- Like its international peers Verizon and Vodafone, DT is hustling to move more of its workloads to the cloud
- Network workloads in particular live in DT's homegrown cloud, T-CaaS
- The operator's ultimate goals are network functions that can be upgraded whenever it wants and the ability to capitalize on AI and automation
Deutsche Telekom (DT) is pushing to move more than 70% of its network technology (NT) and IT to the cloud by 2027. But where exactly are its workloads moving? And, more importantly, why is DT so dedicated to this undertaking?
The answer to the former question is that DT is using a mix of private and public cloud infrastructure, VP of Corporate Communications Harald Lindlar told Fierce Networks via email.
The default for network and select IT applications is DT’s internal private cloud, which is known as Telekom Container-as-a-Service or T-CaaS, he said. That means everything from 5G core and RAN workloads to other network functions like OSS run in its private cloud. Public cloud options are used for those services that have no explicit requirements related to critical infrastructure - think workloads like BSS and selected IT-related network applications.
Lindlar didn’t definitively state that DT wouldn’t use the public cloud for network functions, but noted “there are three main barriers to us adopting the public cloud for network workloads: first is cost, second is technical, third is sovereignty regulation.”
How far along is it on this journey? In its October 2024 Capital Markets Day presentation, DT said it expected to end 2024 with around 40% of IT workloads and 44% of network workloads in the cloud.
Big cloud end game
That brings us to the why behind DT’s big cloud transformation. Like its peers, the operator throws around words like “optimization” and “cost savings,” but that’s really only part of the story.
“We want to get to generationless network functions,” Kai Steuernagel, DT’s VP of Cloud Technology, said during a recent virtual event when asked about the operator's “north star” goals.
In the past, generation-specific functions made sense since hardware was changed out during the shift from 3G to 4G and 4G to 5G, Steuernagel said. But with applications now running on the cloud, he asked, "Why does it need to be a new generation other than for marketing reasons?”
Ultimately, DT wants to be able to “apply changes during operations without any service degradation” and easily scale up and down with demand. This, he said, requires “independence of service and microservices.” But for now, “That is yet a dream.”
Lindlar added that in the AI era, DT’s cloud quest is also about getting data where it needs to be to take advantage of capabilities like automation and other forms of intelligence.
“Cloud provides the platform for data and AI. In our RAN Guardian agent for autonomous RAN performance monitoring, we partnered with Google Cloud for their cutting-edge AI expertise and toolset,” he wrote. “The realization of autonomous networks using data and AI is Deutsche Telekom's long-term goal.”