Test & Assurance for the Communications Industry

5G is a limitless market opportunity—if you can reduce the risks for end users, your supply chain, and your business. As one recent analyst report reminds us, “Trust is the foundational principle for technology adoption.” Yet trust is an elusive commodity in developing secure 5G use cases. The complexity of 5G security is so overwhelming that it actually creates a new form of risk: inertia. If your business cannot solve the security challenges of 5G, it risks falling behind and incurring the opportunity costs of inaction. At the same time, there is urgent pressure to deploy new services quickly, compounding the risks.

Cloud-native networks offer tremendous benefits – greater agility, faster release time, shorter time-to-market, lower costs, and the potential for telcos to avoid vendor lock-in. As network providers race to take advantage of clouds, how can they ensure that their services operate as promised and their customers enjoy the superior experience they expect? Hybrid clouds require enhanced collaboration with vendors and heightened vigilance against cyberattacks. In this paper, we look at the trends that are driving these challenges, particularly the move to hybrid clouds, and examine how test and assurance needs to evolve to support the agile new services running on cloud-native networks.