This panel exchanged diverse views from three very different telco business and operational scenarios
The discussion took place at our recent Telecom Europe LIVE event, moderated by Tilly Gilbert, Director – Consulting, STL Partners. Our panellists were Aleksandra Jović, Director of Data & Analytics, Telekom Srbija, Antonietta Mastroianni, Chief Digital & IT Officer at Proximus and Martina Klingvall, CEO of Telness.
As Gilbert noted, when you’re still getting questions at 5pm on the second day of a conference, it’s been a good event – and a very strong panel.
Using the best elements
Mastroianni explained that despite initial hesitation, Proximus recognised the importance of its cloud strategy and opted a multi-cloud strategy, “not only in terms of vendor but also in terms of cloud level”. The Belgian operator chose Microsoft for Level 2 and AI, and is “very much in touch with them because we really want to explore the efficiencies they are bringing to the market,”
Proximus’ partnership with Google has a strong sovereignty element. She notes, “You really can’t build [and scale] every sort of skills and talent solution yourself, you will be always behind, so definitely the new strategy is partnering with the best that bring that piece of solution which allow you to be competitive to differentiate yourself on the market.”
For instance, by offering services on an as-a-Service basis via a predefined catalogue (copying the hyperscalers’ model to some extent).
Leaving some telcos behind
Jović said that Telekom Srbija is just at the start of its cloud journey and has “some concerns”. She started by speaking specifically about data strategy and said as a small operator, every solution it looked at – such as for data governance and data preparation – was global and cloud-ready, with integration if you were already using cloud.
Telekom Srbija was looking to migrate from a ten-year old, on-prem solution. So that was a barrier and the second issue was scaling, then partnerships as not always straightforward. For instance, Telekom Srbija is creating its own TV shows and movies and developing a hybrid solution is complex and under investigation.
In other words, if it is not a ‘standard’ telco situation, cloud is not an immediately simple answer. Gilbert said so, for example, if an operator has not started its cloud journey, it couldn’t leverage the innovative tech offered by a cloud-native firm like Telness.
Speed, scale and security
Cloud-native Telness offers its services to other operators. KIngvall says being cloud native was “a bigger bet at the start” than it is now, but it enabled the Swedish firm to become international without requiring lead times for things like installing equipment within countries. Hence it’s PBX solution was able to go live in 64 countries within one year.
Kingsvall said along with speed, scale and only paying for what you use, another key reason for working with hyperscalers is that it is possible to provide a far higher degree of security than a start-up on its own could achieve in the same amount of time.
An interesting point of view, given how that one reason telcos often fight shy of using public cloud is security.
The discussion also dug into:
• telcos’ cloud strategies versus the hyperscalers’ approaches to telecoms
• the benefits and challenges of ‘verticalised offerings’ such as Elisa goes to market with versus telcos’ usually more horizontal approach
• the tension between vertical and horizontal approaches and how cloudcos can help telcos deliver B2B2X services
• the importance of not looking at hyperscalers as though they are all the same
• the danger of telcos becoming disaggregated access providers for hyperscalers?
• how well is the strategy of telcos offering added value to B2B2X working in pratice?