 inform.tmforum.org
SPONSORED FEATURE
Key features:
Standard-based unified
granularities, covering the
component granularity,
component grouping
granularity, and component
implementation granularity,
facilitating product integration.
Standard APIs, simplifying
component integration across
venders.
Canvas and Governance,
ensuring unified deployment
and execution of components
from different vendors.
Huawei is a pioneer, contributor,
and promoter of ODA. In 2017,
Huawei proposed to define the
ODA standard. It is one of the first
vendors to sign the Open
API Manifesto.
Huawei BSS actively participates
in ODA model standardization
and domain language unification,
and promotes implementation
and certification of the Open
API of Huawei BSS products. By
May 2021, Huawei has 14 groups
of APIs certified as TM Forum
Open APIs, covering the following
domains recommended by ODA:
Customer, Customer Engaged
Party, Product, Resource, Service,
and Common.
The open architecture of
Huawei BSS aims to help
carriers future proof their
business.
In an era beyond connectivity,
carriers will enable connections
in a wide range of industries,
from rigid production to flexible
production, and from economies
of scale to economies of scope.
The O&M system must be able to
support flexible manufacturing
and provide multi-state service
products.
Huawei BSS is publishing more
and more scenario-based cross-
industry APIs, enabling industry
customers and ecosystem partners
to upgrade their production and
20
ABC layered architecture
Customization layer (C)
Carriers can use in-house resources or seek for third-party
SIs to deliver personalized functions.
The layer includes configuration and customization (primarily
low-code and codeless customization). Carriers can modify
and release the customization layer independently.
OOTB layer (B)
Individual Family Corporate New business
...
Based on best practice in global delivery and provided by vendors,
the layer can be directly used by carriers.
Core layer (A)
Resource inventory
Core commerce
Product catalog
Service balance
Billing account
Product rating
Product order
Service usage
Production
Payment
Identity
Party
...
...
...
...
Provided by vendors, the core layer includes TMF APIs with standard features,
models, the service framework, and core logic implementation.
operation processes while helping In the future, the BSS is expected
carriers monetize their assets. to be decoupled into standard
These APIs abstracts away specific services vertically and, more
low-level network and system importantly, layered horizontally.
details and are orchestrated into In this way, carriers can complete
scenario-based capabilities based fast innovation of new services
on different requirements of while not depending on software
industry customers. vendors’ versioning. The ABC
layered architecture of Huawei
The layered architecture BSS is defined as follows:
enables more flexibility Layer A, the Core Layer:
and openness. provides core product
As a matter of fact, the need for components designed based
differentiated operations is deeply on the Cloud Native, including
rooted in the telecom industry. models, APIs, business logic
Different carriers opt for different implementations, and business
operation processes, operation frameworks.
modes, and market strategies, Layer B, the OOTB Layer:
which, in some respects, provides the service features of
contributes to the competitive best practices in the telecom
advantages of each carrier. operations field, and supports
feature lists of different
In addition, integration of a large
product categories (mobile,
number of peripheral systems
fixed network, and new
on the live network (usually the
most complex part of a project) digital services) for different
and compliance with local customers (individuals,
laws and regulations also pose families, and enterprises).
differentiation requirements on
the BSS.
inform.tmforum.org
SPONSORED FEATURE

Layer C, the Customization A large number of
Layer: allows carriers to technical advantages
develop personalized are reserved to support
requirements by themselves continuous product
or ask SIs to do so when evolution with service
features at layer B cannot development.
meet requirements. The
In the future, carriers will develop
implementation modes
from CSPs to DSPs and have
include configuration based
more technical requirements on
on the service framework
IT systems. In addition to cloud
and low-code or codeless
Native, AL/ML, ABC layered
customization development.
architecture, omni-channel
The ABC layered architecture can customer contact, and security and
help carriers get rid of vendor privacy, BSS-related technologies
lock-in and control differentiated will be continuously developed and
competitiveness by themselves. updated in the future.
First, layer C does not depend
on layer-A or layer-B products.
ODA interface
Therefore, the response time
standardization is
and customization fee of service
supported on Huawei
requirements are not subject to
SaaS platform, providing
vendors. Second, the vendor’s
better support services for
products serve multiple carriers,
carriers.
sharing the costs of developing
common product capabilities In the future, BSS SaaS should
and evolving the technical be based on a brand-new cloud
architecture. Finally, components native architecture and comply
from different vendor are unified with the TM Forum ODA standards
to ensure that the components to provide product capabilities
use the same language and do featuring efficiency, agility,
not depend on standards, which openness, intelligence, safety,
can shorten the response time to and trustworthiness, to provide
carriers’ requirements. cloud-based operations support
capabilities for carriers, and to
provide flexible cloud migration
paths for various customers.
1. MVNOs and small- and medium-
sized carriers can directly
use the BSS SaaS solution
to complete E2E operations
support solution integration
based on standard interfaces,
shortening the delivery period
and reducing CAPEX.
2. Provides operations support
featuring agile services, low
costs, and light weight for
new services (such as IoT and
5G) and new brands based on
BSS SaaS, and integrates with
the original system through
standard interfaces to avoid
data silos.
3. Some non-core and non-real-
time experience services, such
as collection and marketing
services, can be made
SaaS-based and gradually
piloted. These services can
be integrated with other core
modules through standard
APIs to ensure coherent user
experience.
Huawei BSS SaaS solution
preferentially supports standard
ODA APIs and provides better
operation support services for
carriers based on years of practice
in the telecom industry.

Traditional CSP Digital Service Provider

Zero-touch Partnering

CSP domain Core layer (A) Core layer (A)

Operations AI-Enabled, Real-Time Operations

(processes & people) Augmented Intelligence
Zero-touch Interoperability

BSS Cloud Native IT

Production Components
Re-usable, ‘Plug and Play’,
OSS Micro-service oriented

Natwork Autonomous Infrastructure

(physical) 5G + Edge + Data +AI

21 inform.tmforum.org
tm forum open
digital framework

A blueprint for intelligent operations fit for the 5G era

The TM Forum Open Digital Framework (ODF) provides a migration path from legacy IT systems and
processes to modular, cloud native software orchestrated using AI.
The framework comprises tools, code, knowledge and standards (machine-readable assets, not just
documents). It is delivering business value for TM Forum members today, accelerating concept-to-cash,
eliminating IT & network costs, and enhancing digital customer experience.
Developed by TM Forum member organizations through our Collaboration Community and Catalyst proofs
of concept, building on TM Forum’s established standards, the Open Digital Framework is being used by
leading service providers and software companies worldwide.

Goals of the Open

The framework comprises TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture
(ODA), together with tools, models and data that guide the
transformation to ODA from legacy IT systems and operations.
Open Digital Architecture
Architecture framework,
common language and
design principles
Open APIs exposing
business services
Standardized software
components
Reference implementation
and test environment
Transformation Tools
Guides to navigate digital
transformation
Tools to support the
migration from legacy
architecture to ODA
Maturity Tools & Data
Maturity models and
readiness checks to
baseline digital capabilities
Data for benchmarking
progress and training AI
Digital Framework
The aim is to transform
business agility
(accelerating concept-to-
cash from 18 months to 18
days), enable simpler IT
solutions that are easier
and cheaper to deploy,
integrate and upgrade, and
to establish a standardized
software model and market
which benefits all parties
(service providers, their
suppliers and systems
integrators).
Learn more about
member collaboration
If you would like to learn
more about the Open
Digital Framework, or
how to get involved in the
TM Forum Collaboration
Community, please
contact George Glass.

22 inform.tmforum.org
tm forum research reports

23 inform.tmforum.org
meet the Research & Media team

Report Author: Report Editor:

Mark Newman Dawn Bushaus
Chief Analyst Contributing Editor
mnewman@tmforum.org dbushaus@tmforum.org

Report Author:
Editor in Chief, Inform:
Dean Ramsay
Principal Analyst Joanne Taaffe
dramsay@tmforum.org jtaaffe@tmforum.org

Customer Success &

Managing Editor: Operations Manager:
Ian Kemp Ali Groves
ikemp@tmforum.org agroves@tmforum.org

Commercial Manager,
Digital Media & Research & Media:
Event Coordinator:
Tim Edwards
Alexis Jackson Senior Analyst
ajackson@tmforum.org tedwards@tmforum.org

Global Account Director: Digital Marketing Manager:

Carine Vandevelde Anna Kurmanbaeva
cvandevelde@tmforum.org akurmanbaeva@tmforum.org

Report Design:
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© 2021. The entire contents of this publication are protected by copyright.
info@intuitive-design.co.uk All rights reserved. The Forum would like to thank the sponsors and
advertisers who have enabled the publication of this fully independently
researched report. The views and opinions expressed by individual authors
Report Design: and contributors in this publication are provided in the writers’ personal
TM Forum, 4 Century Drive, capacities and are their sole responsibility. Their publication does not imply
Parsippany, NJ 07054, USA that they represent the views or opinions of TM Forum and must neither
www.tmforum.org be regarded as constituting advice on any matter whatsoever, nor be
Phone: +1 973-944-5100 interpreted as such. The reproduction of advertisements and sponsored
Fax: +1 973-944-5110 features in this publication does not in any way imply endorsement by TM
ISBN: 978-1-955998-03-1 Forum of products or services referred to therein.

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for more about tm forum’s cloud
native IT & agility projects, please
contact Ian Turkington