Keynote: Building Autonomous Networks for the AI Era - Gergely Csatari

This talk covers Nokia's advancements in building cloud-native telecom applications and their significant role in contemporary communication networks. The speaker, Gergely Csatari, highlights Nokia's focus on software that powers mobile base stations and data centers, serving billions of mobile subscriptions globally. He discusses key projects within the cloud-native community, including the maintained kept CNCF sandbox project, which enables faster deployment of configurations across thousands of telecom devices using GitOps principles. Additionally, he presents a schema-driven configuration project that integrates Netconf Yang-based devices as Kubernetes resources, facilitating automated operations. Csatari emphasizes the importance of community feedback and collaboration through events like Cloud-native Telco Day and invites attendees to the upcoming Kubernetes Community Day in Helsinki.

Hi, good morning. And beyond snowboarding, I'm working in the open source for of Nokia. My name is Gergely Csatari. In Nokia, we are building fixed, mobile, and transport networks. We are not a phone company anymore. We produce devices and technology which is which are making communication networks and the internet work. Our software is in mobile base stations, in homes, and in data centers. Most probably every IP

bucket in the internet is touching a Nokia device along its route. We We build cloud-native telecom applications which are serving more than 4.4 billion uh mobile subscriptions served by more than 1.5 thousand telecom providers in 150 countries. Only for testing and internal purposes, we are running one of the biggest private clouds in the world consisting more than 70,000 cores running Kubernetes workloads. We created technology what is

enabling the Kubernetes control plane to build autonomous networks. I would like to highlight three projects what we are working on with the cloud-native community. First, uh we are maintaining the kept CNCF sandbox project together with our peers. Uh we use kept to define configuration blueprints for our applications. This enables us to specialize the configuration based on the location of the applications. With the help of this, we

can use GitOps principles to roll out the configuration faster than ever before. Think about reconfiguring reconfiguring 10,000 devices in a telecom network in a consistent way. Second, there is a schema-driven configuration project. With SDC, we made it possible to expose the configuration of Netconf Yang-based devices as Kubernetes resources. This helps to use the Kubernetes control plane to run run closed-loop automation on these devices. SDC is fully

open and we are working with CNCF to bring it in onto the sandbox level. At Nokia, we are transforming how networks are built and operated. We need spaces where we can discuss new ideas and feedback with our industry peers. Community events are the best ways to have these discussions and move the technology forward. The cloud-native Telco Day was a great success on Monday, and we would like

to organize it next year, also. Finally, talking about snowy snowy places, I would like to invite you to the Kubernetes Community Day in Helsinki. KCDs are community-organized events uh supported by the CNCF. Our cloud-native community in Finland is organizing its second KCD this year on the 20th of May. Our schedule is public and ticket sales are open. I hope to see you there. Thank you.