The venture also gets a new name, Aduna, to signify its many members acting as one – in theory
Last September, some of the biggest telcos in the world backed Ericsson’s plan form a new joint-venture company “to accelerate adoption and innovation of network APIs” and basically try to work out how to monetise them. The company was announced at the time to be owned by Ericsson (50%) and the telco partners (50%) and today it finally has a name, Aduna, derived from the Latin word for many entities uniting as one.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, 30-year veteran Anthony Bartolo has been named as its new CEO. Unsurprising because Bartolo was most recently chief operating officer at Ericsson’s Vonage which has been working with some of the telco members already to build an API ecosystem. However, an ecosystem needs hundreds of telcos using it and Aduna has the task of making this happen.
Bartolo also served at Bandwidth and prior to that, he was executive vice president and chief product officer at Avaya, where he led the transition to a software as a service-based business model. Before that, he held several executive roles at Tata Communications, including president of mobility and chief product officer.
Aduna will combine and sell network APIs globally, with a vision that new applications will work anywhere, and on any network, paving the way for developers to innovate much more quickly and easily. This is a glaringly easy thing to say but a fiendishly difficult thing to execute. Operators tend not to collaborate well but today, there is a greater urgency in finding ways to better monetise 5G network investments. The involvement of so many large telcos, plus Vonage and Google Cloud proving access to their respective ecosystems of millions of developers, suggests that while Aduna may not be the answer, it will move the industry closer to asking the right questions.
The newly formed company will provide network APIs to a broad ecosystem of developer platforms, including hyperscalers, communications platform as a service (CPaaS) providers, system integrators and independent software vendors, based on existing industry-wide CAMARA APIs – the open-source project driven by the GSMA and the Linux Foundation.
It will be interesting to see how many new telcos join. In September Three Sweden (Hi3G Access) was named as a potential member but one telco a quarter is not going to give the project the momentum it needs to become the de facto ecosystem. Aduna’s initial partners include: América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Reliance Jio, Singtel, Telefonica, Telstra, T-Mobile, Verizon and Vodafone. But each of them already has API platforms, tools and approaches which will need to be coordinated so the resulting Aduna APIs avoid the risk of becoming bogged down.
That said, if customer get a consistent set of CAMARA APIs, delivered on Open Gateway principles and by a much larger cohort of global developers, it stands to reason that we’ll see more innovation than in the past.
Venture closing this year
Bartolo will assume his responsibilities as CEO on 20 January 2025. The closing of the venture is expected later this year, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions.
“Aduna is at the forefront of the next technology wave. Providing developers with ubiquitous access to open, programmable network functionality through common APIs will empower them to innovate at global hyperscale and drive value creation for enterprises, their customers and the telecom industry,” said CEO-designate Bartolo. “These new and more advanced applications will create better customer experiences, open new revenue streams, work seamlessly anywhere in the world, and provide businesses with innovative and differentiating ways to operate. I am honoured to lead Aduna towards a new frontier for the future of technology, communication and the telecom industry.”
“Anthony is a recognised global technology leader with a proven track record in driving successful strategy execution in fast-moving businesses. His unique cross-industry expertise across the technology, operational and business domains positions him exceptionally well to deliver on Aduna’s vision,” said Ericsson head of business area global communications platform Niklas Heuveldop.
“We are excited about Anthony now stepping in to further accelerate the onboarding of developer platform partners, enabling millions of developers to access advanced network capabilities and drive the next wave of services innovation via common APIs across industry-leading partner networks worldwide,” he added.