Three can’t-miss sessions for telcos at MWC 2022

We’re pumped for Mobile World Congress, the biggest event in telco! It runs from February 28 to March 3, 2022 in Barcelona (and also online). With hundreds of sessions, it can be overwhelming to choose where to spend your time, so I picked the top three for telcos. You’re welcome!

And be sure to visit the TelcoDR team in this year’s all-virtual CLOUD CITY. We’ll be hanging out with more than 30 of our favorite vendors that offer cloud-native solutions for communication service providers (CSPs). Get the deets in my blog.

Azure has private networks, too!?

Microsoft Azure’s private network offering unites 5G, edge computing, and a robust partner network to deliver private networks to enterprises. In this episode, Shriraj Gaglani, GM, Azure Private MEC, tells us what this means for telco. Listen now >

CLOUD CITY is ON! I’m so psyched about all the cool demos we have from the partners that make up the Cloud City Army. You can join us from anywhere in the world between now and March 2. Register here if you haven’t already and visit with my team at the Totogi and TelcoDR booths.

I’m super stoked to be joining Claus Verner, Business Development Manager at AWS Startups, for a fireside chat at MWC22. This is part of the 4YFN track, and we’ll be talking about TelcoDR’s journey, the excitement of taking over Ericsson’s booth last year, and the massive opportunities the public cloud brings to Telco startups. Join me at the AWS Startup booth at 2 pm CET on Tuesday, March 1, for a fun “silent disco” talk!

And just a few more days until you’ll find me kicking off the "Public Cloud: The Key Questions" session at MCW22. My talk starts at 11 am CET on March 2 in Hall 5, Stage B. And let’s chat on the show floor – I’ll be tweeting and passing out goodies!

To kick things off, here’s a great Q&A from The Mobile Network featuring Ishwar Parulkar, Chief Technologist, Telco, Amazon Web Service. He lays out AWS’ vision for working with telcos to transform the way they operate and serve customers, saying “We believe that moving virtual network functions onto AWS will become the standard way to build new telecommunications networks going forward.” I love that vision! He goes on to explain the different ways AWS plans to engage the telco space and deliver increased agility and lower TCO. Telco execs, I’ve said it before – the hyperscalers should be your BFFs.?

And there’s no doubt AWS is delivering the goods. Here’s a Twitter love letter from a newbie programmer who was gobsmacked by how easy it was to get a site running on an EC2 server with automated health checks performed 16x per minute across eight global regions. It was up and running in one day. (As one smart commenter noted, it takes longer to place an order for on-prem hardware.) The price tag to keep it going? $2 per month! THIS is why the public cloud is so awesome.???

Augmented identity firm IDEMIA has gone all-in with Microsoft Azure,?collaborating with the hyperscaler?to deliver next-gen eSIM and connectivity solutions to MNOs. The relationship will boost the companies’ ability to provide high levels of service availability, geo-redundancy capacities, and state-of the-art security technologies that improve resilience against DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. It’s launched in France and the United States, and should roll out in other regions over the coming months.

Here’s my new favorite article, from David Linthicum at InfoWorld, When Kubernetes is not the solution. While there are legitimate reasons to consider Kubernetes, he points out that many developers aren’t considering the complexity and cost trade-offs when it comes to using Kubernetes. Do your homework and don’t just default to using Kubernetes with your applications.

Staying with David at InfoWorld, I’m starting to see a buzzword enter the telco vernacular: multicloud. It’s not the panacea you think it is, and in this article he dispels three myths about the cloud: that it’s more resilient, it’s cheaper, and that it solves the vendor lock-in problem. Before everyone runs off to adopt a multicloud strategy, I suggest reading this article first.

Reliance Jio has become the first digital service provider to achieve TM Forum’s Open API Platinum Certification. Way to go, Jio! ?? APIs are a super smart way to build telco functionality. And enjoy the rarified air at the top of the TMF Open API certification leaderboard with Totogi by your side.?We started a chain reaction of Open API certifications when we entered the race – let’s keep the momentum going!

This one has me scratching my head. Oracle and Telefónica Tech have announced a partnership to offer global cloud services. While I’m sure Oracle gave Telefónica Tech a sweet deal, it wouldn’t be the cloud I’d bet on. If you compare Oracle’s capex investment to the Big 3, well, Telefónica Tech has opted to play in the minor league. Plus, to take this to the next level, the company really needs to be thinking about helping enterprises use the software and services the cloud offers, not just infrastructure and databases.

Back to Microsoft Azure for a more compelling partnership story. Nokia has integrated Azure Arc, a multicloud and on-premise management platform, with its Analytics, Virtualization and Automation (AVA) system, giving Nokia’s customers access to Azure’s security and cloud-native services in their existing hybrid and multicloud environments. This allows Nokia to monitor and operate AVA applications in its customers’ preferred clouds, through a single screen, while still meeting data regulations in various countries.

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