Telcos find cloud migrations, security, are a pain in the IaaS

Telecom companies have consumed only 48 percent of the cloud they have committed to, yet seek to secure more, according to a report released late last week by Infosys.

The outsourcing giant's "Cloud Radar – Telecom Industry Report" is compiled from over 400 industry insiders, from mid-level management to execs to C-suites. It concludes that "the industry is significantly increasing cloud spending."

The fear is that without more cloud, telcos are not full optimizing their 5G networks efficiently – and consequently not meeting the high-speed and low-latency needed for IoT and edge computing applications.

Therefore they continue to buy – even as the product is not fully used – in the hopes it will reduce costs, increase operational efficiency and improve scalability.

They're prevented from meeting full utilization, according to Infosys, by the challenges of migration, competition and security.

Infosys attributed the slow uptake of procured cloud to the complexities associated with transitioning from legacy IT systems – a process that "often involves intricate interdependencies and customizations."

That's further complicated by cloud offering services that directly compete with the telecoms' own offerings – like edge computing, IoT platforms, and virtualized network functions (NFVs).

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Infosys also warned that the adoption of cloud-native 5G networks and virtualization can expose data to interception. It cited cloud-based assets – including software-as-a-service apps and databases – as primary targets for cyber crime. The risk is enhanced by the number of IoT devices on the network, which are susceptible to botnet attacks, and human configuration errors.

Forty-five percent of respondents admitted to allowing any department head or IT manager the ability to deploy new cloud infrastructure software or applications – a move Infosys deemed "too lax from a security perspective."

Another problem highlighted in the report is that a huge chunk of 44 percent of critical cloud decisions is being made in isolation – meaning the IT department or the business makes the decision, instead of working jointly.

"Considering that cloud saturates every corner of the corporate enterprise, decisions about cloud need to involve leaders, technologists, and users," wrote the report authors.

Still, migration to the cloud – a process that for most has taken place long-term over decades – has mostly worked in the telco industry's favor. Over three-quarters said cloud migration efforts have proven to be very effective or extremely effective and have resulted in significant cost savings and improved performance.

However, some improvement could be made when it comes to understanding those cost savings. While telecom cloud managers were found generally confident in their ability to run their systems, they were much less so in monitoring, predicting, and optimizing associated costs. ®