In April 2022, twimbit, in partnership with F5 Networks and Kyndryl, organised the 2^nd ‘Asia Pacific Telecom Summit, 2022: The Next Frontier’.

During ‘The Innovation Panel’ session, we had two eminent speakers:

• Nathan Bell – Chief Digital Officer at M1 Limited
• Rajeev Singhal – Senior Vice President at Reliance Jio Infocomm

Mohamed Tanana, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at F5, sparked the conversation of how telcos adopt cloud for their internal capabilities and enterprise customers. In brief, here is what we learned, key takeaways and all:

#1 Telcos focus on migrating their workloads to cloud and microservices architecture

“More than 50% of systems are already on a cloud and they are modernised to micro service based architecture and the honest middle line the focus is on move to open source as much as we can.” – Rajeev Singhal, Senior Vice President, Reliance Jio Infocomm.

“Our digital platform, which we’ve established is 95% in the cloud, our approach is a little bit different. Rather than migrating legacy to the cloud, we build a brand new digital house in the public cloud environment. – Nathan Bell, Chief Digital Officer, M1 Limited

• Telcos are moving their Operating Support System (OSS) & Business Support System (BSS) applications to the cloud. Apart from the infrastructure, the focus is also on migrating the applications from monolithic to microservices architecture. Another focus area is to move the telecom infrastructure to open source technologies.
• Telcos also prioritise onboarding and building in-house skills and talent to develop and manage microservices.
• Most vendors and software partners align with the telcos and their vision of moving to the microservices architecture.

#2 Telcos would continue to partner with hyperscalers and leverage on their skills for the cloud services

“We are also working with various hyper scalars. And, and we are developing our own private cloud, but in association with the hyper scalars. Of course, it’s not like a pure private cloud, but we are working with various hyper scalars to create our own private cloud. And indefinitely we are using their public cloud also.” – Rajeev Singhal, Senior Vice President, Reliance Jio Infocomm

“We sort of set the objectives together with our hyper scalars, ourselves, and whatever software partner might be working with and say, Hey, this is where we need to get to now let’s figure out how we get to that particular outcome.” – Nathan Bell, Chief Digital Officer, M1 Limited

• Telcos intend to partner with multiple hyperscalers because of their strength in internal operations, such as building a private cloud. Telcos are certain that hyperscalers carry unique capabilities regarding microservices and open source, as acquiring and retaining these skills is challenging for the telco industry.
• Partnerships with hyperscalers will also enable them to serve their enterprise customers with advanced computing technologies such as analytics, a prerequisite for business and mission-critical use cases.

#3 Telcos are in a good position to facilitate the cloud journeys through bundling and providing managed services

• Enterprises have several fears about their cloud adoption going wrong. They fear security risks. Hence, it is vital for them to understand the best practices. Telcos are in a position to guide the digital journeys of the enterprises.

“We don’t want to become a connectivity provider, our focus is on becoming a solution provider.” – Rajeev Singhal, Senior Vice President, Reliance Jio Infocomm

• Telcos also focus on their enterprise strategy based on two different types of businesses, small and medium businesses (SMBs) and large companies.

• SMB:

1. Focus on selling cloud solutions bundled dynamically, as selling cloud or connectivity as separate products are unsuccessful.
2. Provide different services as a solution to better manage services and better service level agreements (SLAs) compared to the individual service provider.

• Large companies

1. Enable Chief Information Officers (CIOs) rather than making them dependent on us.

Telcos are keen on moving their workloads to the cloud, building their private cloud and digital platforms in partnership with hyperscalers. Telcos stand firm in their partnerships with hyperscalers as the right strategy to serve their enterprise customers.