Why Migrate your OSS to a Public Cloud?

Most communications service providers’ OSS is still hosted on-premises or private clouds. OSS was considered a greater challenge, given its closeness to the network, sensitivity to latency, big data quantities, and requirement for increased reliability.

But, operators have recently chosen to put their mobile core on the public cloud. There is no reason it cannot host OSS if it is deemed suitable for a system as vital as a mobile core.

Why would you consider operating your OSS in the public cloud if it works properly on-premises?

Here are the main reasons:

Elasticity

The public cloud is infinitely expandable in terms of the needs of each telecom operator, industry, or government. As a result, there’s no need to generate future workload forecasts or overprovision resources.

You pay for the server capacity you demand right now, and your application hosting fees will adjust proportionately if your requirements change in the future.

Agility

Agility is closely related to flexibility. An OSS application deployed on-premises will necessitate requests for server infrastructure well in advance. The resources can be made instantaneously available using the public cloud.

It allows for the speedier deployment of new IT systems and the introduction of new services. Operators can be more imaginative in their marketing and product strategy by shortening the time to market.

Availability

No organization, telco or otherwise, can match the availability of public cloud infrastructure when it comes to server infrastructure availability.

The massive scale and redundancy of public cloud server farms and networks ensure their uptime is extremely consistent. Public cloud providers are also highly secure due to their effective patch management.

Upgrades are Simple

Hosting apps on the public cloud can make software upgrades easier, allowing for faster and more regular updates. Blue-green deployments, which gradually transition software from the current version (blue) to the new version (green), can manage the upgrading process (green). Both software versions are used in the same production environments.

Because the additional server capacity necessary during the upgrading process only needs to be made available briefly, blue-green deployments are well-suitable for the public cloud.

Development and Testing

OSS applications frequently go through development, adaptation, and integration phases within the telecom operator’s IT infrastructure. The operator will collaborate with the OSS provider to test the application during this procedure. It could be used to test a new module with more functionality or to launch a totally new OSS.

If the servers are not transferred to another use once the testing is completed, having to dedicate on-premises server resources for these demands can slow down the process and result in low utilization.

Operators and their OSS providers can ensure that the required server capacity for development and testing environments is only available for as long as it is necessary by leveraging the public cloud.

Total Ownership Costs

While the public cloud’s agility and flexibility are important selling features, operators also expect to save money. With the public cloud, they can naturally avoid CAPEX. On the other hand, operators do not want to swap cheaper CAPEX for higher OPEX.

They want to reduce their total cost of ownership. Operators hosting OSS in the public cloud have had a pleasant experience. In some circumstances, they have incurred unanticipated fees due to chatty applications with high traffic in and out of the cloud.

However, they have discovered that paying only for the capacity they require and utilizing hyperscalers’ economies of scale has resulted in significant cost savings. Telecom operators can lower their operational costs by leveraging the experience of public cloud providers in managing IT infrastructure.

Final Thoughts

OSS applications have traditionally relied on commercially available high-performance database software. The annual software maintenance fees for many apps are quite high.

You can greatly reduce the OSS application’s ownership cost by changing it to an open-source database such as MySQL, delivered as a managed service by the public cloud provider. These public cloud platform services are extremely dependable and scalable, and they can even boost application performance.

Contact Symphonica today to learn more about migrating your OSS to a public cloud.