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 Telecom
SaaS
Nokia Special Edition

by Lawrence Miller

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 Telecom SaaS For Dummies®, Nokia Special Edition

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 Introduction
F
or decades, telecom service providers have run their opera-
tions and business software on complex, custom-built, on-
premises infrastructure. This approach can no longer keep
pace with today’s rapidly changing customer expectations. To
seize dynamic new 5G market opportunities, telecoms must
accelerate time to value and lower the total cost of ownership for
the software their businesses and networks depend on.

Enter telecom software as a service (SaaS).

SaaS is already widely used in other industries. Now that network

software can be hosted literally anywhere, disaggregated from
network hardware, it’s time to bring the SaaS mindset to tele-
coms. With on-demand access to the applications you need, you
can achieve faster time to value, cut non-strategic IT costs, and
improve operational agility.

About This Book

Telecom SaaS For Dummies, Nokia Special Edition, consists of
five chapters that explore the following:

»» The basics of SaaS and telecom SaaS and why it’s critical for
transformation today (Chapter 1)
»» Telecom SaaS and 5G business opportunities (Chapter 2)
»» Telecom SaaS challenges (Chapter 3)
»» Telecom SaaS use cases (Chapter 4)
»» Key benefits of telecom SaaS (Chapter 5)
Each chapter is written to stand on its own, so if you see a topic
that piques your interest, feel free to jump ahead to that chapter.
You can read this book in any order that suits you (though I don’t
recommend upside down or backwards).

Introduction 1

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 Foolish Assumptions
It’s been said that most assumptions have outlived their useless-
ness, but I assume a few things nonetheless!

Mainly, I assume that you work for a telecom service provider and
have at least a basic understanding of cloud-native technologies
and IT SaaS, but you would like to understand how telecom SaaS
can help your business achieve digital transformation.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book, I occasionally use special icons to call
attention to important information. Here’s what to expect:

This icon points out important information you should commit

to your nonvolatile memory, your gray matter, or your noggin —
along with birthdays and anniversaries.

If you seek to attain the seventh level of nerd-vana, then perk up!
This icon explains the jargon beneath the jargon and is the stuff
legends — well, legendary nerds — are made of.

Tips are appreciated, but never expected — and I sure hope you’ll
appreciate these useful nuggets of information.

These alerts point out the stuff your mother warned you about
(well, probably not), but they do offer practical advice to help you
avoid potentially costly mistakes.

Beyond the Book

There’s only so much we can cover in this short book, so if you
find yourself at the end of this book wondering, “Where can
I learn more?” go to https://nokia.com/saas.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Looking at SaaS, the cloud, and the
5G landscape

»» Recognizing key differences between

IT SaaS and telecom SaaS

»» Exploring the telecom SaaS market

opportunity

Chapter  1
What Is Telecom SaaS?

I
n this chapter, we look at software as a service (SaaS), the cloud,
the 5G landscape, how IT SaaS and telecom SaaS differ, and why
telecoms and communication service providers (CSPs) must
seize the telecom SaaS opportunity now by consuming different
value-added services as SaaS offerings.

Starting With the Basics

Moving at lightning speed toward fulfilling the promise of 5G,
CSPs are on the cusp of a new era in fast, affordable, profitable
connectivity. Telecom SaaS is key to achieving positive outcomes
as CSPs digitally transform their operations and business models.

Defining telecom SaaS

SaaS is a type of model in which the user consumes applications
running on a cloud, where the applications and cloud are man-
aged by the SaaS provider. Unlike a hosted private cloud, which
is based on a single-tenant business model, SaaS offerings sup-
port a multi-tenant business model that scales to accommodate
hundreds or even thousands of customers accessing the software
simultaneously over the Internet. SaaS solutions are often inte-
grated with other software offerings from the same SaaS solution
provider.

CHAPTER 1 What Is Telecom SaaS? 3

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 Compared with the traditional approach of installing and main-
taining on-premises software, with the SaaS model telecom com-
panies don’t have to worry about adding another server to run
the software. The SaaS provider takes care of all server capacity
planning.

Telecom companies only need to enable a new SaaS offering  —

and they get the flexibility to scale their SaaS use up and down
through automation in a carrier-grade delivery model, based on
specific needs.

In addition, because the software is delivered on cloud-based

architecture, telecom companies don’t need to download upgrades
or reinstall new versions of a product. Any updates or patches to a
service are handled by the SaaS provider.

SaaS is:

»» Subscription-based, purchased from a SaaS vendor on

a monthly or annual basis and delivered on-demand as
an operating expense, not an upfront capital investment.
»» Outcome-oriented with value measured not by technical
specifications, but in terms of benefits to CSPs and their
customers.
»» Cloud-native, to deliver a reliable, scalable service with a
lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

Looking at the growth of 5G+ and SaaS

The 5G+ landscape is evolving rapidly, and SaaS is the accelera-
tion engine for communication service providers to realize the full
potential of 5G and beyond.

Some important trends reported by various industry sources

include:

»» 7x growth experienced in mobile traffic in the last five years

»» 5x growth expected in mobile traffic in the next five years
»» 75 percent of data will be processed at the telecom network
edge in the next five years
»» 49 percent of the world’s population is un- or underserved
by modern communications technology

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 It’s clear that traffic on telecom networks will continue to grow
exponentially, particularly as the proportion of machine versus
human users increases with the rise of the Internet of Things
(IoT), Industry 4.0, and more. This growth creates a significant
opportunity for CSPs. To address this demand, compute capacity
will continue to move closer to the point of consumption — that
is, to the telecom edge.

SaaS is a profitable business model across many industries

today and is a catalyst to bring all networks alive in real-time.
Statista counts the number of SaaS companies worldwide at about
25,000  in 2021, with an estimated market of $272.5 billion and
an industry compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approxi-
mately 11.7 percent, meaning that the global SaaS market will hit
$307.3 billion by 2026.

Overbuilding telecom networks to address reliability and unfore-

seen demand is no longer a viable option. Likewise, leaving close
to half the world’s population un- or underserved is no longer
acceptable. To capitalize on the new opportunities that abound,
CSPs must have on-demand, elastic network scalability and
availability.

Differentiating Between Telecom

SaaS and IT SaaS
Telecom SaaS is a service delivering a business outcome that is
bought as a subscription and based on cloud-native software.
It’s delivered with a fully digitalized business experience and
a fully automated services lifecycle, which is designed for any
carrier-grade network. Simply put, with the SaaS model, CSPs
are provided access to the software they need instead of buying it
outright, typically through a usage-based subscription purchased
on a monthly or yearly basis.

Telecom SaaS involves a significant degree of specialized capa-

bilities required to support carrier-grade availability, scalabil-
ity, resiliency, performance, and security to handle the rigors of
managing telecom workloads. When an IT SaaS workload fails,
that service is effectively “off-the-grid.” In contrast, when a tele­
com SaaS workload fails, the grid is subsequently at risk because
the role of a CSP is to provide the grid itself.

CHAPTER 1 What Is Telecom SaaS? 5

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 CSPs are increasingly disaggregating software from hardware.
While dedicated hardware is still needed for certain types of com-
munications services, software can be hosted anywhere. When
ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) is required,
the software can be hosted at the edge cloud, ensuring the fast-
est round-trip for mission-critical packets for services such as
Industry 4.0 automation and monitoring of factory floors, aug-
mented reality (AR), construction site security, and more.

While regular SaaS provides software, telecom SaaS can be

deployed for specific geographies and target specific use-cases.
Telecom SaaS provides a guaranteed service level for specific
next-generation applications  — such as Esports in an arena
environment or low-latency communications in autonomous
vehicles — creating new revenue opportunities as new technolo-
gies that leverage 5G’s rich feature set are conceptualized and
realized.

Telecom SaaS also provides the extreme reliability required to

meet service-level agreements (SLAs) by containerizing applica-
tions that can be spun-up on secondary servers in the event of a
failure on the primary host and by hosting at the edge cloud.

Recognizing Why Telecom SaaS

is Critical Today
As 5G deployments continue around the world and the 3rd
Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and other standards bodies
release updates, managing a 5G network is becoming increasingly
complex. At the same time, enterprise customers are demanding
more from these increasingly agile networks.

In the past, telecom engineers and developers had to painstak-

ingly build new capabilities by hand, then deploy and monitor
them manually. In today’s 5G world, there’s simply too much
going on for any one human to monitor and maintain.

To scale and profit from your 5G investment, it’s critical that

networks of the future be secure, programmable, orchestrated,
and on-demand. The networks — and the applications that live
on them  — work together seamlessly to achieve business out-
comes. These business outcomes require immediately available

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 and elastic network capacity that addresses different use cases in
real-time. The return on investment (ROI) comes from delivering
enterprise customers and developers with a dynamic service that
the next Netflix, Snapchat Spectacles, or Pokemon Go can rely on
for their next-generation services and products.

If the telecom industry is to grow, it must be open to development

by the next generation of entrepreneurs, startups, and over-the-
top (OTT) service providers. Who knows what the next Netflix,
Amazon, or TikTok will build on top of a network that provides
almost zero latency with download speeds 100x faster than the
previous generation network? CSPs will monetize these enhanced
capabilities by offering value-added services to enterprises
through telecom SaaS. Enterprise customers will be willing to pay
a premium for the ability to quickly scale their SLA requirements
up or down as they “move fast and break things.”

CHAPTER 1 What Is Telecom SaaS? 7

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Transforming the telecom business
model

»» Virtualizing network functions

»» Reimagining your value chain

»» Going to market with new offerings

for your customers

Chapter  2
Realizing New Business
Opportunities with
SaaS and 5G

I
n this chapter you discover how telecom SaaS transforms
the traditional communication service provider (CSP) business
model and enables new revenue opportunities. You’ll under-
stand how containerized network functions (CNFs) have enabled
a paradigm shift from specialized hardware to commoditized
software, and how CSPs are building out their value chains and
extending telecom SaaS offerings to their customers.

Doing Business Differently in 5G

The telecom industry isn’t particularly known for partnering with
outside industry players, but working with enterprise partners
and developers to expand your SaaS offerings is critical to the
success of 5G. It’s time to leverage your strategic partnerships.

Telecom SaaS enables CSPs to improve business agility by

­significantly reducing the time typically required to realize

CHAPTER 2 Realizing New Business Opportunities with SaaS and 5G 9

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 the value of the investment in communications business and
­networking applications. A SaaS business model eliminates
investments in large upfront capital expenditures and accelerates
the ability to launch new services more rapidly and realize faster
time-to-value.

Transitioning to a SaaS business model offers many advantages

for CSPs, including:

»» Getting to market quickly. No lengthy procurement,

installation, or set-up processes means rapid time-to-value.
»» Bridging the knowledge and talent gap. Eliminating
proprietary hardware and software reduces the need for
specialized skills and enables you to recruit from a broader
talent base.
»» Testing new and existing markets. With little upfront
investment required, you can test markets, new products,
and lines of business.
»» Reducing IT spend. Eliminate activities with little strategic
value such as customizing and maintaining business and
operational systems and networks.
»» Using evergreen deployments. Always be up to date on the
most current versions of software.
»» Transferring risk. Transfer the risks of security manage-
ment to the SaaS vendor.
»» Lowering costs with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)
hardware. Access standard off-the-shelf use cases and
integrations, providing faster time to market and lower cost.

Understanding the Role of CNF

as a Foundation for 5G
Since the introduction of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV),
software has been disaggregating from hardware and ­subsequently
into cloud-native microservices. This steady ­evolution from
proprietary on-premises monologic network appliances to
­
­Virtualized Network Functions (VNF) and ­Containerized Network
Functions (CNF) running on COTS hardware sets the stage for a
major paradigm shift. Software can run anywhere.

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 As communications software makes the leap to a 5G, any-cloud
environment, telecom SaaS becomes a relevant business model
to improve time-to-value and lower total-cost-of-ownership.
­Telecom SaaS isn’t just a technological transformation. It’s a
business (and mindset) transformation and the next step in the
evolution of the telecom network.

Seizing the 5G opportunity means shifting away from the

­legacy practice of deploying customized software for analytics,
­security, network management, and network functions. It’s the
­natural evolution of the everything-as-a-service journey for the
­communications industry and a key enabler of Nokia’s strategy
toward network-as-code enabled by 5G networks.

Containerized Network Functions (CNFs) are a way to take ­routers,

firewalls, and other high-functioning applications and deliver
them as software on commoditized computer hardware. It’s what
makes it possible to tie all the features of 5G together by providing
the ultra-reliability that comes with multiple containers acting
as backups, the low latency that comes with deploying software
in an edge cloud much closer to the user or their device, and the
artificial intelligence (AI)-powered machine learning algorithms
necessary to monitor, maintain, and deploy new services quickly
and at low cost.

Building New Value Chains

5G delivers higher multi-gigabit per second (GBPS) peak data
speeds, ultra-low latency, more reliability, more precise ­location
awareness, massive network capacity, increased ­availability,
and a consistent experience for more users. In short, higher
­performance and improved efficiency empower new user
­experiences and ­connect new industries.

As networks get bigger and more mobile, more data is ­generated

farther away from the data center. Data processing must occur
closer to where the data is generated  — at the network edge.
Edge computing processes data quickly, closing the loop between
where the data is generated (near the user) and where it’s
­processed, bypassing the data center. As networks become more
­decentralized to get closer to the point of consumption, they
must also become increasingly available on-demand.

CHAPTER 2 Realizing New Business Opportunities with SaaS and 5G 11

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 Internet of Things (IoT) devices can deliver autonomous,
­intelligent, local analytics based on their sensed environment.
A good example is the rise of smart factories connected by the IoT
operating within the plant. These factories operate in a ­seamless,
connected environment where machinery and equipment
improve processes through automation and optimization. Beyond
­producing goods, benefits include functions like planning and
supply chain logistics with integration across the manufacturing
supply chain. Consider the Siemens Electronic Works facility in
Germany. Smart machines orchestrate production and a built-to-
order process encompassing roughly 1.6 billion components.

Watch for other markets from healthcare to consumer goods

to adopt Industry 4.0 technologies, such as remote surgery and
emergency response — life-critical use cases that count on highly
reliable, low-latency network communication when it’s needed.
The use cases may have short life spans and peak-load spikes to
deliver elasticity through combinations of mature infrastructure
as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and SaaS offering
in real- or near-real-time.

Extending Telecom SaaS to the Customer

Once a CSP has the foundation of telecom SaaS, it can open its
network to the economies of scale that come from consuming
services as SaaS applications, enabling them to try more offerings
and initiatives, achieve quick wins or fail fast, and quickly regroup
if (or when) needed. CSPs need several SaaS-based applications,
including:

»» Analytics
»» Monetization services
»» Security services
»» 5G core, network core or mobile core
CSPs will reimagine themselves towards thinking about outcome-
based propositions. Instead of simply selling connectivity, they’ll
be selling bundled capabilities for Industry 4.0 players like air-
ports, manufacturers, and smart cities. The services created by
telecom SaaS can also be white-labeled for enterprises looking to
provide 5G services for their own customers.

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 When building new revenue opportunities, the selling ­proposition
for telecom SaaS is that the CSP has the ability to experiment
with their business and technology strategy. Because they’re
using SaaS on a subscription basis, CSPs can explore new revenue
streams in unknown markets without big upfront commitments.

CHAPTER 2 Realizing New Business Opportunities with SaaS and 5G 13

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Calculating the real total cost of
ownership

»» Ensuring robust security and compliance

with regulatory requirements

»» Transforming CSP operations

»» Starting your telecom SaaS journey

Chapter  3
Turning Hurdles into
Opportunities

I
n this chapter we address some common telecom software-as-
a-service (SaaS) concerns such as total cost of ownership (TCO),
security, and operational silos, and show you how to get started
with telecom SaaS.

Addressing Total Cost of Ownership

The SaaS consumption model is typically a subscription-based,
pay-as-you-go model in which costs are spread over time.
Although this model allows organizations to avoid major upfront
capital investments, the TCO can be significant as more services
are consumed over longer periods of time.

However, this rather simplistic view of TCO fails to account for

many of the hidden operational costs associated with traditional,
on-premises deployments, as well as the new opportunities that
SaaS opens up to telcos and communication service providers
(CSPs).

CHAPTER 3 Turning Hurdles into Opportunities 15

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 In traditional deployment models, the CSP must purchase,
deploy, and maintain hardware, software, and other physical
(or virtual) infrastructure in their on-premises datacenters or
­private or ­public clouds. They are responsible for the energy costs
(power and cooling) associated with the deployment, as well as
­operational tasks such as:

»» System administration
»» Patching and upgrades
»» Performance monitoring and troubleshooting
»» Lifecycle management and capacity planning
»» Backup/recovery and disaster recovery
»» Security and regulatory compliance
All of these operational tasks require dedicated, in-house ­expertise
which requires significant investments in hiring, ­training, and
retaining talented staff.

Traditional software and hardware vendors also appreciate a

recurring revenue model in the form of annual support and
­maintenance fees.

With SaaS, customers can quickly scale up/down services to

support growth or bursts of demand. This on-demand aspect
­
of SaaS enables CSPs to experiment with new service offerings,
­validate proofs of concept (POCs) or fail fast, reduce opportunity
risk, and accelerate time-to-market.

Improving the Response to Cyberattacks

Advanced 5G services have enormous revenue potential for CSPs,
but building partners and customers into the solution ­lifecycle
requires more openness in the network than ever before. This
openness creates an exponentially larger attack surface for
malicious actors at a time when cyberthreats are growing in
­
­frequency, scale, and sophistication.

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 Public hyperscaler clouds are secure by design. In fact, most
of the world’s sensitive data is already stored and processed in
public clouds. In the shared responsibility model for SaaS (see
Figure  3-1), the cloud provider is responsible for the security
of the data center environment, physical hardware, virtual
machine instance(s), storage, networking, operating system(s),
and application(s). The CSP/customer is responsible for the
­security of their data.

FIGURE 3-1: The SaaS shared responsibility model.

To secure data, CSPs should implement the following security

controls and best practices as part of their telecom SaaS deploy-
ment strategy:

»» Site-to-site virtual private networks (VPNs) using IPSec or

a dedicated line for connectivity — no routing of traffic
via the public Internet
»» Dedicated tenant resources/subscriptions — no shared
resources

CHAPTER 3 Turning Hurdles into Opportunities 17

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 »» Security by design
»» Defense in depth
»» Data minimization principles
»» Data encryption in motion/transit and at rest
»» Sensitive subscriber data suppression or masking
Traditional CSP security operations (SecOps) teams struggle
to identify and contain real threats in a daily deluge of tens of
thousands of alarms and alerts. These SecOps teams need to
increase the speed and intelligence of their cybersecurity response.
Flexible cloud-based security SaaS solutions hold the key.

New configurations, combined with newly exposed interfaces

and application programming interfaces (APIs), have made
­security more dynamic than ever before. The number of cloud-
native network functions has skyrocketed. Deploying SaaS-based
­security enriched with artificial intelligence (AI) and ­automation
can protect the network from breaches, and ensure that if ­anything
happens, a CSP is able to deal with it as quickly and effectively as
possible.

SaaS-based security AI has to consider a cross-layered data

correlation to contextualize security events with intelligence-
­
driven alerts for comprehensive alerts and responses. SaaS-based
security automation allows the creation of cyber-playbooks that
respond to threats based on a series of triggers, cutting mean-
time-to-respond (MTTR) and centralizing response capability
with automated workflows and orchestration.

Breaking Down Silos at the CSP

5G isn’t just a transformational wireless technology, it’s trans-
forming the CSP itself. The days of sales, marketing, IT, and
engineering all operating in independent silos are coming to an
end. For a 5G deployment to be successful, all groups must work
together to develop new ways of leveraging the power of this
next-generation service.

Telecom SaaS is a vehicle for digital transformation. It’s an

opportunity for CSPs to redefine themselves in the way they sell
to customers. In an age of “Everything as a Service,” enterprise

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 customers are quickly becoming accustomed to paying only for
what they need. The cloud-native nature of telecom SaaS makes
your CSP more agile by reducing or eliminating the time required
to build, manage, and maintain a 5G network, so that you can
focus your human and technological resources on new revenue
opportunities.

Telecom SaaS allows a CSP to be more agile. When development

and maintenance of the underlying software becomes the respon-
sibility of a vendor, the resources previously required for these
activities can be redeployed to other value-added services. What
differentiates one CSP from another isn’t the level of custom-
ization for the service they’re consuming. Much like the success
found by hyperscalers, it’s the ability to innovate much faster
than competitors that makes telecom SaaS critical to 5G success.

CSPs will reimagine themselves towards thinking about outcome-

based propositions. Instead of simply selling connectivity, CSPs
will sell bundled capabilities for Industry 4.0 players like airports,
manufacturers, and smart cities. The services created by telecom
SaaS can be white-labeled for enterprises looking to provide 5G
services for their own customers.

Getting Started with Telecom SaaS

As you begin your journey to telecom SaaS, it’s important to
clearly define the roles and responsibilities of several key players.
These roles include the following:

»» Chief executive officer (CEO). An effective SaaS deploy-

ment requires buy-in from the top down. The CEO of any
telecom company must be the leader in this transforma-
tional change.
»» Chief financial officer (CFO). The CFO must recognize the
potential for generating new revenue and reducing costs
with new business models involving partnerships with both
developers and enterprises looking to leverage the power
of 5G.
»» Chief information security officer (CISO). 5G opens new
threat vectors and requires a CISO with a firm understanding
of the ring-fence nature of the technology that comes from a
SaaS-based CSP.

CHAPTER 3 Turning Hurdles into Opportunities 19

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 »» Chief technology officer (CTO). The CTO must remain on
top of the evolution of the hardware and software required
for a successful 5G deployment.
»» Chief information officer (CIO). The deployment of
machine learning algorithms will change the IT department’s
role in a 5G world. No longer will this team be glued to
dashboards or have to wade through log files looking for
anomalies that signal potential failure. Instead of looking for
fires, they can focus on fighting the ones they have, working
with other departments to build robust redundancy into
systems, and ensuring SLAs promised by the sales and
marketing teams are achievable and achieved.
»» Chief revenue officer (CRO). Gone are the days of waiting
for the phone to ring. Sales teams, armed with an under-
standing of SaaS, will be able to approach existing enterprise
customers with new ideas for services that lead to increased
revenue generation for both the enterprise and the CSP.

Armed with an understanding of who is responsible for what,

you need to determine your primary focus when moving to
SaaS. For most CSPs, the shift to a telecom SaaS model will be a
gradual, multi-year journey. It is also not an “all-or-nothing”
proposition  — CSPs can begin the transformation with a few
low-risk analytics, security, and network management functions,
for example.

The next step is completely up to your imagination and creativity.

5G enables a bold new future of innovation and opportunities for
CSPs that embrace telecom SaaS.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Leveraging Core SaaS

»» Reducing the cost of a breach with

Security SaaS

»» Going green with Analytics SaaS

Chapter  4
Exploring Telecom
SaaS Use Cases

T
he telecom industry must provide innovative and
­sophisticated technologies that operate at the edge to meet
their customers’ current and future needs. Telecom ­software
as a service (SaaS) offers a secure, orchestrated network with
programmable on-demand applications that are powered by
­
­artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

In this chapter, we explore three different telecom SaaS use

cases (Core, Security, and Analytics) that communication service
­providers (CSPs) can leverage to realize the full potential of 5G
and beyond.

Telecom SaaS reduces complexity and provides the business and

technical agility required to support current needs and deliver
valuable services. Greater business agility provides improved cost
management and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Technical
agility enables CSPs to focus on innovation rather than integration.

CHAPTER 4 Exploring Telecom SaaS Use Cases 21

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 Core SaaS
Core SaaS can substantially enhance an existing core network
installation by simplifying cost control, reducing time to ­market,
and enabling greater support for new service creation. Core
SaaS provides a network template incorporating pre-integrated
network functions, all delivered commissioned, operated, and
maintained by the telecom SaaS provider.

Core SaaS can simplify integration and provide immediate ­capacity

to address requirements from straightforward use cases to the
most complex, hyper-connected 5G scenarios. Core SaaS can be
configured and optimized for a variety of use cases, such as:

»» Modernize network operations. Provision test environ-

ments for digital transformation projects, technology trials,
or innovation labs.
»» Pop-up network on demand. Industry 4.0 requires rapid
scalability of telco networks. Customers may require peak
load or event-related network expansion.
»» Metaverse experience. An on-demand core network can be
set up for emerging opportunities like augmented reality and
low latency use cases.
»» Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE)/Mobile Virtual
Network Operator (MVNO) as a Service. Rapid, low risk
deployment for VNOs, neutral hosting solution providers,
or digital wholesalers.
»» Enterprise demands. Individual, scalable core for existing
enterprises like utilities, railways, smart cities, or government
agencies. Also meets the agile needs of entrepreneurial
companies wanting to test new market opportunities.
»» Network as Code. Exposes Core SaaS capabilities via open
application programming interfaces (APIs) for new services
in multiple service chains.

Using a telecom SaaS model for core network services enables CSPs
to reduce risk, investment costs, and implementation time. With a
telecom SaaS provider, CSPs can reduce risk by quickly executing
pilots or proofs-of-concept for new digital transformation proj-
ects; investment costs can be avoided by leveraging cloud infra-
structure owned and operated by the telecom SaaS provider; and

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 implementation time can be cut from a year or more to a fraction
of that time with on-demand infrastructure and services.

Security SaaS
Security operations teams are under constant pressure to defend
against cyber threats in network environments that have never
been more challenging to secure. Trends such as cloudification,
expanding use of APIs, and the deployment of open 5G archi-
tectures are dramatically increasing the network attack surface,
giving threat actors more opportunities to breach your network.
The sheer volume of network activity makes it challenging for CSP
security teams to identify breaches when they occur, and every
day that goes by before an attack is detected means more damage
and higher costs to the organization.

The average total cost of a data breach in the telecommunications

industry is $3.62 million according to the Ponemon Institute’s
2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report.

In a network with no AI or automation to support security actions,

a breach takes an average of 323 days to identify and contain, and
costs a company approximately $6.2 million. Partial deployment
of AI and automation reduces the average time to 299 days and the
cost to $3.7 million. With full automation, the average time drops
to 249 days and the cost is reduced by nearly half, to $3.15 million
(see Figure 4-1).

Security SaaS reduces the time and cost associated with a breach
by combining technologies such as extended detection and
response (XDR), AI, and ML, to enable robust, automated threat
detection, prevention, and response across the entire network
topology — from the 5G core to the radio access network (RAN)
and the transport network.

XDR software automatically classifies alerts by type and security,

removing the need to manually investigate every alert so that
security teams can focus on containing and eradicating sophis-
ticated threats.

CHAPTER 4 Exploring Telecom SaaS Use Cases 23

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 (Source: Ponemon Institute 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report)

FIGURE 4-1: AI and automation reduce the cost of a breach.

AI and Analytics SaaS

Energy is one of the largest and fastest-growing costs for
­telecom service providers. According to GSMA Intelligence, energy
­consumption accounts for 20 to 40 percent of telecom ­operating
expenses (OPEX). But cutting energy consumption isn’t just
important to your bottom line  — it’s also essential to meeting
corporate social responsibility commitments, complying with
environmental regulations, and promoting your brand in today’s
eco-conscious society.

Energy efficiency is one example of a key telecom industry use

case for AI and Analytics SaaS.  AI can optimize power savings
for every base station in every sector, every day. For example,
conventional energy-saving methods operate based on pre-
defined static shutdown windows and aren’t able to handle com-
plex savings scenarios. Nokia AVA Energy Efficiency, on the other
hand, predicts low traffic periods and shuts down resources such
as frequency carriers or even whole sites dynamically. AI-based
solutions achieve two to five times more savings than non-AI
systems that perform temporary shutdowns based on fixed
schedules.

AI and Analytics SaaS can help you decouple network and traffic
growth from energy consumption so you can keep expanding your

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 business while reducing energy-related OPEX.  Key ­capabilities
and benefits include:

»» Minimize consumption. Software-based overlay energy

management solution Nokia AVA for Energy Efficiency
minimizes the power consumption of RAN equipment
across all layers for all major vendors.
»» Gain insights to help you optimize. Benchmarking lets you
see the energy usage patterns of different sites and equip-
ment types and analyze trends against current or historical
averages (for example, GB of traffic per kWh of energy).
»» Simulate energy savings. AI models let you simulate the
results of proposed changes so you can see which ones will
have the greatest impact on your costs.
»» Detect energy theft and fraud. Advanced analytics
highlight anomalous patterns that could point to theft and
fraud so you can address them and protect your networks.
»» Identify faulty equipment. Anomalies can also indicate
equipment that is malfunctioning or improperly configured
so you can take appropriate action.

Leveraging a telecom SaaS model for analytics rather than tradi-

tional on-premises models increases business agility and reduces
analytics costs. It does so by eliminating the need to retrain your
AI and ML models for different analytics use cases and reducing
infrastructure and integration costs associated with on-premises
data lakes and data warehouses.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY:

ELISA’S JOURNEY TO
TELECOM SAAS
Elisa is a Finnish market leader in telecommunications and digital
services, founded in 1882. Elisa and Nokia have a long history going
back to the origins of Global System for Mobile Communications
(GSM) technology with many areas of collaboration and innovations
together over the years, including setting a speed record for
5G millimeter wave (mmWave) in 2021. Now the telecom industry

(continued)

CHAPTER 4 Exploring Telecom SaaS Use Cases 25

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 (continued)

is at the cusp of real adoption of telecom SaaS, and Elisa is again

ahead of the curve and showing real foresight in thinking about SaaS.

Automation

Elisa has been focused on automation for more than a decade to

drive both operational efficiency and greater business agility, resulting
in faster time to value. Today they are looking for more automated
solutions in the 5G world. Markus Kinnunen, vice president of Cloud
Services at Elisa Telecom, says he looks forward to the time when
“with a click of a button I could order a 5G network for our purposes.”
He added, “It’s not a question of whether I prefer automation or not:
the world gets more complex all the time,” and automation is essen-
tial for delivering quality and a great customer experience. When
done well, automation cuts across organizational silos. Markus says,
“Elisa is in a good position going forward because we have been doing
this kind of automation already for a long time, when combining the
network engineering skills with the software developing skills and
bringing those two together in a concrete level.”

From IT SaaS to telecom SaaS

Elisa adopted IT SaaS many years ago with the likes of Salesforce and
Workday and they are also using resources from the public cloud.
Markus notes: “And now we are seeing the same kind of path in tele-
com and going more software-wise into infrastructure and utilizing
the models, for example from Nokia. We go step-by-step for 5G core
utilization of the SaaS model. In telecom, the world is a little bit differ-
ent; more complex. So there comes the telecom grade, five nines.
Quality is extremely important all the time. And we also need to take
into account regulatory privacy security issues, different service-level
agreements (SLAs), maintenance windows, and so forth. We are
learning all the time!”

Ecosystems and 5G monetization

Most industry thought leaders believe that the road to 5G monetization

is paved with partnerships and ecosystems. Gone are the days of a
single-threaded value chain from the service provider to the customer,
and instead service providers are experimenting with all kinds of ways
to create new services and experiences with multiple providers with
faster time to value.

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 Nokia and Elisa are currently partnering with an ecosystem of app
developers to experiment with new uses cases in the Nokia Arena in
Tampere, Finland. Using a live 5G network, the ecosystem of partners
is developing use cases based on virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality
(AR) experiences for hockey games, concert events, commerce, and
more. These new applications take advantage of the programmable
nature of 5G to expose specific network capabilities — latency, location,
speed — into applications via application programming interfaces
(APIs) for greater business agility. Markus observes: “That is something
we have built together in the Nokia Arena and the next experiment
would be to demo the delivery of SaaS 5G private core network in the
Arena and how, based on that, can we deliver some of the use cases
for different developers or the customers in that Arena. So, let’s see. It
will be an interesting experiment!”

As our industry continues to explore how to monetize 5G, accelerate

experimentation, and manage costs with greater business agility,
telecom SaaS can deliver on these objectives. We are at the dawn of
an exciting new frontier of providing transformational 5G business-to-
consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) experiences and
capabilities, powered by telecom SaaS.

CHAPTER 4 Exploring Telecom SaaS Use Cases 27

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Accelerating time-to-value

»» Improving financial performance

»» Achieving greater business agility

Chapter  5
Ten Benefits
of Telecom SaaS

H ere are ten important business benefits of telecom SaaS for

telecom service providers:

»» Reduced time to value. Enables rapid customer adoption

and use of service by reducing the time spent on software
installation, configuration, and upgrades.
»» Greater value proposition. Provides outcome-based
solutions and services, increasing the value proposition
of the service.
»» Value-added ecosystem. Facilitates ecosystem partners
and customers in co-creation of value.
Telecom SaaS accelerates communication service providers’
(CSPs) ability to launch new services faster and realize
quicker time-to-value.
»» On-demand scalability and advanced security. Permits
automated scaling and on-demand resource availability,
according to customer need, as well as advanced security
capabilities.

CHAPTER 5 Ten Benefits of Telecom SaaS 29

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 »» Rapid provisioning. Provides swift service provisioning,
often within minutes or hours.
»» Evergreen operation. Enables customers to remain
up-to-date with frequent and efficient delivery of software
patches and upgrades.
Telecom SaaS is about improving value and reducing
complexity by providing software that’s always the latest
version and consumed purely on demand through a
subscription.
»» Lower capital expenditure (CAPEX). Requires limited
upfront investment and no additional hardware or
physical space.
»» Simplified maintenance. Eliminates financial risk related
to software maintenance and upgrades.
»» Cost savings. Provides improved cost management, lower
total cost of ownership (TCO), and compelling economies
of scale.
»» New opportunities. Lowers entry barriers to market
evaluation and bridges knowledge gaps.
Telecom SaaS enables the next frontier of business
transformation.

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