[MUSIC PLAYING]
MAX KAMENETSKY: Hi, and welcome to the Google Cloud and Nokia
series on the cloudification of telecom provider networks.
Why now, and how?
I'm Max Kamenetsky, group product manager
of Cloud Networking at Google Cloud.
JITIN BHANDARI: I am Jitin Bhandari,
chief technology officer for Cloud
and Network Services at Nokia.
MAX KAMENETSKY: Jitin, it's wonderful to have
an opportunity to talk to you today.
We've been talking a little bit already
about what it means to be cloud native.
And of course, one of the things that we do need to discuss
is what are these workloads that we actually want to run,
and where do we run them?
Do you have any perspective on this?
JITIN BHANDARI: About three years back when
we started the journey of cloudification and taking
this journey next to what we call cloud native for Nokia,
and especially for the cloud platforms that we have,
which goes across networks operations, assurance,
and the full gamut of transforming the whole telco
cloud, one of the first things we did
was clear classification and bucketization
of these workloads.
What are we talking about here, right?
If you look at that whole spectrum of workloads
and applications, they're very distinctively
put on classification.
Some are control plane applications.
Some are user plane applications, high bandwidth
latency intensive applications.
Then we have got workloads which are storage intensive, more
tie-up to the analytics aspects of it,
more tie-up to the storage of the service providers'
networks' data and subscriber data in [INAUDIBLE]..
And then we've got workloads that
are sensitive to latency and bandwidth and the positioning
of the workloads where they sit in the network.
So you got to start out with that broader spectrum
when you're talking about the transformation.
And inside those, it's just not about the networks.
It's also about the workloads that
are actually managing, operating, and taking
care of the networks.
I'm talking about workloads in the operations aspects,
the assurance aspects, and workloads that actually ties up
to the analytics and the big data pieces that
sits in the telco space today.
So that's what the landscape that we are thinking about when
we talk about the cloudification and true
cloud native nature of transforming these networks.
MAX KAMENETSKY: Hmm.
So one of the things that we often hear
is the word containers, so the notion
that you have microservices that are stateless,
that are reduced to their absolute minimum size
that you're able to run in this kind of infrastructure.
Now, of course, there are container systems,
such as Kubernetes.
This has been around for quite some time.
In fact, this is something that Google has been thinking
about for a very long time.
Google open sourced Kubernetes.
It still is one of the major contributors to Kubernetes.
And within Google, we have been running
a container-based infrastructure for well over a decade
at this point.
Do you believe that in the telecom community
we're ready to have containerized network functions
for all of our workloads?
JITIN BHANDARI: [LAUGHS] Max, I'm almost convinced now
to that point that we are absolutely ready to take over
what the cloud-native computing foundation set up,
and Google has been pioneers in setting up
the Kubernetes and the containers mission.
Two things we studied very closely--
because of our backgrounds into the telco space, we know where,
and interestingly thanks to UPP specification
and how the network functions architectures has been defined,
if you see the architectures and the definitions of it,
they are actually almost screaming
for an adoption of a microservices adaption, right?
How do you take those implementation of containers?
How do you take the concepts of reuse?
How do you build and architect these applications
from a fresh approach that actually
define scale, resilience, and concepts of reuse?
So I'm almost convinced that whether you
go into that spectrum that I previously talked about,
pick any workload of that spectrum,
there is enough proof point that the maximum concepts of reuse,
the concepts of microservices and containers
can easily be implemented into these applications.
But one thing we need to think about,
this is not an overnight process.
This journey has to start well ahead in advance
re-architecting these applications, what
they do in the network.
Whether they are a control plane, a user plane,
or a storage node or an operations node,
you got to think about that.
You've got to think about the value they
bring into the 5G ecosystem.
And all these considerations are really important when
you embrace technologies like microservices and containers.
MAX KAMENETSKY: Yeah, I completely
agree with you on that point.
So it does sound like we need to still have an architecture that
supports containerized workloads,
virtualized workloads, perhaps even VMs.
One other thing that's been very important in the IT
architecture world is the openness of platforms,
the openness of interfaces.
If you look at examples like Kubernetes, which we already
mentioned, which is open sourced,
and a number of other technologies like STO
for service matching, which are open sourced,
they bring tremendous value to the community.
And of course, there are other great examples
like Android, which is an open-source platform that's
enabled a huge ecosystem, or Linux.
What do you think is the value of openness and open APIs
to telecom workloads?
JITIN BHANDARI: Openness to me means at multiple layers.
And you so hit it very, very well.
We've got to start thinking about how do we
design applications in a more open way.
And you spelled it right.
Long gone are the ways where you build an application
from scratch.
The concepts of reuse from those open-source communities
is almost inherent to how you build applications, and hence
the term, platform as a service or the past components we've
been talking about quite a bit of how
do we reuse what the platform brings,
its assets when we're talking about firewalls assets, when
we're talking about forwarding assets,
and many aspects of those, and how do we
look at service mesh concepts and reuse those
as we are re-architecting these networks.
So absolutely, openness out there plays a big role.
The other aspect of openness to me
is all about how do you open up the networks, the operations,
and the analytics of this infrastructure, right?
To tell you the truth, this has been a big challenge
for the telco space.
We have failed in the last many years of our journeys,
especially during the virtualization pieces of it,
of really creating open-value systems that connect straight
up to the marketplace.
So to me, as much as building the application
and re-architecting the applications
in an open paradigm is important,
what is also critical is how do you
make sure that those cloud-native design
principles of open APIs, those RESTful APIs that
engage in true service-oriented architectures from one
block of software to another block of software
really comes to full life.
And to me, that's going to be critical
in the designing principles of an application today.
MAX KAMENETSKY: Yes, I agree.
And I think if you also look at some of the initiatives that
are happening in the telecom industry,
and of course, both Nokia and Google
have been participating in them, which is really
all about creating open interfaces, open APIs,
and allowing choice, allowing flexibility
in all of those things, what do you think
are some of the pitfalls that maybe we
need to be looking at as well?
JITIN BHANDARI: You know, Max, every time
I connect with our service provider friends,
and especially the telco CTO communities, one topic
that often comes up is about data privacy, security,
and trust, and how are we doing that when
we talk about migrating the networks and operations
into private and hybrid clouds.
It'll be fantastic to hear your views
and Google Cloud view, where do we stand?
How do we handle that concern for service provider
and operators out there?
MAX KAMENETSKY: Well, Jitin, I strongly
believe that it is a fallacy to think
that moving to cloud somehow compromises privacy or security
or control.
In fact, telecom operators are not
the only industries that are on this journey to cloud.
Look at some other highly-regulated industries
that are also on this journey, financial services
as an example.
Google Cloud has built in very strong protections
for assuring privacy and security.
Maybe a couple of points I can make on this.
The first is that we strongly believe that the operators will
continue to control their networks,
will continue to own their networks.
They will continue to operate their networks.
And the data and the users are theirs.
We are merely technology enablers from that perspective.
Second, on the security piece, moving to cloud
actually enhances security.
Consider the kind of investments that public cloud companies
such as Google are making in security.
Whether you look at Project Zero,
which is Google's team that has been
instrumental in discovering some of the key, some of the worst
vulnerabilities over the last decade,
or whether you're looking at the investments we're
making in support of the nine products
that each have over a billion users,
we are able to take these investments
and scale them for our cloud customers
in providing very comprehensive security.
We talked before about the example of Anthos Service Mesh.
Anthos Service Mesh enables security at rest, in transit,
and as a result, you're able to establish an automatic zero
trust infrastructure.
This is something that we really are looking forward
to working with telecom operators on as well.
JITIN BHANDARI: Fantastic.
That absolutely makes sense and looking forward
for the collaboration out there in the marketplace.
MAX KAMENETSKY: Thanks for catching our discussion
on the cloudification of telco networks.
We'll see you next time in the cloud.