Stronger together in a 5G Edge ecosystem
DIGITAL REPORT 2021
IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
IBM, INTEL AND WIPRO: STRONGER TOGETHER IN A 5G EDGE ECOSYSTEM
2
ibm.com
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
ibm.com
3
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
Digital transformations built on powerful partner ecosystems are helping IBM, Intel and Wipro deliver future success for their customers at the 5G Edge
M
ore organisations across multiple industries are understanding the importance of collaboration when it comes to technology. These digital ecosystems are naturally stronger than their individual parts, and you can take that to a whole new level when those partners include the likes of Wipro, Intel and IBM. However, with 75% of enterprise workloads still not migrated to the cloud, and executives expecting a 20% increase in the prioritisation of cloud and AI technology in the next two years, a hybrid cloud approach is required. This represents a US$1 trillion market opportunity for IBM, its partners and their customers. This is a time of enormous change and opportunity for 5G and edge computing, with exciting applications across everything from healthcare to retail, from driverless cars to autonomous mining. IBM, Intel and Wipro have joined forces to offer telcos and enterprise clients new revenue streams that simply did not previously exist. “In an ecosystem that is somewhat fragmented and complicated, we rely on partners such as Wipro to deliver solutions and software to end customers utilising Intel technologies and also IBM hybrid cloud,” says Eric Levander, GM, Global Solutions & Scale, Network & Communications Sales, Intel. “We provide components, building blocks. Very few end users can extract the value from a piece of silicon. It is when we work with
4
ibm.com
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
ibm.com
5
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
IBM, Intel and Wipro: Stronger together the video (Intel) in a 5GTitle Edgeofecosystem
“The broad ecosystem always wins over time and that is the best investment protection for enterprise today”
the ecosystem that it He also says that 5G Edge comes to life. Without is a new way of delivering the ecosystem, our network-as-a-service products just generate for multiple industrial heat. That's why it is so applications. crucial for us to drive the “How those come digital transformation together is an ecosystem for customers, to of ecosystems,” says enable them to scale Levander. “With 5G and innovate through in place, you need to partnerships that bring together these combine the best ecosystems and ensure -in-class technology that the solutions ERIC LEVANDER and deep industry are commercially GM, GLOBAL SOLUTIONS & SCALE, experience.” consumable, and that NETWORK & COMMUNICATIONS SALES, INTEL Levander, who has takes a bit of time, been with Intel for but we were seeing more than 23 years, says Intel and IBM tremendous traction, especially in those deliver new capabilities to run workloads mission-critical areas.” in any environment on any cloud. This Dr Evaristus Mainsah is GM, IBM Hybrid broad ecosystem provides end users with Cloud & Edge Ecosystem, and his team’s innovation and freedom of choice – building core focus is helping clients on their solutions on open platforms such as Wipro. journey to digital transformation. In 6
ibm.com
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
Proving 5G’s value Thomas Muller is CTO, Wipro Engineering Services. Wipro joined the IBM Edge Ecosystem in 2020 when it launched its 5G edge services solutions suite, designed to offer Wipro customers better data control,
ERIC LEVANDER TITLE: GM, GLOBAL SOLUTIONS & SCALE, NETWORK & COMMUNICATIONS SALES COMPANY: INTEL
EXECUTIVE BIO
particular they focus on systems integrators looking to build solutions around IBM’s technology and ecosystem partners for cloud and telecommunications which includes edge computing. “The ecosystem is core to IBM's growth strategy, so when our partners succeed, so do customers, and so do we,” says Mainsah. “When it comes to telco and edge, the need for the ecosystem based around a common platform is greater because of the intrinsic heterogeneous nature of those environments – often a plethora of different devices or the IT hardware software and services provided by different partners. “IBM works with our partners providing resources including expertise to help them get to market faster and grow their businesses with our technology. Together we are creating shared value for customers and a shared vision for the future of hybrid cloud and AI, including use cases that take advantage of the opportunities provided by 5G and edge computing. So partners like Wipro and Intel – with their own technology and skills and expertise – are key to that ecosystem and the value that it creates for businesses.” Mainsah says businesses are striving to become more and more digital, more data driven, moving more online, more contactless, and becoming more automated. This shift was well underway prior to the pandemic but has been accelerated leading to investments in data management and analytics, machine learning, and AI to enable better visibility and improve decision making.
Based in Intel’s HQ in Santa Clara California, Eric leads the newly formed global Solution and Scale Organisation hosted in the Data Center Sales group. The organisation works together with some of Intel’s most trusted hardware-, software- and system integrator partners to ramp and scale commercial solutions in the networking and communications markets. The organisation is global and consists of Program-, Sales development-, Solution architecture- and marketing functions. Prior to this Eric headed up Intel’s global Strategy and Business Development organisation focused on the same market. In this role he and his staff plotted the long- and medium-term strategic direction, made investment recommendations, and drove implementation and follow up Eric has held a variety of international positions within Intel’s Sales and Marketing Group. He was the Director of telecom in EMEA and General Manager for Intel Sweden and led Intels engagements with the Network and handset equipment vendors as Global Sales Director for the Ericsson, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Alcatel Lucent account graduate school of business.
ibm.com
7
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
THOMAS MULLER TITLE: CTO
Thomas is a senior technology leader with over 30 years of experience in various diverse roles. He is responsible for the development and execution of Wipro’s Engineering Innovation Services, which includes Software Defined Vehicle, Autonomous Services and 5G. Prior to Wipro, he was founder, CTO of visionapp, a cloud automation pioneer. After Visionapp, he has held corporate leadership roles as VP, CTO at Deutsche Telekom, VP Digital (Chief Digital Officer) at Weltbilt (NYSE: WBT) and Bank of Ireland. Thomas has extensive Digital Innovation, Transformation and product development experience across multiple industry verticals. He had led multiple industry-first innovations including spearheading ASP & WLL in Europe, Digital Workplace and Cloud Service platforms.
8
ibm.com
EXECUTIVE BIO
COMPANY: WIPRO ENGINEERING SERVICES
reduced costs, faster insights and actions, and more automated, secured operations.“We are creating practically anything, from chip to cloud,” says Muller. “We build one of the latest generation chips for many of the main brands in the semi computer industry, including TSMC. “We then have our software practices who create the embedded software for those systems to actually come to life. We create the application and product software on top of it, and then we take it to our respective customers across industries.” One of the largest industries served by Wipro is networking and connectivity, with some of the latest products in 5G supported, created and designed by Wipro engineers for the leading brands.
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
IBM, Intel and Wipro: Stronger together Wipro video (Wipro) in a 5G Edge ecosystem
“We are creating practically anything, from chip to cloud”
When it comes to fancy things, in reality, high tech, Wipro can none of those use cases also partnerships with that were brought to the likes of Google, me actually exhibited Microsoft, the characteristics that and Facebook. could not have been When Muller took done with existing responsibility for 5G technologies if someone THOMAS MULLER technologies in the really wanted to,” CTO, WIPRO engineering space at he recalls. “We were ENGINEERING SERVICES Wipro, the first challenge basically at the point he set for his teams where the technology was to provide a use case that only 5G can is searching for a problem, which would be deliver. And that turned out to be quite an unfair to 5G. To really show its strengths, we exercise, because it was hard to find. needed to look hard and find use cases that “While we talked about a lot of things like would actually leverage those capabilities no latency, and VR, and AR and all kinds of under certain circumstances.” ibm.com
9
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
IBM, Intel and Wipro: Stronger together Ibmecosystem video in a 5G Edge (IBM)
“ The ecosystem is core to IBM's growth strategy, so when our partners succeed, so do customers, and so do we” DR EVARISTUS MAINSAH GM, HYBRID CLOUD & EDGE ECOSYSTEM, IBM
Muller and his teams had to turn to the pinnacle of technological engineering – Formula One – to find a challenge stiff enough to test 5G’s capabilities and prove 10
ibm.com
its business case. As he says, if there is no business case, even if the technology is super smart, there is no point in doing it. He also believes strongly that the importance of the ecosystem has grown significantly in the last few years. “We have our own ecosystem initiative anchored at leadership level in Wipro,” says Muller. “We call it Ecosystem Next, where we work with strategic partners such as Intel and IBM, and a few more of the major cloud hyperscalers. “Intel is a key partner to enable us to drive 5G adoption worldwide with communication service providers. Intel technology is at the heart of disaggregated 5G solutions, and Intel has done a tremendous job with their technologies, not just the processors, but also their accelerator technologies. The
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
DR EVARISTUS MAINSAH TITLE: GM, HYBRID CLOUD & EDGE ECOSYSTEM COMPANY: IBM INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY
1911
IMB: Year founded
$73bn IBM: Company Revenue (USD)
300K+
whole software ecosystem for disaggregated 4G and 5G software would not exist without Intel having started their innovation leadership in their investments in this space. “IBM, as a partner, is tremendously important for us to drive the softwarisation of digital products. IBM has, in partnership with Red Hat, a tremendous set of open sourcebased technologies that help us disaggregate previously monolithically integrated black box solutions. That can be networking products, that can be medical devices, that can be automotive product technologies. “Technologies that IBM makes available to us, be it the Red Hat platforms, looking at OpenShift, they allow us to create a manageable software ecosystem that we can roll out from very tiny platforms, from Raspberry Pi-sized computers, IoT-size
EXECUTIVE BIO
IMB: Number of employees
Evaristus Mainsah is General Manager, Hybrid Cloud & Edge Ecosystem, leading the IBM ecosystem team working with Global Systems Integrators and other technology ecosystem partners to enable them to deliver value to their clients through IBM’s hybrid Cloud and AI platform. He also served as General Manager, Global Asset Recovery Services, responsible for optimising the financial recovery of IBM’s leased asset portfolio and IBM’s excess inventory worldwide and as worldwide General Manager, Client Financing, providing financing for clients to help them acquire technology solutions. Before that he was General Auditor of IBM also served as IBM Assistant Treasurer as well as other senior finance, operations, and sales roles across Europe and worldwide. Evaristus holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School, a Ph.D. in Engineering, an M.Sc. in Manufacturing Technology and a B.Sc in Computer Science & Electronic Engineering all from the University of Birmingham, UK.
ibm.com
11
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
IBM, Intel and Wipro: Stronger together video in aPartnership 5G Edge ecosystem
1945
Wipro: Year founded
$8.13bn Wipro: Company Revenue (USD)
221,365 Wipro: Number of employees
12
ibm.com
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
computers, all the way across to very scalable hyper converged infrastructures in edge and central implementations. And that's where IBM's key value for us comes in – as an infrastructure partner with Red Hat.” Mulller also adds how Wipro is using IBM software tools across its engineering organisations – IBM's lifecycle management tools help Wipro drive efficiencies in software engineering factories, using model-based design approaches and quality assurance. 5G’s bright future The COVID-19 pandemic has made many organisations rethink their strategy – building for increased resilience and sustainability. Nagaraju Cheemalamarri, General Manager and Business Leader, 5G and Emerging networks, has been at Wipro since 1994, and believes the pandemic has transformed how
organisations operate – opening a huge opportunity for 5G and edge computing. “Edge computing is a crucial element in terms of developing the next generation of digital services,” says Cheemalamarri, “and it's also not new – it has been prevalent in various forms already. “5G actually opened up a new range of opportunities and possibilities from the edge perspective. Enterprise 5G and also the edge compute and MEC market will be a growth engine for us in the next two to three years, and the main drivers here will be the simplification and also automation of all these deployments. We are also making very aggressive investments into cloud.” We created ready to service pre-integrated reference stacks like BoundaryLess Universal Edge (BLUE) and 5G Edge Services Solution Suite so that customer needs are addressed providing time to market advantage. Our BLUE framework offering has ready to service, pre-integrated IBM stack components such as IBM Edge Application Manager, IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation, Data platform and Watson AIOps which is included in our offerings. We leverage Intel on the software front using OpenNESS which is their open network, edge services software platform. And on the hardware front, we use varied Intel hardware, such as integrated GPUs, core and Intel Atom. We are integrating our Edge lifecycle management platform with Intel Smart Edge software stack, which can provide integrated and intelligent connectivity edge offerings. Intel’s Eric Levander says when it comes to future-proofing, companies have to ensure their investment is sustainable and they don’t “build themselves into a corner”. “Going forward, open solutions with broad ecosystem support is the high-level answer ibm.com
13
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
NAGARAJU CHEEMALAMARRI TITLE: GENERAL MANAGER AND BUSINESS LEADER, 5G AND EMERGING NETWORKS
Nagaraju Cheemalamarri (Nagu) is the Global Business head for 5G and Emerging networks practice in Wipro. Over his 27 years of rich industry experience in telecommunication services, Nagu has assumed several technical and business leadership roles globally. Nagu’s current charter is to build strong System Integration solutions and nurture ecosystem partnerships to grow the 5G/Telecom/Edge networks business in Wipro across various industry segments: Communication Service Providers, Enterprises, Network equipment vendors, and the Hyperscalers. Nagu holds a Bachelor's Engineering degree in Computer Science and MBA in Software Enterprise Management. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden.
14
ibm.com
EXECUTIVE BIO
COMPANY: WIPRO
“ Our enterprise customers are constantly seeking the 5G and Edge applications & use cases that will actually monetise their investment” NAGARAJU CHEEMALAMARRI,
GENERAL MANAGER AND BUSINESS LEADER, 5G AND EMERGING NETWORKS, WIPRO
to aim for,” he says. “The broad ecosystem always wins over time and that is the best investment protection for enterprise today.”
IBM - INTEL - WIPRO
Levander also points out that when it comes to precious data, it is all extracted from or touches Intel architecture at some stage, so it’s incredibly important that Intel builds in security features on silicon, on the platforms that are supported by the ecosystem. “I don't think we can underestimate the impact of the data and the data revolution that is happening for us and for our customers,” says Levander. “Our job is to enable other ecosystems and new business models as part of the data revolution.” IBM’s Evaristus Mainsah concurs and concludes that ecosystems fuel platforms. IBM Cloud for Telecommunications is built on an open architecture, so a large ecosystem of partners can enhance it with their own solutions in addition to providing services for it.
“The combined strength of IBM, and our partners, will create a large hybrid cloud ecosystem that can help operators meet three strategic industry imperatives: attracting and retaining subscribers; increasing investment effectiveness while driving down operational costs; and creating new, monetisable digital services,” says Mainsah. Welcome to the ecosystem era.
ibm.com
15
IBM Corporate Headquaters 1 New Orchard Road Armonk New York 10504-1722 United Stated
T 914-499-1900 | ibm.com
POWERED BY: