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Telefónica's López Vives on Digital Revolution The move to software and synchronized services In some of our countries now we are putting an offer online for SMBs. If you go for an offer and then do that two minutes later, the offer will be different, because we are learning all the information about what any customer is doing as they look for an offer, for a bundle, for a solution in communications. And our processes are now able to change by seconds, and offer what the customer wants, based on the information we have and what is working better. And all the difference on the software models is what we have named "synchronized services." Let me try to explain. You might have seen that most traditional value chains were supply-driven. Let me give you an example: a hotel chain. Normally, you invest in a hotel, you have "x" number of rooms and then you market using a single channel, which traditionally was the travel agencies. Now, with the Internet world, there are plenty of places where you can make comparisons. You may choose one hotel or another because it's more convenient. So the value chain has changed. The power has moved from the supply into the demand side. It's a huge transformation. Additionally you see guys like Airbnb that are moving a further step. They have built a solution in between supply and demand, and they do not need physical assets. What they are doing is putting in contact people who are offering their flats with people who want a room at a specific time in a specific city. You know what? What they have created is a platform. You know in a platform world, economies of scale are critical. So if you want to succeed with a platform, there's one rule: The winner takes all. And that is the new world, so even if you have your traditional value chain, it is changing. It is moving from supply side to demand side-driven. So that is bringing a lot of risk and it's forcing almost every company to reset their business. While doing that resetting and that changing in the business model, we have seen so many examples of how technology has to be used in a different way. Managing the huge volumes of business that are needed cannot be done with traditional assets, with traditional data centers. Most companies are unable to cope now with technology revolution, with the investment, the capex and all the platforms needed, so they are moving into cloud. And very few companies will manage all the infrastructure needed for that new world in house. So that movement into the cloud is critical, and the way companies perform that movement is critical for the future. That's Telefónica's value proposition. I just want to use that as an example. In the end, communications and the cloud will be more integrated, with a common layer and structure between the companies. Then the companies are collecting information from the workplace and their employees. Devices will be deployed in almost every part of their processes. With that, they are using big data and analytics to make completely different decisions or to really have insights that they were not having in the past. And don't forget one thing that we have mentioned many times here today: security. You need to have a secure infrastructure, because if you lose the information of your customers, you will be dead in your business in a matter of days. So how are companies moving into the cloud? There are different strategies. In large enterprises a hybrid approach is the most common. So again, using our value proposition, you may see that companies are using dedicated platforms, are moving into shared platforms and they are using the public cloud for some things. What is core in this? Connectivity needs to be adapted to cloud demands. Latency is critical. You need a differential communication infrastructure, enabling infrastructure, when you are deploying multi-cloud. It is not an easy thing and the way you balance what you want to have in dedicated platforms, in shared platforms, and the public cloud is going to be critical. It's a journey, and companies are taking that journey depending on their needs and the speed they need to transform. But that's going to happen. We saw the research: By 2020, almost every company will be in cloud. So to do that, we are working with Huawei and we are deploying 20 data centers worldwide where we have presence and we have our operations, which we call Telefónica Open Cloud. We are able to provide networking, security, storage, computing, database and management on demand. I will not explain the characteristics because it has been fully explained this afternoon. I just want to stress one thing: We are working with Huawei on OpenStack . When you decide your cloud strategy, take care not to have a proprietary solution, where you don't have the ability to move to different solutions. I think OpenStack is going to be critical in the evolution of the cloud strategy of any company. I have one additional comment. This is where we are deploying the initial nodes of our Telefónica Open Cloud. Latency is relevant for most services, and more and more, latency is critical. It's very difficult to have the right customer experience if you are deploying from a data center in South Africa and expecting to deliver the right experience in Iceland, or in Norway. So when you are deploying cloud, you need to understand what is the right latency for you as you deploy your applications. Sometimes you can be using the same cloud, but you will need to do a multi-site deployment if you are playing a global game, and you want to have the best experience. Last but not least, we have been talking about large enterprises. But what about small and medium businesses [SMBs]? You know what cloud is bringing? Cloud is bringing democratization in access to technology. Small companies in the past were not able to access the most advanced technologies. Now they are able to do that. Here you have two different kinds of companies. You have the new, cloud-native companies, which are able to manage all that technology and they don't need help; most of them are SMBs. What they want are bundled solutions. At least in our experience, what works with them are bundled solutions. Here it's not about IaaS or SaaS. It's about building bundles that address business needs. How can we help a company, an SMB, to be on the Internet? Well, they need a domain; they need a website; they may need some cloud servers or cloud backup; to advertise, marketing online, digital signage; SEO/SEM. But also, how do we help them to be more efficient? We need to bundle things of the cloud and productivity suites, with some communications, or with peace of mind. How can we provide them security on different devices, on different applications that they have? So the journey to cloud is different depending on where you are coming from. What are the threats and the speed you need moving to the cloud?. I will bet that this will happen; all of you will be using most of your infrastructure in the cloud. And the question is the way you choose [to make] that journey, how you ensure that your platform is secure, how you ensure that it's open, so it is giving you the flexibility to move into different platforms if you have different needs in the future. It's going to be critical. So, I'm sure, all of you are moving on that journey, or you will be moving on that journey. So just to finish it, I want to say good luck! — Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation < Previous Page 2 / 2 |
In part two of this Q&A, the carrier's group head of network virtualization, SDN and NFV calls on vendors to move faster and lead the cloudification charge.
It's time to focus on cloudification instead, Fran Heeran, the group head of Network Virtualization, SDN and NFV at Vodafone, says.
5G must coexist with LTE, 3G and a host of technologies that will ride on top of it, says Arnaud Vamparys, Orange Network Labs' senior vice president for radio networks.
The OpenStack Foundation's Ildiko Vancsa suggests that 5G readiness means never abandoning telco applications and infrastructures once they're 'cloudy enough.'
IDC's John Delaney talks about how telecom CIOs are addressing the relationship between 5G, automation and virtualization, while cautioning that they might be forgetting the basics.
On-the-Air Thursdays Digital Audio
ARCHIVED | December 7, 2017, 12pm EST
Orange has been one of the leading proponents of SDN and NFV. In this Telco Transformation radio show, Orange's John Isch provides some perspective on his company's NFV/SDN journey.
Special Huawei Video
Huawei Network Transformation Seminar The adoption of virtualization technology and cloud architectures by telecom network operators is now well underway but there is still a long way to go before the transition to an era of Network Functions Cloudification (NFC) is complete. |
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