Philippe Ensarguet’s keynote at Mobile Europe’s recent Telco to techco virtual conference was all about how telcos’ can return to growth in conversation with Annie Turner
Philip Ensarguet is a former winner of Mobile Europe’s CTO of the Year in the Trailblazer category (he then held that role at what is now Orange Business). With “a 100% software background” he is now VP of Software Engineering reporting directly to Orange’s group CTO, Laurent Leboucher. His job is both to be a strategist and an implementer, and his job recently has been “working hard on how to manage and orchestrate the new generation of telco cloud infrastructure, and telecoms shift towards cloud native and becoming a cloud-native telco”.
As a strategic thinker, he contributed to NGNM’s cloud-native manifesto and to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s white paper, which specifies, in great depth, telcos’ requirements to move towards being cloud nativeEnsarguet says that In his regular meetings with analysts and vendors, he finds “they are using one or the other of [those documents] as kind of backbone or map, to explain how they are working to transform themselves to meet those needs”.
He adds, “The relationship with the vendor ecosystem is super interesting because there are a lot of things to support in terms of transformation. The delivery of best practices in software, APIs and automation, for example, is far behind what we had when I was purely [working] in digital. That’s why it’s so exciting.”
The session was designed to probe why so much work has gone into telcos’ transforming themselves and continues, yet it is not reflected in new revenues or share price. So how will network’s ongoing evolution and operational transformation lead to growth? In short by a radical change in how telcos’ infrastructure, implementation and operations…
The following is an edited version of Ensarguet’s answers to the editor’s questions, for brevity and sense.
Foundations for growth
Ensarguet explains, “To be concrete on this, I want to emphasise that by definition, for instance, a 3GPP functional specification rule how [certain] network services have to work. But all the wrapping and the lifecycle around that is going to change based, for instance, on automated infrastructure, a new generation of deployment strategy, new ways of operation that are opening doors for novel, more optimised operating models.
Ensarguet said he’s not concerned that in the past so much talk was about telcos being behind Big Tech in terms of digitalisation because “it means that we can really learn and grab the best practices that enable or fast track digital and [associated] tools into the telecom ecosystem.”
He believes the big levers regarding growth are: API-isation, automation, the move from a vertical model to a horizontal one and AI – and especially generative AI. The four things are not separate, rather they impact each other. Ensarguet also thinks there are also some topics outside the ‘pure’ telco world that could have a big influence regarding opportunities for growth.
Underlay and overlay
Orange is concentrating on how best to use APIs to leverage the value from the underlay and the overlay networks to differentiate services – a huge benefit of owning the network. He notes there is a big industry focus on CAMARA, the Linux Foundation’s open-source project, including the definition of a new network API that can do two things. Firstly, retrieve information from the network and secondly configure the network.
He acknowledges that with the GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative, the emphasis has largely been on leveraging APIs for mobile connectivity, but says in the context of 5G, both fixed and mobile need to benefit from APIs. Ensarguet comments, “It’s not an option if you want to fully support the promise of what we are calling the programmable network”.
There has been some progress already on the fixed side, he says, such as “the old device policy on-demand or the CPE”. He adds that, “For standardisation, we work to establish end-to-end connectivity, for both. And it’s happening also in the open-source ecosystem. We truly believe that it will definitely help to create the API that has the most impact for the developer communities.”
So there is considerable effort in addressing the APIs in the right order. He says the industry wants to be sure that “We are prioritising the network services that would help B2B or B2B2C company to implement the cases where the API and network could bring a new superpower”.
And according to a new survey from McKinsey, there’s a lot to play for as shown in the graph below.
Orange demo’d three kinds of use cases at Mobile World Congress, with Ensarguet stressing this is just one year after the launch of CAMARA:
• smooth, verified onboarding of users using their digital ID using two APIs from Orange’s production network
• location verification – using face recognition for secure payments between two people and being able to prove that the devices are at the same location. He says, “Here the network is bringing a superpower” combining its less exact location info with their GPS location
• geofencing – ID is used to provide notifications when devices enter a given area.
He says their potential is huge and highlights a Spanish company that is working on preventing gender violence. Ensarguet’s point is that it is not the APIs per se that matter, but the uses to which they are put.
Asked about the progress of network automation, he stresses, “We need to understand that the automation is mainly done with the network function technology we are using. You can automate physical network, you can automate the virtual network you can add to an automated network, but the level of the workload you are manipulating here as absolutely different…and that’s why we engage so much with this cloud-native, horizontal model transformation.”
He adds, “Extended delivery of automation and moving to the autonomous network for us is critical because it’s about saving money on operation and bringing us much more efficient operations. And here of course is where generative AI has a super-disrupting potential.
Industrial model
“We are investing a lot into what we are terming our industrial model to support the transformation from the flows and vertical silos to the horizontal one,” he says. “The idea is to push for an infrastructure, a deployment strategy and operation that’s API-driven and the others things I [am sharing].”
He explains, “We are pushing the level of the intent at a scale, where…our infrastructure is for the cloud native purpose is 100% intent-based and using the GitOps model [so] we are spinning our infrastructure in pure software.”
This approach to achieving a highly strategic foundation for infrastructure rests on the Sylva open-source project whose aim is to “an open Telco Cloud platform of reference” on which automation sits.
Ensarguet adds, “We are adding what we call the network integration factory, that is a total critical assets. The idea is that instead of relying on very specific and proprietary deployment, and lifecycle management tools, we rely on something we build that’s 100% standardised and we leverage the best practices from the digital and the IT world. Today, the network integration factory tooling zone is just a cloud native application we are deploying in our Orange central cloud…[that can]…provide the detailed framework for all the tools for deployment, lifecycle management and continuous testing.
“For us it is critical to be sure that everything has been validated before moving to production or accurate when the deployment is done. Everything about this is moving up to the operation layer and a new way operation that’s much more closer to the digital and IT.”
He continues, “A large part of this automation is thanks to the cloud-native superpower…it’s about the abilities in terms of resilience, of closed loop reconciliation, and risk management. Being able to rely on an orchestrator with such capabilities is a total game changer in the way we can automate and remediate our infrastructure.”
Growth is an ecosystem shift
A great question from the audience was, “How do you maintain the network advantage against competition from systems integrators and hyperscalers while transforming to a telco? Would you go as far as one of your competitors [T-Mobile USA] and [claim to] be an uncarrier?
Ensarguet said the first thing to stress is that integrators and hyperscalers are very important partners as well as competitors. The new, simple API business is leveraging use cases…but you can only have these benefits if you own the network. For me, that is a true differentiator.”
He concludes, “The four components [outlined above] can enable a new business model or new way of building infrastructure or consuming the services. For me [hyperscalers and integrators], are more enablers than real competitors… That’s why the industrial model we are working on right now around the infra layer, implement layer, operation layer is so important. It’s where we want to standardise and apply to mutualisation. It’s what I’m observing with our every telco peer.
“As a final thought, last Monday Orange had a cloud-native workshop where we add up to six or seven telco peers, from Europe and Asia. Basically, they told more or less the same story about the business of transversality is need of regionalisation is needed of some data. And that’s why all the same telcos are working hand-in-hand, supporting the transformation of the ecosystem because here in the new domain for a growth – new ways of implementation.
“We cannot win alone. We need the whole ecosystem. That’s why it’s so important to support the integrators, the vendors, the hardware makers, because we can only win growth for the new generation if the whole ecosystem is shifting.”