You act as a consultant for a multisite company. They want to implement 5G coverage and are currently looking for a Cloud solution. Due to financial constraints they don't want to hire any new staff. What Cloud solution will you propose?

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the most suitable solution. The company wants to implement its own 5G coverage, which involves deploying and managing 5G network functions (as applications). PaaS provides the necessary computing platform (e.g., servers, operating systems, container orchestration like Kubernetes) managed by the provider. This abstracts away the complexity and operational cost of the underlying infrastructure, allowing the company to focus solely on its 5G applications. This model directly addresses the constraints of not hiring new staff for infrastructure management and keeping costs down by leveraging a managed, pay-as-you-go service.

A. Private Cloud: This typically requires significant capital investment and a skilled IT team to build and manage, directly contradicting the financial and staffing constraints.
C. Infrastructure as a service: IaaS would require the company to manage the operating systems, middleware, and runtime environments, necessitating specialized staff which they want to avoid hiring.
D. Network as a service: NaaS implies consuming network connectivity as a finished product from a provider, not "implementing" and managing their own 5G coverage solution.

1. Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2011). The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing (NIST Special Publication 800-145). National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Page 2, Section "Platform as a Service (PaaS)": The definition states, "The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications..." This supports PaaS as the correct model, as the company can deploy its 5G network functions (applications) without managing the complex infrastructure, thus avoiding the need for new staff.

2. Nokia (2022). Nokia Core on any cloud. Nokia White Paper.

Page 4, Section "Cloud-native by design": The document explains that Nokia's 5G Core network functions are designed as cloud-native applications to be deployed on any cloud platform, including public and private clouds. It emphasizes deployment on container platforms (a form of PaaS), stating, "This enables our customers to choose the cloud platform and infrastructure that best suits their business needs." This shows that a PaaS model is the standard industry approach for deploying 5G functions while minimizing infrastructure overhead.

3. Bouten, L., & Van de Walle, B. (2018). Cloud Computing for Telecommunications and the Telco-Cloud. Ghent University, Department of Information Technology.

Section 3.2, "Cloud Service Models": This courseware material discusses the different responsibilities in IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. It clarifies that with PaaS, the cloud provider is responsible for the platform's maintenance and management, which "reduces the operational burden on the user," aligning perfectly with the company's constraint of not hiring new staff.