Was the training bill an unexpected item in the OPEX area?
Swedish operator group Telia has brought in Amazon Web Services (AWS) to train its workers to use cloud technologies. Ten per cent will get training over the next 3 years, reveals Andrew Wooden in Telecoms. That means Telia is going have to pay for 2000 training courses.
There is an urgent need for artificial intelligence and machine learning to be pressed into service and Telia’s machines need to be trained to learn, so someone needs to train the trainers. Since Telia has 800 software developers on its payroll, all creating applications for a culture that puts the cloud first, there is an urgent need for algorithms that can regulate these liberated assets. Otherwise the ebbs and flows, created by the new liquidity of these disaggregated computing resources, could create unmanageable swells.
The madness of clouds
Machines can learn, but in the early days they need some foundations and boundaries, or they can get spoilt. The AWS programme is designed to expedite the production of machine teachers who will underpin the firm’s ‘cloud first strategy’, according to Rainer Deutschmann, Telias group chief operating officer.
Telia has embarked on one of the telecom industry’s most ambitious digital transformation journeys, Deutschmann claimed. The cloud, big data, analytics and AI were at the heart of this transformation, but they are all useless without some genuinely intelligent guidance from humans. The constant elevation of AI has made people forget that these systems are only as good as the people who created them.
Rising cost of collaboration
“We now extend our collaboration with AWS to launch the Nordic region’s largest in-house AWS training program to date,” said Deutschmann. That means that 10 percent of Telia’s total workforce on AWS and cloud technologies must achieve cloud fluency. Around 2,000 staff must attend AWS training courses in the next three years. Is that an expense that was accounted for when Telia embraced the cloud? Productive decisions have many parents, but wastages are aways orphans.
Not so, according to Deutschmann. “This initiative complements our ongoing wider product and technology skills augmentation with currently 4,000 active learners. I am very excited to see our talents grow and develop, which is a critical foundation for sustainable delivery of our transformation,” said Deutschmann.
A basket of instances
Naturally, Fabio Cerone, the MD of AWS’s EMEA Telecom Industry Business Unit, saw it as a demonstration of a ‘commitment to pursuing modern and innovative strategies to optimize its business’ and better serve its customers. Everything from serverless data to SAP migration is an investment in ‘upskilling’, according to Cerone. “Telia proves they are embracing the future and that AWS cloud technology sits at the core of their way forward,” said the AWS business unit beneficiary. “We look forward to continue working with Telia to support their digital transformation and their ambition to be one of the best tech employers in the Nordics,” said Cerone.