Telcos run some of the most demanding data management environments in the business world, says Duane Gabor, Telecom Solutions Group, VoltDB.There’s the network environment: Telco network efficiency guidelines have extreme requirements for the availability and performance of network infrastructure, hardware and software: known as “six 9s”, or 99.9999% availability. That equates to unscheduled downtime of no more than 31 seconds PER YEAR for carrier-grade infrastructures.

Then there’s the competitive landscape: Telco, Communications Service Providers (CSPs) and Mobile operators are being disrupted by Over-the-Top (OTT) providers, including Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

After decades of investment in R&D, networks, proprietary switching systems, undersea cables and disaster-resilient data and call centers, their subscribers are no longer captive and are changing allegiances, switching carriers, cutting cords and moving to new technologies – many offered by OTT providers like Skype, Google and Slack – to communicate with others.

And then there’s investment and planning: Telcos typically make infrastructure investments that assume a six- to 10-year lifecycle. They place long-term bets on enabling technologies and place a high value on reliability, performance, availability, scalability and accuracy. In this day of constant change, how can you possibly predict what 6 months from now will look like? Never mind 6 years!

And still, each of us with a mobile phone, connected IoT device, or (gasp) landline expects two things to be delivered by telcos 100% of the time: a dial tone, and an accurate bill. When we don’t get one, or both, we switch carriers. Or we move to Skype, WhatsApp or one of the many messaging-oriented OTT providers.

For an industry which until deregulation had a lock on its customers, to today’s free-for-all market, growth depends on adopting new technologies like NFV and 5G to handle increased data traffic; managing resources to provide the capital for investment in innovation, and looking outside the industry to find inspiration to create new, customer-focused services.

VoltDB telco experts Duane Gabor (that’s me) and Dheeraj Remella, led by senior director of Product Marketing, Dennis Duckworth, explored the challenges facing telcos in a recent webinar with Heavy Reading analyst, Roz Roseboro.

Listen to the archived webinar here to learn more about:

• Why carriers need to go to 5G and NFV – now
• Requirements of data platforms that can transport much larger volumes of data at lower latency
• How to think about your network, the advent of ultrafast edge computing and how to prepare today by designing on-demand systems and capacity planning to be competitive tomorrow via SDN and NFV
• New database architectures to support on-demand, per service, per device, per time of day scalability and billing/revenue models; multi-tier rating
• New data security models

Learn more

For a deeper dive into the thinking behind the market impact of 5G and NFV, download the Heavy Reading white paper, 5G Can Be a Catalyst for NFV – Will CSPs Win the Battle for Value With OTT Providers? by Heavy Reading senior analyst Roz Roseboro.

Happy reading and listening – and stay tuned for more on telco, 5G, NFV and IoT.

The author of this blog is Duane Gabor, Telecom Solutions Group, VoltDB

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