• TelecomTV conducted a cloud-native telco market perception survey
• We asked network operators which companies they recognise as cloud-native telco leaders
• Red Hat came out on top, while AWS was the highest-ranked hyperscaler
• We also asked the telco executives about the platforms/tools they regard as being vital to their cloud-native strategic goals
• The full results have been published in the first DSP Leaders Report

Red Hat is the company most widely regarded as a cloud-native telco market leader by network operator executives, according to the results of a survey conducted by TelecomTV that have just been published in our first DSP Leaders Report. 

We asked executives from a broad range of operators to participate in our Cloud-Native Telco Market Perception study, and we received responses from 38 executives representing 21 network operators/communications service providers (CSPs) from Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, North America and Latin America that collectively serve more than 1 billion customers across their group operations. Nearly all of the respondents hold roles in the network technology or research and development (R&D) departments at their companies.

We asked just three questions.

The first was – ‘Have you adopted a cloud-native strategy?’ 

The vast proportion, 89%, said they had and the two remaining questions were for those who answered in the affirmative to that question.

We then asked – ‘Which of the following platforms/tools do you recognise as being vital to meeting your strategic aims?’ 

We provided a list of potential tools and platforms but also gave respondents the opportunity to add any others they regarded as vital. Respondents could select as many options as they wished. 

The top answer to that question (not surprisingly) was Kubernetes – the open-source system used for the automated deployment, scaling and management of containerised applications and which is maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It attracted votes from 90% of the respondents who completed this part of the survey. 

But it was one of only four platforms/tools that garnered a score of more than 50%, with the majority of the technologies cited as vital garnering votes from fewer than 20% of respondents, which shows how fragmented the sector is. To see the results in full, you can download the full report for free here. 

The final question was – ‘Which of the following companies do you recognise as being cloud-native experts/leaders in the telecom sector?’ We provided a list of options, and respondents could select as many options as they wished. 

Red Hat was recognised as an expert/leader by 73% of our network operator respondents. Amazon Web Services (AWS) ranked second with votes from 63% of them, ahead of its two main hyperscaler rivals, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure, both of which were selected by 50% of respondents. 

VMware, recognised as an expert/leader by 57% of our network operator respondents, was the only other company to attract a score greater than 50%.

Of the major mobile network equipment vendors, which all offer cloud-native systems to their customers – including the all-important 5G standalone core systems – Ericsson attracted the highest score, but just 33%.

To see how the other mobile network vendors, along with companies such as Mavenir and Wind River, fared, download our short report (just seven pages) for free by clicking on this link.  

The survey was conducted ahead of our latest Cloud Native Telco Summit. 

Look out for future DSP Leaders Reports – our next one will focus on the telecom sector’s views of artificial intelligence.

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV