Digital & Cloud are no longer merely buzz words; they already form part of our day to day lives. The question, therefore, is not whether you should go for it; but rather when and how to adopt it? Some 5000 years back, the challenge was to get the best piece of land for cultivation. 200 years ago, the one with the most efficient machine was praised. In the last decades, the party holding the highest amount of information was king. Today, the paradigm has again changed. Nowadays, with growing competition, advent of new players and increasing costs, business players are more and more shifting to the digital era. Currently, the operator feels the heat of OTTs everyday in their businesses as traditional [Voice & SMS] revenues surpass maturity stage and have declined from 70% in 2012 to 35% in 2016. However, at the same time, IT/Cloud Services revenue have increased from 5% to 20% and new digital services emerge one after another, such as video, music, M2M, smart home, education, healthcare and etc.
Any 2016 C-level in the telco industry has at least these on his agenda:
And it is not opportunities that are scarce ….
Currently operators might be facing ambiguity in front of the catalogue of choices which are possible; starting from Fixed Voice / Broadband, Outsourcing, Data Network Services, Analytics, Cloud to M2M / IoT. However, neither they have equal growth rate nor do they have equal investment requirements and given that each market has its own intrinsic characteristics of maturity, culture, & technology, it defeats the “one size fits all” archetype. As per the recent study exposed by Analysys Mason new opportunities like M2M / IoT, Cloud, Analytics are emerging services growing at tremendous pace [> 15 % CAGR]. The right choice depends on the market but also on the telco management’s acuity to take drastic game-changing decisions.
A Digital Strategy consists of 2 distinct components which are closely intertwined and sometimes erroneously interchanged. Digital Services are where the operator still emphasizes on providing connectivity based services & products but in an enhanced manner whereas Digital Transformation is where the operator focuses on transforming existing business model to improve customer experience via new services. Worldwide telco leaders like Orange, Vodafone, BT, Telefonica are already in the digital race. In order to embark on the digital journey, cloud becomes a necessity due to its intrinsic features like elasticity / scalability, flexibility, and related benefits. In the cloud transformation, carrier services will be deployed over the distributed Cloud DC [Data Center], the operator can make use of virtual data centres [VDC] to deploy different services, initiate cloud transformation in B2B Cloud, Private Cloud, Telecom Cloud and Data Center modernization. This allows the Operator to achieve agility of operations and TTM [Time to Market] can be drastically reduced. The operator can define roadmap to transform into cloud platform which is flexible and can be adapted on a case to case basis, the following screens will show the roadmap of the cloud transformation. Given that the initial outlay & operating costs of such infrastructure are not negligible; it is salient for the management to understand whether the investment pays back or not. In fact, what happens with this transformation is that the investment towards existing Applications and Infra level is reduced while more budget is allocated to new innovation & enhancements.
Approaches towards embarking on the digital journey are many, however falling into 3 main categories:
It is no hazard that partnership is the most adopted methodology and this is where Huawei hits hard. Huawei can enable the business not only to meet your customers’ new needs but to transcend the entire business model towards digital. Basically, the whole logic is to provide you with muscles & network in the proper environment which you do not currently have. This synergy can only happen in an alliance to target at the same time broad & niche markets allowing to monetize investments by transforming not only the technology but the whole business model.
Our unique approach has already allowed multiple operators and even governmental bodies to get on and ride the wave of Digital. Carrier B2B Cloud Success is based on 3 critical success factors:
- Target Segments for Carrier B2B: Identify the right market
- Platform Openness: Allow for integration
- Ecosystem: Have the proper environment [MarketPlace, Certification Trainings, Partnerships. Resale channels, Integrated solution,….]
The typical telco cloud transformation roadmap goes through a pilot phase whereby non-critical application can be hosted on a private cloud to gain cloud experience. Following that, key VAS applications can be migrated after which the whole telco environment of core network elements [SGSN / GGSN / MSC / HLR / BSS / OSS, ….] can be moved to the cloud environment to convert from a hardware defined to a software defined telco.
Books, articles, whitepapers, journals and other content have already been written on these topics; however at Huawei we do not only dream it, but we live it. Some say that Huawei lives for connections, and honestly being with Huawei for a while now, I have come to realize that connecting people through innovative smart solutions for an intelligent digital world, is indeed a noble pursuit. Huawei’s mission is to continue to be the partner of choice in the transformation journey from the Telecom connectivity age to the Digital Services Era, introducing significant business, functional and financial improvements through leveraging all the technological and business capabilities available. Furthermore we feel proud when our vision of ROADS [Real-time, Online, Always On, Do it yourself, Social] is more and more becoming concrete and vouch the fact that Huawei has been a key driver behind this both at the African level & even on a global landscape.
Today, Huawei is a partner of choice with State of the Art technology, fully qualified people; a plethora of Strategic partners and bleeding-edge leadership.
Going digital is no longer a luxury, it has become a must and the best way to succeed is to partner with an ally of choice.
