Swisscom embarks on public cloud migration with AWS to power 5G innovation

Switzerland-based telco Swisscom is embarking on a cloud-first enterprise IT strategy to power its 5G roll-out plans, having named Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred public cloud partner.

The partnership will involve the migration of a wide range of core business applications to the AWS cloud, including those that underpin Swisscom’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) procedures, its operational and business support systems, and its contact centre and communications provisioning workloads.  

The company said it will lean on AWS’s portfolio of public cloud products and services to bolster its business agility, generate operational efficiencies and accelerate the pace of its own in-house and consumer-facing innovations, including the roll-out of its 5G proposition for customers.

“Swisscom will leverage AWS’s proven infrastructure and breadth and depth of services to explore how it can build a reliable, scalable, secure and cost-effective 5G Core in the cloud that would enable rapid development and deployment of new 5G services for its customers,” the company said, in a statement.

“Swisscom will also explore migrating from a 5G network built on current infrastructure to a new standalone 5G network powered by a cloud-native 5G Core – the architecture that aggregates and directs traffic flow across the network.”

The company said it anticipates that its 5G core will be underpinned by a hybrid cloud infrastructure setup that will be hosted in on-premise datacentres via AWS Outposts and within the Zurich-based AWS Europe public cloud datacentre region, which is due to launch in 2022.  

“Running the planned cloud-native 5G Core will enable Swisscom to reduce operating costs, increase reliability and scalability by virtualising and automating network functions, and accelerate deployment of new features and applications to customers,” the company said.

Internally, Swisscom has also committed to using Amazon’s data analytics, machine learning, database, data storage and container services to modernise its applications and automate its hardware provisioning processes, too.

Christoph Aeschlimann, chief technology innovation officer at Swisscom, said teaming up with AWS will pave the way for the firm to deliver on the technological promise of 5G technologies.

“AWS contributes to the technological foundation and agility we need to unlock new growth potential by transforming our IT services and delivering robust 5G communications that meet the needs of our enterprise and consumer customers,” said Aeschlimann.

“We expect 5G to open the door for a host of specialised services. Having AWS by our side, with their proven infrastructure and unparalleled suite of cloud technologies, will help us innovate and grow at a rapid pace.”

Adolfo Hernandez, vice president of telco sales at AWS, said Swisscom is among a number of telcos who are now entrusting the company and it public cloud environments with their applications and workloads.

“The telecoms industry is turning to AWS to build more flexible, agile, and cost-effective networks in the cloud, capable of delivering reliable services at any scale while continuously improving the customer experience,” said Hernandez.

“Our collaboration with Swisscom represents our long-term commitment to Switzerland, and we look forward to driving broad industry transformations for more European customers when we open our new region next year.”