The Open Telekom Cloud of Deutsche Telekom AG was launched in 2016 and developed into a solid cloud platform since then. The Open Telekom Cloud platform offers many services on top of the standard IaaS set, e.g. for data analytics and for serverless functions.
The technology of Open Telekom Cloud is based on the Huawei “distro” of OpenStack called Huawei FusionSphere. Parts of the hardware for Open Telekom Cloud is also provided by Huawei. Some observers are therefore raising questions about true sovereignty of Open Telekom Cloud. Does Huawei possess a kill switch for Open Telekom Cloud? Is a US dependency simply traded for a dependency on a Chinese supplier? At least the spectrum of suppliers and dependencies is widened.
Features & Services
Open Telekom Cloud has a very broad service portfolio, including some unique services, e.g. for Big Data processing, the AI service ModelArts, an OCR service and the serverless compute engine FunctionGraph, a Service Mesh, a Data Warehouse and many more advanced services.
Data Centres
The Open Telekom Cloud is currently powered by 6 data centers, or, as Deutsche Telekom AG are putting it themselves, 3 twin core data centers. There are are 3 data center pairs, each forming a twin core in
- Biere and Magdeburg in Germany
- Almere and Aalsmeer in the Netherlands
- Zollikofen and Bern in Switzerland
For a complete overview of data centers, check the Data Centres Map.
Environmental Policy
According to Open Telekom Cloud Rechenzentren, Open Telekom Cloud data centres are fueled by 100% renewable energy.
Conclusion
OTC is a fairly mature cloud platform with a service portfolio well above classic, core IaaS offerings. The main target group are corporate clients in the DACH region. As OTC is built mostly on open source components, lock-in is comparably low.
