How StarHub is tapping OpenShift in its cloud strategy

In Singapore’s highly competitive telco market, network operators face immense pressure to reduce churn, boost average revenue per user (ARPU) and lower customer service costs. Digital transformation, process automation and cloud adoption are central to these efforts.

But for StarHub, Singapore’s second-largest operator, it was more than just migrating workloads to public cloud – the company took a hybrid multi-cloud approach that retains its telco differentiation while leveraging the power of the cloud.

This vision materialised as Cloud Infinity, a platform built on Red Hat OpenShift, designed to deliver an “infinite number of digital platforms and services” for StarHub and its customers, said Ayush Sharma, chief technology officer at StarHub.

“Two years ago, we decided we couldn’t continue to operate in this hyper-commoditised market in the way you build traditional telco stacks,” he said. “We wanted to transform into a hybrid multi-cloud company, harnessing the power of the internet, which telcos had a good handle on, and the cloud for innovation. Cloud Infinity was the result, enabling us to leverage our telco assets in a cloud and AI [artificial intelligence]-native way."

The choice of Red Hat OpenShift was strategic. StarHub sought a platform that provided standardisation and maturity while being supported by major hyperscalers. “Red Hat OpenShift is front and centre of our brownfield transformation strategy,” said Sharma. “It’s the glue that holds our common fabric together, enabling consistent CI/CD [continuous integration and delivery], cyber security and cloud-native, AI-native capabilities across different cloud environments.”

StarHub’s hybrid cloud strategy focuses on optimising costs and maintaining control. Consumption-heavy workloads, compliance-sensitive data, and core telco differentiators reside in its private cloud, while public cloud services are used for commodity functions, scaling resources and access to a broader ecosystem of software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools and applications.

At the same time, it’s actively developing in-house intellectual property, including building its own DevSecOps process, as well as containerised, cloud-native network functions such as user plane function/session management function, which are deployed on Red Hat OpenShift for flexibility and portability.

Sharma noted the importance of addressing the entire technology stack, operating model and business model for successful transformation. This includes modernising legacy systems such as operational support systems through autonomous operations and incorporating closed-loop automation to improve customer experience and support hyper-personalisation.

Business support systems are also being transitioned to SaaS offerings, with a strict policy against vertically integrated or virtual machine-based applications without a clear migration plan to cloud-native architectures. This required commitment from all levels of the organisation, from top management to the board. “We made bold decisions,” he said. “There’s no real transformation if you don’t re-architect everything.”

AI also plays a crucial role in StarHub’s overall transformation. An AI centre of excellence governs its AI initiatives, focusing on impactful projects with measurable outcomes. “We’re also developing an OpenShift data science team to create unique AI differentiation within the StarHub fabric,” said Sharma. “This will drive both operational improvements and new customer-facing offerings.”

The company is also actively exploring AI-powered operations, leveraging technologies such as knowledge graphs and collaborating with partners such as Nvidia, Google and Amazon Web Services.

StarHub’s hybrid cloud journey has reaped returns. Cloud Infinity 1.0 has achieved cost benefits, as reported in StarHub’s annual reports, and is slated for commercial launch in March 2025. The platform’s multi-tenancy design has also opened new business opportunities, with trials underway with major customers across different industries in Singapore.

“We’re seeing huge benefits for our enterprise customers,” said Sharma, citing an example of a major bank leveraging Cloud Infinity for low-latency connectivity, cyber security and enhanced observability. “This offloads complexity and extraneous costs, allowing them to focus on their core business.”