End-to-End 5G network deployment on public cloud challenges and best practices

The advent of end-to-end 5G networks into the public cloud opens the door to new ways of thinking and utilizing telecom infrastructure, not only new abilities, but also a whole new set of architectural, operational, and regulatory complexities. Cloud-native abilities from hyperscale providers like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud allow for scalable flexible, and AI leveraged orchestration of network functions. Still, these abilities are making us reconsider some of our previous thinking particularly related to security, latency, compliance, and interoperability. The gamification of cloud-based 5G networks has progressed past the threshold of theory where research and academic deployments have yielded the fruit of tooling and tangible realizations in both the public and private sector. Often times technological and functional methods have emerged, and among the functional methods are holding real applications to realize systems at scale. These methods include service meshes which allow for layering, Kubernetes which allows for containerized network function mapping, and orchestrating methods which leverage machine intelligence. Collectively, these capabilities have begun to address operational complexity and more importantly, have the potential to deliver on the scale and immediacy of next-generation infrastructure. Often methods permitting action to deal with the complexity of an entire system while engaging a consistent level of operational scale are not the norm.
There is still an incredibly amount of interest in several issues. Multi-tenant environments will require significantly more rigorous security regimes. The common service level agreement (SLA), brings together a possible composite of managerial and use performance components. Network slicing is now something that can be not only reconceptualised as a recommended best practice but dais a dynamic amendable operating principle.
As we look to the future, it is anticipated that interest will subsequently build in three key areas: bridging the gap between diverse cloud providers; operationalizing zero-trust principles; and finding better alignment for edge-native systems with cloud-native infrastructure. The building blocks have been established, but much of the narrative has yet to be written.