SCOPE Alliance

The “Cloud Computing in Telecom” workshop, featuring twelve interesting presentations (complete list) and two spirited panel discussions, consisted of a series of presentations focused on carrier grade requirements that telecom imposes on a cloud computing-based implementation. Key concerns were related to high availability, security with identity and location confidentiality as well as communication and data security, pseudo real-time (predictable / enforced Q0S) with SLAs to fulfill, specialized I/O processing and application portability with long life-cycles using standard APIs.

Workshop attendees discussed virtualization and cloud computing and mapped cloud computing virtualization capability against telecom requirements to expose the feasibility of cloud computing in telecom. Attendees also examined security in detail. We discussed our concerns about cloud computing solutions potentially eliciting new attack vectors and also discussed cloud computing architecture aspects and application implementation.

Cloud computing provides the best experts, automation and system tooling. But it also brings a new threat of attacks, with third party access and shared infrastructure. Several presenters discussed security in cloud computing, indicating they believe it is a serious concern. Telecom customers consider security and trust as a key differentiating factor. With this in mind, we discussed the need for cloud-tailored trusted computing technologies to support strong security and performance SLAs. We also identified the need to express SLAs as different levels with a standard SLA management framework.

Several of the presentations mentioned the cloud standards groups and the cloud computing areas that the groups impact. Attendees agreed to consider PaaS and IaaS as middleware that enables SaaS and discussed the need for application portability with long life-cycles using standard APIs.

Workshop attendees also examined multiple telecom applications such as location-based services and SIP-based telecom and conferencing services. One of the telecom examples we discussed is the potential implementation of BTS Hoteling using cloud computing. This implementation was presented as a potential OpEx as well as a CapEx network cost reduction.

The need for cloud-to-cloud interoperability with intercloud protocols and services and OpenFlow to enable visibility and openness in the network was discussed during the architecture presentations. It was determined that in order to meet the required SLAs, an efficient network solution needs to place data where it is used and place the computation where the data exists.

SCOPE Alliance plans to host several informative workshops like this each year. These workshops provide opportunity for open, focused discussions among members and help set direction for future SCOPE Alliance work. Workshops are open to SCOPE members only.

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