Telefónica Germany reveals how a public cloud overhaul of IT and telecom is redefining its community — and its tradition
Telefónica Germany has taken a daring step in telecom transformation by migrating each IT and telecom workloads, together with the core community, to public cloud infrastructure. In doing so, the operator is advancing one of many business’s most mature cloud-native methods, centered not simply on expertise adoption however on essentially rethinking its working mannequin.
This public-cloud-first strategy displays the corporate’s perception that significant differentiation not comes from conventional community protection or {hardware} selections. As an alternative, Telefónica Germany has prioritized agility, transparency, and automation by turning to the hyperscale cloud.
“The intent [was] principally: Change the working mannequin, the way in which we take into consideration… consuming the general public cloud,” Telefónica Germany’s Chief Expertise and Data Officer Yelamate Mallikarjuna Rao advised RCR Wi-fi Information.
The transformation, he stated, started within the IT area, the place Telefónica launched a company-wide structure overhaul emigrate each crucial IT system—together with billing, CRM, product catalog and order administration — to the general public cloud.
“Zero on-prem,” he emphasised.
Rao defined that one of the crucial advanced and delicate elements emigrate was the charging platform, on account of its dealing with of buyer information. Telefónica addressed regulatory and sovereignty challenges by deploying confidential computing and end-to-end encryption.
“We sorted it out,” he stated. “We now… have about 16 million prospects… on [a] full charging platform, sitting within the public cloud.”
This milestone laid the groundwork for comparable developments within the telecom community infrastructure.
Ending the Ericsson collaboration: A strategic pivot
Following its IT transformation, Telefónica turned its consideration to telecom workloads —particularly migrating the packet core. In contrast to enterprise IT functions, telecom workloads demand ultra-low latency, excessive throughput and real-time reliability.
“After nearly a 12 months, we stated, okay, when you actually wish to disrupt your self, it’s important to contact the core of our enterprise, which is telco, proper?” defined Rao.
The operator initially partnered with Ericsson and AWS to discover cloud-native deployment of core community features. Regardless of almost 18 months of funding, the collaboration failed to satisfy expectations. Efficiency challenges and strategic misalignment between the three firms — Telefonica, AWS and Ericsson — in the end derailed the trouble.
In keeping with Rao, Ericsson’s dominant market place in Europe restricted its incentive to disaggregate its options or speed up public cloud adoption. In the meantime, AWS on the time lacked readiness to assist telecom-grade consumer airplane workloads requiring high-throughput, low-latency efficiency.
Rao added that every associate approached cloud-native transformation from a unique perspective, resulting in basic variations in perception and execution technique.
“I don’t wish to drag a lifeless horse… I simply wish to transfer. And that’s after we stated, okay, let’s change the observe,” stated Rao.
Telefónica ended the collaboration and pivoted to Nokia, which provided a extra agile and cloud-aligned strategy. Working intently with AWS, Telefónica redesigned infrastructure elements to satisfy the efficiency necessities of telecom workloads. This shift enabled the profitable deployment of a totally operational, public cloud-hosted core.
Operational shift and cultural change
Telefónica’s transformation additionally required main adjustments in operations. The corporate applied a unified CI/CD pipeline throughout IT and community domains, implementing a single DevOps mannequin that each one suppliers needed to undertake. This introduced consistency, lowered overhead, and enabled seamless in-service software program upgrades.
Now, almost 100 of the corporate’s 160 functions are hosted on Google Cloud and AWS—together with your entire BSS stack.
“These usually are not small functions. These are large ones… together with your entire, BSS stack,” stated Rao.
Wanting forward, Telefónica Germany is concentrated on enabling extra autonomous and resilient networks, with public cloud infrastructure serving as the inspiration. The corporate sees 5G standalone as a key enabler, providing a clear architectural break to totally notice automation and open API-driven innovation.
Notably, this shift wasn’t solely technical — it was cultural. Telefónica invested in workforce enablement throughout departments, providing cloud-native coaching to greater than 1,600 workers in features starting from finance to customer support.
“Overinvest in folks and tradition,” provided Rao. “Neglect about expertise; the expertise will come. It’s the folks.”
