In case there was any doubt that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is making its presence recognized within the telecom world, AWS’ incoming CEO Adam Selipsky name-dropped a bunch of main telcos that the corporate is working with, throughout an MWC 2021 presentation.
Those telcos embody Verizon, Vodafone U.Okay., KDDI, Telefonica, SK Telecom, Bell Canada and Dish. To put a positive level on it, Selipsky mentioned, “We’re having related forms of conversations with actually nearly every telecom operator world wide. Particularly, we see that round 5G networks, each ones which have already been deployed the place AWS is being put in, in addition to in some circumstances AWS being baked into model new 5G networks.”
Selipsky will quickly be changing Andy Jassy as CEO of AWS. Jassy is being promoted to the massive position of CEO of Amazon when Jeff Bezos turns into govt chairman of the board of administrators on July 5. Selipsky was one in every of AWS’s first VPs employed in 2005. He ran AWS’s gross sales, advertising and marketing and help for 11 years. He left in 2016 to develop into the CEO of Tableau, which was acquired by Salesforce.
As a part of its public relations blitz at MWC, AWS had Selipsky kick off an “AWS Virtual Village” with a presentation concerning the firm’s work with telcos. And he additionally introduced that Swisscom has chosen AWS as its most popular public cloud supplier for its enterprise IT. Swisscom will migrate a variety of core purposes to AWS, and Swisscom can even work with AWS to construct its 5G core within the cloud.
AWS is additionally going to construct a brand new availability area in Switzerland. Selipsky mentioned availability zones will be considered “roughly as knowledge facilities.” Multiple availability zones represent an AWS area. “AWS has a complete bunch of areas round Europe and world wide,” mentioned Selipsky. “And we’re more than happy to announce that we’re going to be constructing a brand new AWS area in Switzerland, which shall be opening within the second half of 2022.”
Friends with telcos
The incoming CEO famous that AWS is already working with a number of main telcos. Some of those firms, akin to Verizon and Vodafone, are utilizing AWS Wavelength, which embeds AWS compute and storage at service suppliers’ knowledge facilities on the fringe of the 5G community.
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Others, akin to Telefonica Germany, are utilizing AWS Outposts, which is a totally managed service that brings AWS infrastructure into the telco’s on-premises infrastructure.
And then there’s Dish, which has gone all-in with AWS, selecting the cloud supplier to host its RAN and cell core for its new 5G community.
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Selipsky’s presentation about AWS’s work with telcos was slick. There’s been a variety of speak concerning the knowledge of letting the massive cloud gamers into telecom networks. Selipsky positioned AWS as a means for telecom house owners to save huge on capital expenditures.
“Obviously the telecom trade has historically thrived on connectivity providers, and that is a really technically advanced in addition to capital intensive train,” he mentioned. “The trade is constructed on not solely the networks however then after all the information facilities and the infrastructure within the knowledge facilities. And all of that infrastructure, as a lot of you understand, is very expensive. We are actually excited to find a way to carry the cloud mannequin to telecom operators, which actually permits them to flip that mannequin on its head.”
He mentioned AWS would enable telecom operators to “basically eliminate that capex and have opex.” He touted the cloud mannequin as a means to deploy flexibly and scale with elastic capability each up and down at any specific second in time.
No one would argue that the cloud mannequin provides nice advantages. And definitely telecom operators could be comfortable to “eliminate” their capex. The solely hitch is that when operators develop into depending on AWS, or any cloud supplier, they is perhaps topic to elastic scaling of their opex, based mostly on the whims of the cloud suppliers.
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But Selipsky careworn, “There are actually highly effective price financial savings. There’s an avoidance of capex and the power to transfer quicker. And that actually allows telecom operators to concentrate on what actually issues, which is constructing progressive buyer providers for his or her finish prospects.”
However, many individuals within the telecom world have expressed concern that the final word purpose of the cloud gamers isn’t to assist telcos serve their enterprise prospects, however to really poach these enterprise prospects for themselves and depart telcos as “the dumb pipe.”
Selipsky additionally mentioned that AWS is working with all the main telco distributors. He cited Amdocs, Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung. “We’re dedicated to working with the entire ISVs that telecom operators discover to be vital,” he mentioned. “Really, we view ourselves very a lot as enablers, making an attempt to assist our prospects innovate.”
