As consumer demands increase, telcos have to process requests in real-time. Also, the complexity of IT infrastructure is more than ever in the telecom industry. To boost service availability, telcos have to break the vast IT infrastructure into smaller units. By doing so, telcos can create autonomous constituents dedicated to different tasks. Many telecom operators have already adopted the microservices architecture to meet increasing customer demands. However, adopting a microservices architecture has its challenges for telecom operators. Telcos may require the support of new-age technologies to implement an effective microservices architecture. Read on to know more about the adoption of microservices architecture and its advantages.

Understanding the concept of microservices in the telecom industry

Telecom operators have many products for their consumers. Telcos extend their products based on consumer demand and operational capabilities. There are many internal tasks to be completed by telcos for maintaining service availability. Telcos cannot execute all operational functions with a single IT system. To reduce the burden, telcos break down the complex IT system into smaller units. Each partition of the vast IT system is dedicated to a single task. By doing so, telcos can induce automation to each task quickly. Achieving automation for all services under a single IT system is trickier.

The microservices architecture is precisely the opposite of a monolithic architecture. Service management becomes much easier for a microservice architecture as compared to a monolithic architecture. As you know, it is easier to move a small stone than an enormous rock. With new business opportunities, telcos can extend their products easily via a microservices architecture. As the demand for digital transformation services and solutions is increasing, telcos need a microservices architecture more than ever in 2022. Extending new services in a monolithic architecture is a challenge. It is because new services can affect the existing services in a monolithic architecture. Contrary to a monolithic architecture, new services don’t affect existing ones in a microservices architecture.

Pros of deploying a microservices architecture

By adopting a microservice architecture, telcos can witness an immediate enhancement in service availability and reliability. Some pros of microservices architecture for telcos are as follows:

• Telcos have to meet the seasonal needs of consumers. To meet the seasonal demands of consumers, telcos have to scale their network capabilities. Scaling a vast IT infrastructure isn’t easy for telcos. Scaling only a portion of the IT network is much easier for a telecom operator. Microservices architecture can help telcos meet seasonal scalability requirements.
• Tasks and services within the microservices architecture can be easily customized. Service upgrades can be easily deployed in a microservices architecture. Service availability of other tasks isn’t disturbed when you pass upgrades to specific services.
• Telcos are concerned with the time-to-market before releasing new products. Time-to-market is the time from the inception of a product idea to the actual release. With the microservices architecture, telcos can decrease the time-to-market of new products/services.
• Telcos have to put in fewer maintenance efforts for a microservices architecture. Maintaining the entire network at once isn’t an easy task for telcos. It is better to break down the entire IT system into smaller and manageable units.
• Many telecom products require third-party integrations. Often, telcos need to add third-party integrations only to specific products/services. They don’t want the service availability to decline while adding third-party integrations. With a microservices architecture, IT teams only have to interact with limited systems to add third-party integrations.
• For maintaining network security, telcos monitor the user activity at all times. Monitoring a monolithic architecture is trickier as one may not know the source of errors/issues. Monitoring user activity within a microservices architecture is much easier. However, telcos need to ensure there aren’t any data silos within the microservices architecture. One must have a unified view of the entire microservices architecture for enhanced security and compliance.
• Due to technological enhancement, telcos have to go through a paradigm shift. They have to adopt digital transformation services and solutions on a wide scale. A monolithic architecture does not support the introduction of new technologies. However, telcos can easily adopt new technologies with a microservices architecture.
• Telcos have to test their products/services at times to ensure service reliability. Even if you test a single product in a monolithic architecture, the service availability of the entire network gets disturbed. With a microservices architecture, service availability isn’t hampered during the testing of specific products. When no service interruption is observed, a telecom operator can boost the consumer experience.
• Telcos will utilize resources appropriately with a microservices architecture. With a reliable service management system, telcos can control the available resources from a central point. You cannot dedicate some resources to specific services only with a monolithic architecture.

As you can see, there are several pros to adopting microservices in the telecom industry. However, many telcos fail to adopt microservices effectively. It is because they don’t choose the right technology stack for adopting microservices. The main aim of microservices is to create autonomous and manageable units within the entire IT system. To induce automation within the microservices architecture, telcos have to leverage the power of AI/ML technologies. As per the recent trends, telcos are choosing AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) for adopting microservices.

Adopt microservices in the right sense

Are you still stuck with network functions on community hardware? Well, it is time for telcos to switch to a cloud environment. Virtual network functions can be easily deployed as microservices in a cloud environment. You don’t have to worry about monitoring the network activity in a cloud environment. An AIOps-based analytics platform can help you monitor the microservices within a cloud environment.

Network event monitoring and fault detection become easy with AIOps. Any anomalous behaviour within the microservices architecture can be identified in real-time via an AIOps-based analytics platform. You may also have to look towards virtual desktop infrastructure solutions to adopt microservices effectively. With the aid of virtual machines and AIOps, telcos can achieve hyper-automation for the management of microservices. Adopt a microservices architecture right away!