Mobile Magazine - July 2022 by mobileworldmag

G AME - CHAN G IN G G LOBAL MOBILE NETWORK OPERATORS JULY 2022 | mobile-magazine.com CLOUD & 5G LIVE TechLondonLive in review –T-MOBILE sustainabilityEmbracing OOREDOO–KUWAIT EmpoweringwomenintechintheMiddleEast LUMEN SASEnetworkandsecurity

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HQ Unite your digital-first teams around the customer. Discover how you can collaborate better and increase innovation. Watch how Vodafone dials up developer innovation and customer capability with Slack. WATCH THE VIDEO > mobile-magazine.com 3

UNLOCK INNOVATION WITH SLACK AS DIGITAL

YOUR

The Mobile Team CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER SCOTT DANIELAPRODUCTIONCONTRIBUTINGBIRCHEDITORSAMSTEERSDIRECTORSGEORGIAALLENKIANICKOVÁPRODUCTIONMANAGERSPHILLINEVICENTEJANEARNETAELLACHADNEY CREATIVE TEAM OSCAR VIDEOSOPHIE-ANNHATHAWAYPINNELLHECTORPENROSESAMHUBBARDMIMIGUNNJUSTINSMITHREBEKAHBIRLESONJORDANWOODCALLUMHOODPRODUCTIONMANAGERKIERANWAITE DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS MARTA THOMASERNESTEUGENIODENEVEEASTERFORDDREWHARDMANMARKETINGMANAGERALICEPAGEMEDIASALESDIRECTORSJAMESWHITEPROJECTDIRECTORSSTUARTIRVINGCRAIGKILLINGBACKJAMESBERRYBILLYEVANS MANAGING DIRECTOR LEWIS VAUGHAN CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER STACYGLENCEONORMANWHITE JOIN THE COMMUNITY Never miss an aboutDiscoverissue!+thelatestnewsandinsightsMobileMagazine...

5G’s success still has room to grow

Looking ahead, it is clear that the technology willand, in fact, already has - impacted organisations in a number of different ways, proving its high-value status in its pursuit to keep the world connected.

SAM STEERS sam.steers@bizclikmedia.com

The metaphorical foot of 5G is firmly on the accelerator, but it may be some time before we start to see its benefits Whilst the world of 5G is one of the most advanced, what with news of the latest developments being released with great frequency - and in spite of whispers of the incoming 6G network - its success may not happen overnight. Research and analysis has shown that uptake and implementation is still moving at a gradual pace with each new infrastructure deployment. These experts are, however, urging businesses to prepare themselves now by developing their own strategic approach.

mobile-magazine.com 5 FOREWORD

T-Mobile How embracesT-Mobilesustainability 28 Ooredoo Kuwait Empowering women in tech in the Middle East 72 Cloud & 5G LIVE Tech LIVE London in review 58 Our UpfrontRegularSection: 12 Big Picture 14 The Brief 16 Timeline:TheiPod 18 Trailblazer:RymSahnoun 22 Five Minutes With: Katherine Ainley, CEO of Ericsson UK CONTENTS

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Rasheed Mohamad of ALE: making the unpredictable, predictable 96 5G System integration in telecoms 88 IoT Foretelling the future of multi-access edge computing 112 Top 10 Global networksmobileoperators 136 Tomorrow Street Tomorrow Street nurtures tech ecosystems of the future 122

Save the Date! September 19-22, 2022 • Philadelphia, PA The Possibilities are Infinite... Join Us in 2022 As We Chart a New Path to Creating Infinite Possibilities. Every day, we create infinite possibilities for our members, customers, partners, and communities. The promise of our industry is CONNECTION! That connection will be fully realized when we come together for SCTE® Cable-Tec Expo® 2022 this September 19-22 in Philadelphia, PA. Plan now to attend the most influential cable and networking event in the Americas. Whether attending in-person or virtually, you will have access to advanced insights from the most influential decision makers, innovators and professionals of the 21st century. expo.scte.org • #cabletecexpo Michael Fries &Vice-ChairmanCEO, Liberty Global David Watson President & CEO, Comcast Cable 2022 Program Chairs © 2022 Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers, Inc. a subsidiary of CableLabs. scte.org

Lumen Lumen Technologies targets apps, SASE and network security 160 Back Market Disrupting the technology marketplace with Back Market 186 Vodafone Business enabling secure growth in digital adoption 148 Eurofiber Operating in a telecommunicationsdynamicmarket 172 Community Fibre Limited Community Fibre is more than living up to its name 204

10 July 2022

1 is arguably the most data driven and technologically advanced sport. The 2021 race season was a huge success for Oracle Red Bull Racing. With the team achieving 23 podium finishes and Max Verstappen winning the driver’s championship, Oracle Red Bull Racing had its most successful season in recent history. “Oracle Cloud enabled us to make race-day decisions that helped Max Verstappen win the 2021 Drivers’ Championship.”

Christian Horner, Oracle Red Bull Racing Team Principal and CEO

ORACLE AND ORACLE RED BULL RACING WINNING THROUGH DATA

Gracing the Tech & AI podium at this year’s TECH LIVE LONDON, Amr Elrawi, Oracle’s Director, Sports Marketing and Business Development, gave a revealing presentation on the commerciallypartnership.Anaward-winningfocused and data-driven business leader with over 20 years of experience in marketing and sales within the Telecom, Technology, Financial Services, and Sports industries, he helps sports organisations and partners to use data and technology to win and drive performance. Before joining Oracle, Elrawi was the Head of Acquisition for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, focusing on growing and

PLATINUM SPONSOR

INDUSTRY: IT SERVICES AND IT CONSULTING HQ: TEXAS, US platform that lets fans earn points to get exclusive swag and digital downloads. Fans used The Paddock to redeem digital rewards and submit thousands of questions to the team through Oracle CrowdTwist Loyalty and Engagement. Elrawil also revealed how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is helping Oracle Red Bull Racing prepare race strategies and make real-time decisions during races to help them win.

ORACLE

Driven by data, built to win

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engaging fans using Data and Marketing Solutions to drive commercial value and improve Fan Experience. He also spent 4 years at Barclaycard driving the digital transformation programme. Earlier he spent five years at Cisco, leading London 2012 digital sponsorship, and 10 years at Vodafone where he held a number of positions in Service, Sales and Marketing. He also holds an Executive MBA degree from Warwick Business School. Elrawi discussed the launch of The Oracle Red Bull Racing Paddock, a Oracle CEO: SAFRA A. CATZ

BIG PICTURE 12 July 2022

WiFi tech explored as dementia treatment Seoul, South Korea

At the IEEE International Conference on Communications, the audience listens, rapt, to a keynote about the use of magnetic MIMO as a non-invasive brain stimulation technique designed to treat neurocognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s. MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) is a mainstay of wireless communication standards, including WiFi 4 and WiFi 5. mobile-magazine.com

Rajender Singh Bhandari Head of System Integration, TCS READ MORE READ MORE Nokia, UTS Sydney launch 5G-connected microbrewery Nokia and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) announced the successful operation of the world’s first private wireless and 5G connected digital microbrewery. BT, Ericsson sign major 5G private network partnership Ericsson and BT have signed a major partnership to boost the growth of 5G private network. T-Mobile advances Standalone networks with voice over 5G T-Mobile has launched a Voice over New Radio (VoNR) for 5G customers in the US. 20% 26%

Samantha Humphries Head of Strategy

EMEA, Exabeam “As the needs of our 300 mn plus mobile customers evolve, so will our network using this new platform”

Johan Wibergh Technology Officer, MORE

Security

EDITOR’S CHOICE 5%

49% 14 July 2022

Chief

Vodafone READ

When will standardisation bodies start work on 6G? Over 200 industry experts were asked this question 49% 2025-26startingStandardisationin 26% 2027-28startingStandardisationin 20% soonwillStandardisationstartvery 5% decadethewon'tStandardisationstartuntilendofthe BY THE NUMBERS THE BRIEF “The power of the network is huge, the more people you meet, the youopportunitiesmorefind”

“Systemsintegrators are likely to play a crucial role in helping journey”privateaccelerateenterprisestheir5Gnetworks

Apple ofproductionstopstheiPod THE“TODAY,SPIRITOFIPODLIVESON”  ETISALAT BY E& Etisalat by e& has purchased a 10% stake in Vodafone and a investmentUS$4.1bn in the firm.  BT BT’s share price has share.US$2.19date1.5%increasedyear-to-ataroundper  NOKIA Shares in Nokia have dropped by 9.84% in the last 12 US$0.29earningmonths,justashare.  SHIPMENTSSMARTPHONEGLOBAL The asUkraineRussiawartoyearbyexpectedtheshippedsmartphonesnumbertotalofacrossworldistofall3%year-on-in2022duetheongoingbetweenandtheaswellCOVID-19. WUPDON

JULY 2022 Apple has announced it is pulling the plug on a music icon: the iPod. First introduced more than two decades ago, the device has been quoted to have “revolutionised the music industry”, and was one of the products that introduced many consumers to the brand. In recent years, the company has integrated its music library into its other products, such as the iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac, and will continue to do so in the future.

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“Today, the spirit of iPod lives on,” said Greg Joswiak, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Apple’smusicimportanceDiscussingMarketing.theoftheindustrytobrand,headded it “has always been part of our core at Apple, and bringing it to hundreds of millions of users in the way iPod did impacted more than just the music industry — it also redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared.”

THE MINIIPOD

GENTHIRDIPOD

MP3 players predated the first iPod, but Apple CEO Steve Jobs felt they didn’t store enough songs, so he produced his own. Priced at US$399, the white iPod, with its click wheel, was the first MP3 player to ‘put 1,000 songs in your pocket’. Within three years, people had bought 2 million of them.

Following two years of nothing but capacity increases, the iPod gets its first makeover, with the addition of four buttons that glowed redplus a new 30-pin dock

In January 2005, the iPod Shuffle was ofdisplayingdisplayiPodsawmodels.($99)wascigarettedeviceplayer,randomisedlaunched.thescreenlessisthelighteravailableand1GBFebruarythereleasePhoto,wasthousandscolours.

In January 2004 a new version of the iPod, called the iPod Mini ($249), debuted at Macworld San Francisco. Made of anodized aluminium and containing a click wheel that replaced the four auxiliary buttons, this petite 4GB model was closer in size to a business card than a card deck. It was available in gold, pink, blue and green.

16 July 2022

IPODFAREWELL-THEFIRSTIPOD

15GBwithmodelintroducedofPredictingconnector.theneedsmusiclovers,Applea30GB($499),along10GB($299)and($399)options.

SHUFFLEIPOD

TIMELINE2001 - 2004 - 2005

- 2003

ourmusicweretoears plug on its iconic

2005 - 2015 FAREWELLSHUFFLE randomisedlaunched.Shuffle2005,Amusicscreenlessthesizeofalighterandavailablein512MB1GB($149)Februaryreleaseofthewhosecapableofthousands GENSIXTHIPOD After two anda-half years co-processor.processorforfor32GBtouchsixth-generationAppleiPodfifth-generationoftouchproducts,releasedtheiPod(16GBfor$199,for$249,64GB$299,and128GB$399)withanA8andM8 After 20 years and 450 million sales, Apple has finally pulled the

you

and game-changing MP3 player - the iPod. Here, we revisit some of the classic iPod designs from across the past two decades. mobile-magazine.com 17

TRAILBLAZER

18 July 2022

BS is a global digital services company and subsidiary of the Orange Group. An entity dedicated to assisting organisations in their digital transformation, thanks to its worldwide deployment, OBS has a global presence with a local approach. In its mission, OBS relies on the commitment and expertise of its 28,500 employees, and exploits the potential of data in a secure manner that underlines its role as a trusted partner for companies.OBSsupports companies at every stage of their data. In its fourth year in Morocco, the business has greatly contributed to the acceleration of the digital transformation of Acompanies.keyfigurein their operations is Rym Sahnoun, Managing Director of OBS Morocco. She is passionate about new technologies and renowned for her leadership and her capacity to develop business, structure and people. Sahnoun has registered five patents and has also won an ITN Award. In the wake of COVID-19, Sahnoun told lematin.ma: “Big changes have happened during this crisis. Our clients have been able to overcome these challenges by teaming up with us to help them find a way to continue doing business with their own North Africa is fast becoming an area of immense growth for Orange Business Services (OBS). Leading the digital transformation operations, Managing Director Rym Sahnoun has forged new paths of innovation and invention, awareness of equality and people management.

SahnounRym

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“79% of customers we surveyed believe the crisis has changed the way they useservices”digital clients. 79% of customers we surveyed believe the crisis has changed the way they use digital services. Many of these changes will last, because it is now impossible to ignore digitalisation.” An industry pioneer Before her current role, Sahnoun was Transformation Director of an Orange Operation Centre in Abidjan to maximise the mutualisation of Orange Services and Platforms in Middle East and Africa while improving operational excellence. And prior to making waves in business at Orange Group, she earned a five-year Engineering Degree from Telecom Sud Paris.

“Morocco is full of skills, transformation”oftheoftalentspotentialhumanandcapablepromotingaccelerationthisdigital 20 July 2022

Romain Maillart, who worked with Sahnoun through Palo Alto Networks as a Business Value Consultant, described her as “highly-motivated, professional and a sharp manager.”

The acceleration of the digital transformation in Morocco has been accentuated by the exceptional circumstances of the Covid19 health crisis, as different areas (health, smart cities, cloud) look to the North Africa gem as a place ripe for opportunities. “Morocco is full of skills, human potential and talents capable of promoting the acceleration of this digital transformation,” said Sahnoun. To this end, she noted to libe.ma that her group has chosen Morocco for its “state of development and for the quality of its skills andSheinfrastructure.”added,“Weare witnessing a real paradigm shift that today requires companies to take the course of digital transformation. Digitisation is far and away from being a fad, or a marketing argument. It is rooted, essential and a real performance driver for all of the company's functions”.

TRAILBLAZER mobile-magazine.com 21

In 2006, after a rich experience in innovative services, Rym was assigned the responsibility of a strategic program in the field of electronic payment. She helped launch the Orange Money Service and the International Recharge Service with many branches and partner operators, leading multidisciplinary teams and several internal and external providers in an international context.

Up until 2015, Sahnoun managed an International Centre in Tunisia, specialised in the development of high-value-added products and service. The Centre currently has around 200 highly qualified experts, renowned within Orange Group.

Morocco provides ideal digital climate

» When I started at Ericsson, the world was still in the middle of the pandemic and connectivity was so critically important. It was a really exciting time to join the company. It showed how important digital infrastructure is in every part of our lives and why expanding 5G coverage and capacity is so crucial to the future of the country. The year ahead is all about pushing the UK and Ireland’s 5G rollout to the next level.

Ericsson is one of a number of businesses leading the rollout of 5G technology in the UK, but there’s still a long way to go

CEOAINLEYKATHERINEofEricssonUK

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Q. HOW PROGRESSIVE IS THE TELCO INDUSTRY ON FEMALE LEADERSHIP?

Q. TELL US A LITTLE OF YOUR ROLE AT ERICSSON?

» It’s important to recognise that our industry isn’t just suffering from a lack of diversity when it comes to gender, but across all under-represented groups. I’m passionate about ensuring we improve diversity across all these groups, at all levels. I think the challenge breaks down into hiring, retaining and promoting the right skills and talent. We need to widen the pool of talent entering the telecoms industry by 22 July 2022

KATHERINE mobile-magazine.com 23

“5G will help us transform society, improve lives and redefine our business sectors”

Q. HOW IS THE UK 5G ROLLOUT GOING?

» 5G is progressing well here, and Ericsson is at the forefront of the UK’s rollout. We are the only vendor to support all four of the country’s major mobile network operators in our 5G roll out, so we really are the partner of choice.

The fact is that 5G is a technology platform like no other, and it will help us transform society, improve lives and redefine our business sectors. If we can bring 5G to consumers as quickly as possible, we will start to reap the benefits, with innovative services, new apps and cloud gaming coming to the fore. Industry digitalisation is also happening across all segments, and the speed, latency and security of a private 5G network opens all sorts of new possibilities, such as wireless factories, sensors on the production line, real-time data handling, and predictive maintenance. At Ericsson, we’re working with operators to unlock this enterprise potential – we’ve already seen some great examples at Ford, Bosch and the launch of the Green Planet AR Experience in London this year, which was a 5G standalone private network. increasing the numbers of students studying STEM subjects. Just 20% of engineering and computer science students are female. Our Connect to Learn programme in the UK is helping on this front, particularly for those who are female.

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

This year is about building on early momentum for the UK, which was one of the first countries to launch 5G services, back in 2019. In Q1 this year alone, we have delivered around 25,000 radios to customers – one every six minutes – to ensure the UK is leading the 5G race.

» The goal is simple: we want to ensure 5G is ubiquitous across the country and that we’re able to deliver these immense benefits. But despite the strong start, we still have a long way to go on this goal. Our industry needs to move quicker. 5G population coverage is currently around 40%, whereas frontrunners US and Korea are at 60% and 98% respectively.

“Despite the strong start on 5G, the UK still has a long way to go –our industry needs to move quicker”

The strategy in the UK has been to focus on deploying 5G on lowband spectrum and on top of existing 4G infrastructure. This limits the true potential of 5G, and it’s something we need to progress on in the year ahead. The good news is that 2022 will be the year we are likely to see UK 5G rollout really take off. We are getting closer to the transition to 5G standalone and that’s what will unlock a lot of this potential. We have all the pieces in place to really move ahead now, and I’m hopeful that if we can all come together as an industry to speed up our plans, we will be in a great position to take advantage of the unique economic and social benefits 5G can bring.

Q. WHAT IS THE GOAL OF THE UK 5G ROLL-OUT?

5G iscoveragepopulationintheUKcurrentlyaround40%,whereasfrontrunnersUSandKoreaareat60%and98%respectively. mobile-magazine.com 25

26 July 2022 PLATINUM SPONSOR

TRUSTWORTHY TECHNOLOGY IS SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY

As governments and corporations consider ways of enforcing technologies that are lawful, ethical and robust, Fletcher discussed the increase in regulation around data over the last few years due to GDPR, the growing importance of cybersecurity and the role of AI ethics on the imminent EU AI act. Language, automation and trust Fletcher elaborated on the move towards sustainability that has seen professionalisation, standardisation and mechanisms for disclosure – all to create confidence that the world economy can decarbonise, be governed fairly and embrace an inclusive society. Much like the major drivers that propelled the original Industrial Revolution: language, automation and trust, the latter in particular is vital to tempering AI for widespread use today, lowering the barrier of entry in order to accelerate adoption.

ortoise and Kainos spoke to a range of experts throughout the field of artificial intelligence; from executives and technicians, to researchers and government officials. Those insights are revealed in the form of three hypotheses about how the domain of trust in artificial intelligence is changing: ‘The future of trust in artificial intelligence: responsibility, understandability and sustainability’. To coincide with the report, Jane Fletcher, Experience Design Principal at Kainos, discussed 'Sustainability: A path to trust for Data & AI' in a virtual keynote at TECH LIVE LONDON. Trust in the AI ecosystem is largely dependent on data, the conclusions and predictions reached, and the sensitivity of the system to bias and other influences.

Kainos CEO: BRENDAN MOONEY SOFTWARE & TECHNOLOGY HQ: BELFAST, UNITED KINGDOM

Ethics vital to wider AI adoption Kainos suggests that if we don't act today in a responsible and ethical way, in terms of how we develop and deploy AI to help users understand its capabilities, then this lack of trust will limit or prevent the adoption of artificial intelligence over the next few years. Acting early can mitigate and prevent some of those issues from arising, and Kainos will share tips on these first steps.

Belfast-headquartered IT provider Kainos has developed a unique mindset that embraces any digital challenge. With 98% customer satisfaction rating, their key technology partners are AWS, Microsoft, and Workday, with notable clients like the NHS, UK Government, and Netflix.

mobile-magazine.comKAINOS27

INDUSTRY:

Also at TECH LIVE LONDON was, Karim Jessani, Principal: Data & AI Practice / CSO, who discussed ‘Data Governance / With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility’. Jessani said: “If an organisation recognises data as a true and valuable asset and treats it as such through a comprehensive data governance policy, it will be able to use data more wisely to empower its business for success”.

KAINOS: TRANSFORMATIONDIGITAL SERVICES

Data Governance unlocks success

HOW T-MOBILE SUSTAINABILITYEMBRACES

SUSTAINABILITY PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE WRITTEN BY: BLAISE HOPE mobile-magazine.com 29 T - MOBILE

total electricity usage with energyrenewable 2019

was one of the first 100 companies to have its inapprovedBasedScienceTargets2019 30 July 2022 T - MOBILE

Telco giant T-Mobile sets ambitious goals while reaching 1.5 degree mark – before it was even established as a standard T he United States telco disrupter T-Mobile saw tremendous growth even before its merger with Sprint in 2020 and, according to Chad Wilkerson, Director of Sustainability and Infrastructure Sourcing for T-Mobile, an increased commitment to sustainability was another aspect of the company’s mission to do good.

1999

Number employeesof 100%

The idea of the “Un-carrier” first launched in 2013, aiming to make wireless communications simpler by eliminating pain points such as data overages and surprise fees. Although this is an integral part of T-Mobile’s customer strategy, customer retention goes hand-in-hand with robust productivity within the company – as demonstrated by its targetsetting aims. “I would say our approach to environmental sustainability has been growing alongside the company,” says Wilkerson. “Within that culture, there are pockets of intrinsic goodness, with employees that were already doing foundedYear 75k+ T-Mobile its T-Mobile

sources 100% of

WilkersonChad mobile-magazine.com 31

Alicia Chidsey is Director of CBRE’s partnership with T-Mobile Learn more

CBRE Director Alicia Chidsey, is the Alliance Director for CBRE’s T-Mobile account, and the first point-of-contact for their entire real -estate portfolio Alicia Chidsey is the Alliance Director for the T-Mobile account, a post which she’s held for the past five years.

CBRE has recently made large strides in their commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and has recently made a $1BN commitment that includes their employee resource groups, and the commitment to resources for their employees, as well as a to the supplier diversity and the supply chain. Beyond these commitments, CBRE is also committed to Sustainability. 78% of their clients have carbon reduction goals, and 57% have Net-Zero or Carbon Neutrality commitments. Many of them are committed to science-based targets just as CBRE are, themselves. Furthermore, 49% of their clients have actual, finalised sustainability plans. “Sustainability is paramount to the services that we offer to our clients,” says Chidsey. “So it’s critical that CBRE is knowledgeable in this regard, so that we can, in turn, help our clients and serve them as they go along their own Sustainability journeys, which can take time and expertise to achieve.”

CBRE has some crucial Carbon Neutral goals. “We recently announced our commitment to achieve Net-Zero Carbon Emissions by 2040,” says Chidsey, “and that encompasses our emissions from our own operations - and the properties that we manage for investors and our occupiers - as well as our indirect supply chain emissions, (Scope 3) . Since we are the largest manager of Commercial Real Estate Properties, CBRE has real commitment, real obligations and responsibilities to help everyone in the world address the challenges of global warming on our planet. We also have a very strong focus on helping many of our clients achieve similar goals.”

Chidsey says: “Our central focus is to help T-Mobile achieve its ultimate goal, which is to be the number one telecommunications provider, through their uncarrier approach, which, boldly proclaimed, has been very successful so far.”

July 2022 T - MOBILE

“Our ultimate goal is for it to be fully embedded in processes, as part of everything we're doing as a company. Every business decision would start with the question of ‘what impact does this have on our emissions?’ or ‘what is the sustainability impact of this decision?’,” he says.

environmental initiatives in one form or another. And so really, it was going out and seeing all these different groups of people doing the right thing and finding the thread that helped us as a company to kind of grow from Establishingthere.”sustainability as part of the corporate culture means ingraining each environmental target in every aspect of the company's business processes and decision making.

Achieving RE100 In 2018, T-Mobile set an industry first by joining the RE100 pledge and 34

CHAD DIRECTORWILKERSONOFSUSTAINABILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE

SOURCING, T-MOBILE committing to sourcing 100% of its total electricity usage from renewable energy by the end of 2021.

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“I think joining RE100 really showed the commitment and the seriousness with which we were taking these sorts of issues,” says Wilkerson. “We wanted to source our electricity from 100% renewable sources and put a stake in the ground by doing so.” At the end of 2021, T-Mobile was able to meet this goal, even after a historic merger that significantly expanded its electricity needs. In addition, the company has established a standard of transparency in its robust reporting. Aligning SBTis with corporate culture In 2019, T-Mobile set an aspirational emission intensity target to reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions by 95% and Scope 3 GHG emissions 15% per customer by 2025. T-Mobile was also one of the first 100 companies to have these goals approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). Further to this, the company has made some of the most advanced progress in approaching its emission reduction goals, bringing home several prestigious pieces of evidence to support this claim – such as being part of the CDP’s A List for Climate Change. T-Mobile was also recently recognised as an exemplary Green Partner by the EPA, ranking #3 just behind Microsoft and Google on the Top 100 list of companies leading the way in their use of renewable power. According to Wilkerson, the SBTi has a rigorous process and set of guidelines that primarily help to ensure that the mobile-magazine.com

“ I think joining RE100 wewithshowedreallythecommitmentandseriousnesswhichweretakingthesesortsofissues”

to learn more.

At Automated Logic, critical facilities are part of our DNA. We designed and developed the industry-leading WebCTRL® building automation system, an intuitive, proven platform that provides real-time visibility and control of equipment, systems, and facilities – from anywhere in the world. The Automated Logic Strategic Accounts team delivers that innovation to telecommunications, data center, and industrial customers, installing the WebCTRL system with expertise and consistency around the world – bringing powerful, efficient, and sustainable critical facilities to life.

WE SUSTAINABLE.FACILITIESCRITICALMAKE

Visit www.automatedlogic.com/datacenters

According to Keller, the company has established expertise in the telecommunications sector, with more than 8 years as the national building automation system contractor for T-Mobile, most recently providing them automation solutions for mission critical “Weinfrastructure.combineour powerful building automation products with a dedicated execution team to deploy our systems nationally for T-Mobile,” says Keller. This provides T-Mobile with a “single pane of glass” for centralised monitoring, trending, and alarming for their mechanical heating, ventilation, and air conditioning and electrical systems, leading to operational efficiencies which is achieved through the use of its WebCTRL system. Through their Strategic Accounts team, Automated Logic also provides T-Mobile with standardisation across their building management system portfolio, global scalability, consistency across installations, and a 24x7x365 command centre for technical support.

SUPPORTING FIRMS TO REDUCE EMISSIONS When it comes to sustainability, both organisations are aligned and, as a result, Keller says the company is “in an opportunistic position to enable our customers to be more energy efficient while running their facilities, helping them reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.”

Automated Logic’s WebCTRL® building automation system (BAS) provides customers with a seamlessly integrated building system, incorporating air conditioning, heating, ventilation, electrical power management, and more – to create an efficient solution.

Founded in 1977 and headquartered in Kennesaw, Georgia, Automated Logic (a Carrier company) is an expert in the design, manufacturing, verticalisMissionmanagementandmanagementimplementationandofbuildingsystems(BMS)datacenterinfrastructuresoftware(DCIM).CriticalInfrastructureoneoftheirfastestgrowingsegments.

SUPPLYING AUTOMATED SYSTEMS TO ORGANISATIONSLEADING

The company’s reputation for speed and reliability is partly rooted in the outstanding quality of its products.

“Building Operators, Energy Managers, and Real-Estate Owners are becoming increasingly interested in what they can accomplish with the seemingly endless amounts of data they are receiving from their building systems. Through our advanced software, we partner with customers to effectively manage their building data so they can focus on what matters most.”

LEARN MORE Automated Logic: Making Critical Facilities Sustainable Tyler Keller, EnterpriseAccountExecutiveforAutomatedLogic-StrategicAccounts, describes its winning approach in collaborating with T-Mobile

“

CHAD DIRECTORWILKERSONOFSUSTAINABILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SOURCING, T-MOBILE 38 July 2022 T - MOBILE

electricity

goals being set align with companies’ actual impact, such as the volume of emissions they are producing.

“You see more and more companies align to SBTi standards – especially with the new guidelines coming out last year in which SBTi and other organisations are starting to define parameters around We wanted to source our from 100% and put a stake in the ground to do just that”

renewable sources

Chad Wilkerson is an Executive Sustainability Leader and Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative board member with 20-plus years of experience. The Director of Sustainability and Infrastructure Sourcing for America’s Un-carrier, Chad has more than a decade of experience in energy markets and procurement, as well as the implementation of sustainable strategies that address unique challenges presented within the telecoms sector.

BIOEXECUTIVE

CHAD WILKERSON

TITLE: DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SOURCING COMPANY: T-MOBILE US, INC. INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS claiming net-zero,” says Wilkerson. “So, more and more companies are moving towards adopting science-based targets to ensure they have increased rigour around their goals.” At that time, the criteria established surrounded the collective global aim to meet the two degrees mark, meant to restrict global warming to within two degrees above pre-industrial levels.

During 2021, Chad was named a “Top 10 Sustainability Leader in the Telecoms Industry” by Mobile magazine. With his leadership, T-Mobile became the first and only U.S. wireless provider to create – and, at the end of 2021, achieve – an ambitious plan to source 100% of its total electricity usage with renewable energy.

Chad strives to positively impact our communities, environment, and society. He does this while achieving T-Mobile’s aggressive enterprise-wide sustainability goals and serving the wireless provider’s internal and external customers. He and his team are responsible for minimising costs, managing risk, and overseeing the procurement of energy, facility services, and construction across estatenetworkT-Mobile’sandrealportfolio.

GENERAC AND T-MOBILE TAKE BOLD STEPS TO BUILD A BETTER WORLD Learn more

Over the 60 plus years of Generac’s history, we’ve been dedicated to energy innovation. From creating the home standby generator market category, to our current evolution into an energy technology solutions company focused on developing clean energy products and services, Generac has consistently devoted itself to new technologies and processes that deliver more resilient, efficient and sustainable energy solutions. Developing these new technologies has never been more important, given all the challenges that exist in delivering reliable and consistent power to homeowners and businesses. From catastrophic weather events that are exacerbated by the effects of climate change, to an aging and under-invested power grid, we are facing an unprecedented need and opportunity to revolutionize the way power is produced and delivered. Generac is at the leading edge of these investments, hyper focused on continuously innovating our ecosystem of products and solutions that deliver greater resilience while making significant contributions to the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Generac and T-Mobile are dedicated to working together to find ways to maximize efficiencies while complementing our renewable energy efforts. The collaboration also allows for continued investment in network and operational redundancy along with hardening and improving the resiliency of the infrastructure, critical network sites and operations to ensure customers are connected when it matters most.

Generac and T-Mobile are proud of the trust that customers, communities and business partners place in their providers. We are excited to continue to lead the evolution to more resilient, efficient and sustainable solutions. Learn more

Generac is proud to work with companies who are like-minded, where together we deliver innovative solutions that enable and protect wireless networks, along with, next-generation power, communications, transportation and other critical infrastructure.

“T-Mobile set several emission reduction goals: reducing scope 1 and 2 emissions by 95%; and reducing scope 3 emissions by 15% per customer by 2025,” Wilkerson explains.

“ More and goals”aroundincreasedensurebasedadoptingmovingcompaniesmorearetowardsscience-targetstotheyhaverigourtheirHowT-Mobile embraces sustainability the Un-carrier way CHAD DIRECTORWILKERSONOFSUSTAINABILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SOURCING, T-MOBILE 42 July 2022 T - MOBILE

“Our targets received third-party validation and insight, which helped us evolve them by working with SBTi and CDP. By the end of 2021, we not only achieved but beat these targets four years ahead of schedule.”

To maximise its efforts, T-Mobile has established a set of guidelines in the handling of its operations, including design

T-Mobile set and emissionsscopetargetsachievedtoreduce1and2by 95% while emissionsscopereducing3by 15% per customer. By the end of 2021, scopereducedcompanythe1and 2 emissions by 97% and intensityemissions’scopereduced3by 16% per mobile-magazine.comcustomer.

Procurement and sustainability

“We partner with an outside agency that helps us to evaluate our suppliers. Every time a contract goes through, there's a third-party risk group that's able to access that information.

choices that can bring more efficiency to its energy usage. This extends to its supply chain group as well, from smaller things like minimising empty space on trucks as they're leaving the warehouse, to fuel usage and having fewer equipment truck runs.

Wilkerson believes more and more companies will start taking steps to meaningfully reduce their emissions across their operations and ensure transparency with investors, governments and customers about their efforts and progress.

HOW WILL YOU WALK YOUR ENERGY TALK…AND WHEN? From cost containment and risk mitigation to sustainability goals, Sable’s experienced, specialized team customizes energy strategies for each client’s unique business goals. Visit us at Sablepg.com where we focus our energy on you.

In 2015, T-Mobile called on Sable Power & Gas to help with their energy management. Initially, like many Sable clients, T-Mobile focused on energy cost reduction. They liked Sable’s customized approach that tied energy management strategies to company business goals. They appreciated Sable’s long-experienced, specialized team’s investment in learning T-Mobile’s business – from operational issues to the very real human factors driving energy consumption and costs. Sable addressed the telecom giant’s energy costs through a variety of initiatives that made the connection with management, including longterm hedging strategies, savvy contract management, existing supplier reviews, and expansion of the supplier base to minimize individual supplier leverage. The result? Energy cost savings in the tens of millions of dollars, and a stronger position from which to manage their energy use.

So, in 2018 when T-Mobile announced its goal to be the first in the US wireless industry to achieve 100% renewable energy to power its business in just three years, they asked Sable to join their expanded sustainability team. Like all Sable clients, T-Mobile asked, “How can you contribute?”

Together, T-Mobile and Sable Walk the Talk.

As the team member tasked with helping T-Mobile achieve its energy goals through its supplier management, Sable answered the call. The team applied a green filter to its hedging and de-risking strategies and energy contract analysis, which introduced new retail energy supply options to the company while helping manage the costs of going green.

The Sable Power & Gas team is honored to have been part of this accomplishment and congratulates the T-Mobile sustainability team for its industry leadership as we all move forward together.

Toll Free: 1-855-651-8950 Phone: (713) www.sablepg.com808-9014 Contact

100% Renewable Energy | T-Mobile 46 July 2022 T - MOBILE

“Our bypartyreceivedtargetsthird-validationandinsight,whichhelpedusevolvethemworkingwithSBTiandCDP” CHAD WILKERSON DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY ANDSOURCING,INFRASTRUCTURET-MOBILE mobile-magazine.com 47

You have the dream, we have the dream-makers. Let’s make it real. LEARN MORE Full-custom bringenvironmentsconsumerthatbrandstolife. It’s not just a place to buy stuff. It’s your brand’s home. Where your customers can feel and touch and play and fall in love with your brand all over again—and then buy stuff. That’s the new retail. It’s what we do.

mobile-magazine.com 49 T - MOBILE

Our sourcing managers are able to access that information and it really allows them to evaluate a supplier across all aspects of the ESG spectrum. We're comparing suppliers on the front end who have the values that match those of our company,” says Wilkerson.

“ T-Mobile set two core customerbyscope95%;andreducingreductionemissiongoals:scope12emissionsbyandreducing3emissions15%perby2025” CHAD DIRECTORWILKERSONOFSUSTAINABILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SOURCING, T-MOBILE

“There's a series of questions that are embedded within the RFPs, allowing us to ask questions and get a good feel for what suppliers deem important or how they're performing. Going back to the selfassessment questionnaires through that third-party service actually then allows us to calculate a score for suppliers that offers us insights. We get an extensive report on each supplier that allows us to determine areas to focus on and it becomes a long-term partnership with them.”

The company also expects these partners to improve their scores as time goes on.

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DIRECTORWILKERSONOFSUSTAINABILITY

“ I think a lot of our success really is in working with the right partners –companiesmeaning that are aligned with our same values”

“Because, of course, their scope one and two emissions are our scope three emissions. And that's one of the items that we're focusing on – if it helps them improve, it helps us improve,” he says. “It's not just at the beginning of a relationship. It's an ongoing collaborative effort that allows us to see their progress each year. Our Supplier Code of Conduct includes language that helps set expectations for what we're wanting to see from our supply chain.”

mobile-magazine.com 51 T - MOBILE

This is also part of the job of the procurement and sustainability team: meeting with these suppliers directly to discuss the goals, best practices, and experiences in setting science-based targets.

CHAD AND INFRASTRUCTURE SOURCING, T-MOBILE

Learn more Securing network energy consumption with 5G deployments requires a holistic approach that addresses all aspects of the network. Ericsson’s approach brings together precision deployments, energy-saving software and intelligent site infrastructure operations to break the upward trajectory of network energy consumption. Building sustainable and mobileenergy-efﬁcientnetworks

T-Mobile and its energy efficiency efforts

“T-Mobile uses a lot of energy,” says Wilkerson. “Even though we're going to be talking about renewable energy, energy efficiency is also part of that programme."

Wilkerson here refers to a classic saying: “The greenest energy is the energy you don't use” – words that the company most mobile-magazine.com

53 T - MOBILE

As a tech company, energy usage has always been a top concern for T-Mobile when it comes to its overall sustainability efforts.

AND

“At this point, the department for sustainability and infrastructure sourcing covers a variety of items, with energy as one area of focus, for example,” says Wilkerson. “Part of the strategy is that it is within procurement, which actually offers us a seat at the table to influence everything going on across company operations. It also allows us to work directly with our own category managers who are able to offer expert insights and work alongside procurement tenants,” says Wilkerson. “We can share guidelines or frameworks we're going to operate in with our suppliers. Doing so really allows us to extend beyond just what our company is doing, instead actually having an influence on what other companies operating in the wireless industry are doing and the impact throughout the value chain.” The company also tracks its facility’s life cycle carefully, identifying solutions when something needs to be decommissioned.

CHAD DIRECTORWILKERSONOFSUSTAINABILITY

INFRASTRUCTURE SOURCING, T-MOBILE

“We actually have several partners that help us decommission those sites. The materials are recycled or reused, or in some cases, we just ensure that we don't have a bunch of it going to municipal waste. We're reclaiming and utilising as much of that as possible,” Wilkerson says. “We actually are part of a working group with GSMA so we can take a more circular approach.”

“ We're surrounded by a lot partnersofthat are working towards their own goals, yet they toT-Mobile'scomplementreallywhattryingdo”

“That philosophy is actually pervasive in our thinking and one of the main levers in our renewable goal. As part of that, we wanted to make sure that, at the end of every year, we had enough renewable energy to match what our actual energy usage was.”

54 July 2022 T - MOBILE

OPEN POWER FOR A BRIGHTER FUTURE. Follow Enel Green Power on Enel Green Power’s Red Dirt wind farm – Oklahoma, USA THE GREEN STRATEGIC PARTNER TO EMPOWER YOUR BUSINESS. Helping T-Mobile reach their 100% Renewable Energy Goal LEARN MORE “ We feel like there's an opportunity for us to be able to reduce energy, yet still serve the data needs and the speed needs that our customers have come to expect” certainly strives to live by. To that end, T-Mobile has entered into several virtual power purchase agreements with large utility-scale wind and solar farms.

CHAD DIRECTORWILKERSONOFSUSTAINABILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE

To make sure that the company also has a positive impact on surrounding communities, the company works on community solar projects at a local level. Within its energy programme, T-Mobile incorporates its suppliers and other close partners.

“There's even another layer that we're able to leverage within our renewable energy SOURCING, T-MOBILE

yet they really complement what T-Mobile's trying to do. Most of the time, we are sitting down with a lot of our suppliers across energy, construction and operations, and maintenance companies. Those partners are important to us.” Even in light of all of these achievements, however, Wilkerson and his team still aim to portfolio. T-Mobile is a founding member of DiCE or Diversity in Clean Energy. So this also helps shape some of the criteria we are utilising to evaluate the suppliers or the other partners; we're using the space just to make sure that energy equity is available to everybody,“ says Wilkerson.

"Along with companies like Microsoft, Duke Energy and General Motors, T-Mobile supports DiCE because there is a strong business case for diversity. Diversity is in our DNA and we know it creates smarter, better and more successful companies."

“I think a lot of our success really is in working with the right partners – meaning companies that are aligned with our same values. We're surrounded by a lot of partners that are working towards their own goals, mobile-magazine.com

56 July 2022 T - MOBILE

“As we look to the future, we will continue adding more renewable energy

“As we look to the future, we will continue adding more renewable energy projects to our portfolio”

projects to our portfolio to match future electricity usage, explore onsite solar infrastructure and invest in organisations delivering clean energy to more communities across the U.S.” push further, particularly in terms of energy efficiency and renewable energy usage: “We feel like there's an opportunity for us to be able to further reduce energy consumption, yet still serve the data and speed needs that our customers have come to expect.”

CHAD WILKERSON DIRECTOR OF SOURCING,INFRASTRUCTURET-MOBILE

SUSTAINABILITY AND

mobile-magazine.com 57

THESHAPING FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY 58 July 2022

EVENT REVIEW WRITTEN BY: TILLY KENYON

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Tech & AI

“It’s basically about going fully virtual. Fully immersed technology that would take care of brainstorming workshops as well as every other aspect of meeting in person,” said Kreshnik Mati, Vice President Technology at Klick Health. Insights were also shared from companies including IBM, Unisys, Kainos, Sitecore, Interos, USAF, Oracle, JP Morgan, Tata, PwC and Infosys.

MATI VPKLICKTECHNOLOGY,HEALTH. KRESHNIK MATI VP KLICKTECHNOLOGY,HEALTH mobile-magazine.com 61

“It’sfullyaboutbasicallygoingvirtual”

Looking at themes such as AI, Digital Ecosystems and Data & Analytics, the Tech & AI stage welcomed CTOs, CISOs and VPs of Technology from some of the most influential businesses in the world to share theirTheyinsights.explored how technology has developed, how it’s helping to solve problems, showcased the work being implemented right now and also looked at what is possible in the future. The impact of COVID-19 was a hot topic, with it having driven digital transformation and cloud adoption, while also substantially impacting businesses with the shift to hybrid working. In one session, some of the issues raised referred to the use of technology as a substitute for human interaction and whether it could be, and would be, achieved through the current digital systems or even the use of holograms.

EVENT REVIEW

KRESHNIK

EVENT REVIEW ARUNGALAI ANBARASU, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY & STRATEGY OFFICER, WAYGATE TECHNOLOGIES FIRESIDE CHAT: DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS ANTONY KAGOO, HEAD OF INNOVATION, COMMUNICATION, MEDIA & INFORMATION SERVICES, UK & EUROPE, TCS PAUL GRAHAM, DIRECTOR OF UK ENGINEERING, MATRIXX SCOTT BIRCH, CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER, BIZCLIK MEDIA GROUP GERAINT JOHN, VP INTEROS RESILIENCE LABS , INTEROS AARON CELEYA, SQUADRON COMMANDER, UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE 62 July 2022

AMR DEVELOPMENT,ANDMARKETINGDIRECTOR,ELRAWI,SPORTSBUSINESSORACLE INDERPAL BHANDARI, GLOBAL CHIEF DATA OFFICER, IBM PANEL DISCUSSION: THE DIGITAL WORKFORCE SHUBHI RAJNISH, GROUP HEAD OF INFORMATION & DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, BAT SUSAN STANDIFORD, CTPMO, STEPSTONE KRESHNIK MATI, VP TECHNOLOGY, KLICK HEALTH SCOTT BIRCH, CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER, BIZCLIK MEDIA GROUP mobile-magazine.com 63

EVENT REVIEW

Aiming to transform and uplift natural spaces within the locality, they use robotic dogs that are programmed to explore the forest floor using sensors to detect terrain and its overall health, as well as identify the volume of sunlight reaching through the trees. The two dogs, Gizmo and Eric, also made a special appearance on stage – with Eric even showcasing a backflip! “We have an ambition to make Nottinghamshire a county for digital excellence and to try new technologies so that the next generation want to stay”

Ceren Clulow, who currently leads the Digital Connectivity Service in Nottinghamshire County Council, took to the stage where she explained all about the 5G Connected Forest. This is a world-first project, delivering 5G connectivity into a woodland area. The project investigates the role of 5G in delivering visitor attractions for all ages and protecting the sensitive forest environment through robotic environmental management and live monitoring.

CEREN CLULOW DIGITAL CONNECTIVITY MANAGER, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTYROBOT-AIDEDCOUNCILFORESTRY MANAGEMENT. DR TAUFIQ ASYHARI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN NETWORKS & COMMUNICATIONS, BIRMINGHAM CITY UNIVERSITY MOAD IDRISSI, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION, BIRMINGHAM CITY UNIVERSITY 64 July 2022

Cloud & 5G Leading telecommunications and data centre executives came together to discuss their strategies and the future of technology. A highlight from across the two days on the Cloud & 5G stage was the exciting talk about robot-aided forestry management.

NITU KAUSHAL, MANAGING DIRECTOR, INTELLIGENT EDGE, EUROPE REGION, ACCENTURE PANEL DISCUSSION: DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN TELCO. NITU KAUSHAL, ACCENTURE CEREN CLULOW, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL ALEX TUCK, BIZCLIK MEDIA GROUP

EVENT REVIEW TESTIMONIALS “It’s been great to have opportunitythe to come along and meet lots of people across the 5G and cloud industry” ROBERT FRANKS MANAGING DIRECTOR, WM5G “It’s a great event, and I always find it good to get up on stage and speak to the audience” SIMON CHASSAR, CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER, CLAROTY “I really toopportunityandwascomingenjoyedhere,itagreatvenueafantasticformesocialise” TAMMY ARCHER CISO, INCHCAPE “It’s a atmospheregreat at the event, and feels really supportive and coolThere’sencouraging.somereallytechtoo!” ELEANOR LUDLAM PARTNER AT DAC BEACHCROFT LLP “We’ve managed to showcase the robots’ capabilities and the research we have carried out. It’s great to see positive feedback” DR MOAD IDRISSI RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, SMART COMPUTING AND ROBOTICS, BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY. PANEL DISCUSSION: AMIR PAULJEREMYJESSICAABDELAZIM,ELLIS,DIRECTORSPENCER,GOWANS,GLOBAL 66 July 2022

NICOLAS MARKETINGPRESIDENTEXECUTIVEFORTINEAU,VICE&CHIEFOFFICER,AIRTIESLIFE IN 2040: HOW 5G CAN HELP US GET THERE.HANNAH GRIFFITHS, SENIOR ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, JACOBS LARA MOLONEY, HEAD OF SCOTLAND 5G CENTRE, SCOTLAND 5G CENTRETARAMCDAID,REGIONALVICEPRESIDENTSALES,SALESFORCE DISCUSSION:EXPERT5G PARTNER, DETECON INTERNATIONAL DIRECTOR OF APPLIED 5G, DELOITTE MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, BAI COMMUNICATIONS GLOBAL DIRECTOR 5G, VIAVI SOLUTIONS mobile-magazine.com 67

He explained how Oracle is helping Oracle Red Bull Racing use data and technology to improve performance on the track and build an unrivalled fan experience. Elrawi also revealed how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is helping Oracle Red Bull Racing prepare race strategies and make realtime decisions during races to help them win. Enabling winning through the use of data

Christian Horner, Oracle Red Bull Racing Team Principal and CEO

EVENT REVIEW ELEANORBEACHCROFTPARTNER,LUDLAM,DACLLP

68 July 2022

The 2021 race season was a huge success for Oracle Red Bull Racing. With the team achieving 23 podium finishes and Max Verstappen winning the driver’s championship, Oracle Red Bull Racing had its most successful season in recent history.

A popular crowd pleaser at the event was the Oracle and Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 simulator, which attendees and speakers had the chance to experience.

“Oracle Cloud enabled us to make raceday decisions that helped Max Verstappen win the 2021 Drivers’ Championship.”

Speaking on the Tech&AI stage was Amr Elrawi, Oracle’s Director, Sports Marketing and Business Development.

TIMOTHYCISO,ROHRBAUGH,JETBLUEAIRWAYS SIMON CHASSAR, CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER, CLAROTY

Opening on the cyber stage on day one was a keynote presentation from Tammy Archer, CISO at Inchcape. Archer explained the various challenges CISOs are facing in the current changing climate. These included a rise in automated attacks and how attackers are becoming more motivated and knowledgeable.

“There are going to be times when you will face quite difficult circumstances, but I would say when it does come to that, you just need to take a step back and think about how you are going to approach the problem,” Archer concluded.

Another great presentation came from Simon Chassar, Chief Revenue Officer at Claroty, who gave a keynote presentation on managing cyber risk and XIoT. Chassar explained how everything in the world is now becoming connected, which in turn is creating a vast threat landscape. With more cyber attacks directed at the industrial industry, interconnected systems need to be protected, as the impact on society as a whole can be detrimental. Later on in the day, Simon Chassar was back on stage, but this time he was joined by Ian Lilleby, who is Group CISO at Sonnedix Group, and Rob Dyson, Global OT & IoT Security Services Leader at IBM. They discussed technological innovation, creating the right security policies for remote workers, and the ever-increasing volume of malware attacks. Dyson explained: “It’s an exciting time to work. We get to participate in this digital transformation, but we need to manage these vulnerabilities.” KIPLING, SECURITYMICROSOFTADVISOR, mobile-magazine.com

LESLEY

Cyber Recognised as a crucial element of the technology industry, cyber security is a major concern for organisations globally.

CHIEF

March8 The March8 stage showcased discussions on women in STEM and what can be done to encourage future female generations into a male dominated industry. Are girls institutionally discouraged from pursuing STEM careers? Is there a cultural issue facing young women entering the industry? Or is it a combination of the two (and more)? These are some of the burning questions that were discussed.

KABUNIPANEL DISCUSSION: SYSTEMIC GENDER BIAS ONLINE. EMILY COOK, MARKETING MANAGER, MARCH8 KATHERINE GORMLEY, PRINCIPAL SOLUTIONS ENGINEER, RESISTANT AI FANNIE DELAVELLE, MANAGER, BPIFRANCE ARUNGALAI ANBARASU, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY & STRATEGY OFFICER, WAYGATE TECHNOLOGIES 70 July 2022

Laurie explained that barriers seem to start at a young age with stereotypes, but that it can also continue into the workforce, with people often thinking: “If I cannot see it, I cannot be it”. Towards the end of the event, Samantha Karlin gave a keynote presentation entitled ‘An Ethical Revolution in Tech’, which spoke about AI perpetuating bias and the false belief of emerging technologies being neutral and unbiased. She urged the audience to focus on being empathetic and protecting ‘feminist leadership’. Other powerful talks from inspiring women shed light on some of their personal experiences with sexism and how they overcame barriers to pursue their careers.

NINA JANE CO-FOUNDERPATEL,&VP OF METAVERSE RESEARCH,

EVENT REVIEW

ALICE WILLIAMS, VICE PRESIDENT OF STRATEGY, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC UK&I

Paulina Laurie, Head of Women in Tech at Frank Group Recruitment, and Samantha Humphries, Head of Security Strategy, EMEA at Exabeam, took to the stage to discuss barriers of recruiting women in Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Creating the technology of the future These are just a few snapshots of the insights available from across the four stages. Attendees and other viewers can catch up on all sessions from the hybrid event through the Brella platform and on Youtube in the coming week. It enables on-demand viewing and provides a method of contact between registered attendees to allow businesses to collaborate further.

“The power of the network is huge, the meet,peoplemoreyouthemoreopportunitiesyoufind” SAMANTHA HUMPHRIES HEAD OF STRATEGYSECURITYEMEA,EXABEAM EVENT REVIEW MARA STRATEGIST,SENIORPOMETTI,AIIBM SAMANTHA KARLIN, CEO, GLOBALEMPOWER mobile-magazine.com 71

TECH LIVE LONDON was brought to you by BizClik MediaGroup, in association with Claroty, Salesforce, Kainos, Oracle, Virtus Data Centres, DataCentres,NorwegianDatacenter,CloudFactory,umlaut,Africaandmoregreatpartners.

INWOMENEMPOWERINGINWOMENEMPOWERINGINTECHTHEMIDDLEINTECHTHEMIDDLE 72 July 2022

EMPOWERINGEMPOWERINGTECHMIDDLEEASTTECHMIDDLEEAST mobile-magazine.com 73 PRODUCED BY: STUARTIRVING WRITTEN BY: GEORGIAWILSON OOREDOO TELECOM, KUWAIT

Dina Subuh, Director, Capability Management, Ooredoo Kuwait, discusses the challenges of working in a male-dominated field & her digital transformation work Step inside any technology workspace, and it’s easy to notice that most workers are not females. While this is a global problem, a lack of equal gender distribution is particularly prevalent in the Middle East.

Despite UNESCO reporting that woman make up 57% of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates in Arab countries, Dina Subuh, Technology Director of Capability Management at Ooredoo Telecom, Kuwait (Ooredoo Kuwait), comments: “The turnover rate is more than twice as high for women as for men in technology jobs, with one-inthree facing gender bias at work.”

She adds: “Women lack opportunities for advancement in the industry, as well as a lack of role models and mentorship, and there are high pay gaps. Many women are leaving their jobs in technology by the age of 35 – a 45% higher rate than men.” This underrepresentation of women in tech is a huge liability for the industry, stresses Subuh. “Those that embrace diversity and inclusion are more likely to report growth, perform better, and have an increased competitive edge,” she says.

74 July 2022 OOREDOO TELECOM, KUWAIT

Being a leading woman in the technology space for Ooredoo, Subuh is responsible for the digital application development and management of the company’s entire demand and delivery of commercial roadmaps, business continuity and automation plans.

Subuh Technology Director of Capability Management mobile-magazine.com 75

Dina

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Over the years, Subuh has faced many tough times managing large groups of engineers and technicians in a typically male-dominated field. “However, this did not stop me from being successful in my roles. In fact, it helped shape my personality by boosting my selfconfidence and influencing people around me in everything I do,” comments Subuh.

“I particularly love my job in Ooredoo Kuwait. I feel extremely fulfilled by delivering value to our customers, paying attention to details and adopting agile and best practices in the IT domain. Ooredoo believed in my talent and gave me the opportunity to develop my leadership skills by joining Harvard Business School Executive Education – a one of a kind experience that exposed me to different cultures, perspectives, and global teams.”

Ooredoo Kuwait: women in tech in the Middle East

78 July 2022 OOREDOO TELECOM, KUWAIT

“I have carved my career in the Telecommunications sector for more than 20 years. During that time, I have had a healthy progression through many positions THREE WAYS THE MIDDLE EAST CAN HELP WOMEN THRIVE IN TECHNOLOGY

We have to work on access to relevant knowledge and networks for women in technology because they gain strength in numbers. We should improve access to formal finance for women entrepreneurs. Stakeholders from the public sector, the private sector, and development agencies should collaborate in support of women in technology.

KNOW...YOUDID

Empowering

in different companies. I first joined Ooredoo in 2008 (formerly known as Wataniya) and progressed up the ladder from a Supervisor to Assistant Manager, and I’m currently Director of Capability Management,” reflects Subuh.

“Those that embrace diversity inclusionandare more likely to report growth, perform better, and have an competitiveincreasededge”

TITLE: TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR OF CAPABILITY MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

DINA TECHNOLOGYSUBUH

Impact-obsessed and accomplished leader with comprehensive experience directing end-to-end IT transformation projects and devising effective smart strategies to ensure efficient technological adoption and embedment within organisations.

“Most of my inspirations came from women in technology in the telecommunications industry in the US, after graduating from the University of Colorado as an Electrical Engineer. For those keen to build a career in technology I would say, show up and take your seat at the table, no matter what the challenges around you. Speak up and persist to pursue your dreams, and you will get there eventually,” says Subuh.

Digital transformation at Ooredoo Telecom, Kuwait As the Technology Director of Capability Management at Ooredoo Kuwait, Subuh’s role

Ms. Subuh is a well-liked manager of a competitive team. Kind and respectful, she is sensitive to the needs of others. She is a problem solver; she tends to see setbacks as opportunities. She’s always engaged and is a source of trust and high levels of emotional intelligence to her colleagues. She's grateful for her 20+ years of experience in the IT Telecom domain leading high-performing and diverse team of professionals, including

DIRECTOR OF CAPABILITY OOREDOOMANAGEMENT,

“For others in the industry, women can best be supported by men, so make room for them, listen to them, and encourage them to express the great ideas they have, and turn all biases and stereotypes around.”

DINA SUBUH

LOCATION: KUWAIT

For those young girls looking to build a career in technology, Subuh believes in the unique capabilities of women in their attention to detail and dedication to doing things right.

For more than 40 years, Diyar United Company has played a major role in shaping and supporting the ICT community either partners or clients with many solutions, and services at the highest quality and effectiveness, which is proven by the many certificates and quality accreditations Diyar has obtained and is still reaping. International Quality, Delivered by Local PartnersProfessionalsinTechnology www.diyarme.com Learn more

“We work together as a team to deliver

DINA TECHNOLOGYSUBUH

includes developing and leading the digital transformation vision for the organisation, as well as implementing IT, Network Applications IT Enterprise Applications, and Centralised DigitalWhilePlatforms.manyperceive digital transformation to be discovering and capturing new opportunities or encapsulating a radical change in technology, Subuh explains that it is a mindset. “If well-equipped in the right direction, it will lead us to a broader perspective,” says Subuh. When it came to Ooredoo’s own digital transformation, the organisation started with the basics, looking at its own existing capabilities. “We realised from our experience that the best results will come from using our current capabilities. While the current trend or myth suggests that ‘Digital requires radical disruption of the value proposition’, we found that the best results can come from ‘adaptation rather than reinvention’.”

DIRECTOR OF CAPABILITY OOREDOOMANAGEMENT, mobile-magazine.com

She adds: “Therefore, we started refining and simplifying our processes continuously. We closely managed the software development lifecycle to simplify and standardise the product configuration.

81 OOREDOO TELECOM, KUWAIT

milestones”areobjectives,Ooredoo’sandweachievinggreat

82 July 2022 OOREDOO TELECOM, KUWAIT

“These products have been designed to solutionstelecommunicationoptimisenetworkforrevenuegrowthandimprovecustomersatisfaction” DINA SUBUH TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR OF CAPABILITY MANAGEMENT,OOREDOO mobile-magazine.com 83

85 OOREDOO TELECOM, KUWAIT

OOREDOOMANAGEMENT,

“Our innovation strategy has set our priorities for the kinds of innovation that are most important for your organisation. This was the basis of success.”

“We have also built a testing tool from our existing skill set for our business users to perform user acceptance testing (UAT) seamlessly, without depending on us. Our Digital Solutions have been designed around the customer’s needs with personalised offerings on our mobile app. Similarly, for B2B, we built a self-service tool in which the payer can activate new lines, without depending on sales agents. In coordination with our B2B team, we can extend it to device purchases as well.”

During 2022, Ooredoo Kuwait will continue to build its digital capabilities in the Software and product development lifecycle, with the OF CAPABILITY mobile-magazine.com

DINA TECHNOLOGYSUBUH DIRECTOR

“We started to use RPA to automate product configuration, eliminate human errors and increase the process speed.”

“Ourinnovationforourstrategyinnovationhassetprioritiesthekindsofthat are most important for your organisation”

In addition to Diyar United Company, Ooredoo also partners with DataSpark for its mobility data products. “These products have been designed to optimise telecommunication network solutions for revenue growth and improve customer satisfaction,” says Subuh.

86 July 2022

“They manage our network operations centre (NOC), IT Infrastructure, applications stack, and application development. The application development area is particularly important to us as this is where we can maintain our competitive edge in the market. Diyar United Company provides us with end-to-end services using highly skilled resources.

Being a leader in

Telecommunicationsthe sector, Ooredoo must ensure quality, innovation, and outstanding time-to-market in order to remain competitive. “To achieve this, we have partnered with Diyar United Company as our main IT provider,” says Subuh.

“DataSpark empowers organisations with mobility intelligence to help maximise the value of their networks and save on capital investment spending. They are leaders in processing large geospatial temporal mobility data to deliver intelligence on people and places using the highest data privacy standards. Understanding how people move, where they go and what they do enables organisations to make more informed decisions from planning capital expenditure to creating better customer experiences.”“Throughour patented state-of-the-art technology and our team of experienced data scientists, custom mobility reports are built to gain a deeper comprehension of movements. We transform this data into mobility intelligence through our proprietary MobilityGenome™ framework - an unparalleled library of insights on people’s mobility.”

PARTNERS...

She adds: “We work together as a team to deliver Ooredoo’s objectives, and we are achieving great milestones, like introducing Dev-Ops and applying agile methodology. Diyar United Company also helps us to control our costs.”

OOREDOO AND ITS PARTNERS

introduction of Dev-Ops methodology to automate development, inject security by design, and quality testing along the“Welifecycle.believe this is essential for our agility and quality delivery, to further fasten time to market and delivery before the competition,” says Subuh. Harnessing failures to drive success “We all are bound to fail and make a wrong or bad decision in both work and life in general,” says Subuh. “How we handle failure is more important than how we handle success. In Ooredoo Kuwait we embrace failure to understand how we can improve and bounce back better. A healthy, no-blame culture is key, as it boosts the trust among leaders and working teams. Failure “The telecommunication field is a fast-paced industry that requires good problem-solving skills, staying up to date on industry trends, as well as the ability to work well with a team”

should never be about the person. We encourage a self-responsible team that is continuously guided and matured to better improve our outcomes. In the end, we want our employees to be happy working and find enjoyment.”

DINA SUBUH TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR OF CAPABILITY MANAGEMENT,OOREDOO mobile-magazine.com 87 OOREDOO TELECOM, KUWAIT

A major current example is the partnership between IBM and AT&T in the US. The latter leverages IBM’s systems integration expertise to build out new services. As part of the deal, IBM’s networking solution will benefit from AT&T Business being their primary provider of software-defined networking including 5G, Edge Compute, IoT and multi-cloud capabilities using Red Hat.

WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

88 July 2022 5G

Network managed services are big business. Whether on-premise or cloud-based, the wealth of new tech in telecoms makes seamless integration complex communication service providers in the region’s emerging economies.

North America is the major market for telecom system integrators with the largest market share, though the APAC region is expected to be the fastest-growing in terms of CAGR, as shown by the increasing commercial investments from telecom companies and

he telecom system integration market is expected to grow from US$16.56bn in 2017 to US$25.16bn by 2022, at a CAGR of 8.7% during the forecast period. In a market driven by the increasing need to manage cloud and migration activities, telecom vendors wish to seamlessly integrate their network and IT infrastructure with advanced cloud solutions. High maintenance costs and time consumption are, however, also a dilemma, leading to telecom system integration services being fraught with challenges.

Telecom’s main players operating as system integration service providers are IBM (US), Ericsson (Sweden), Nokia Networks (Finland), Tech Mahindra (India), Huawei (China), Wipro (India), Infosys (India), DXC Technology (US), Cognizant (US), HCL (India), Syntel (US), and Stixis Technologies (US).

integrationSystem in telecoms

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U l k Y D Natural Language Processing Data Labeling and Cleansing CV Image Annotation Data and Document Processing Machine Learning Accelerate your AI/ML and automation initiatives and optimize business operations with CloudFactory’s scalable human-in-the-loop workforce 90 July 2022

Bhandari has over three decades of industry experience in the IT and telecommunications domain, holding leadership positions in technical consulting, project management, managed services and service delivery. He also points towards Bharti Airtel leveraging a similar opportunity to IBM and AT&T by partnering with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Bharti Airtel will pilot and deploy TCS’ technology as part of its 5G rollout plans, as per the deal. The Tata Group company has, for its part, developed an O-RAN-based Radio and NSA/SA Core, as well as having integrated a totally indigenous telecomSpeakingstack.on the TCS website, Bhandari says: “Technological advancements like cloudification, virtualisation and the software-based approach, among many others, have completely transformed the landscape for telecom service providers.”

He remarks that the lines between system integrators and telecom service providers are quickly blurring, as system integrators expand their scope to offer high availability services that were traditionally only possible through a telecom operator. mobile-magazine.com

“While several models are being explored worldwide, systems integrators are likely to play a crucial role in helping enterprises accelerate their 5G private networks journey”

91 5G

RAJENDER SINGH BHANDARI HEAD OF SYSTEM INTEGRATION, TCS TCS technologies crucial to the disaggregated network trend

Rajender Singh Bhandari is Head of System Integration at Tata Communications Transformation Services (TCTS).

RAJENDER

“By leveraging artificial Intelligence/ machine learning, they can automate network operations, enhance customer experience, and develop innovative business models that give them a competitive edge. However, developing these portfolio components involves extensive use of software skill sets, including virtualisation, automation, and orchestration, traditionally associated with system integrators.”

“On the other hand, with 5G services being rolled out along with edge computing and network slicing, several service providers are looking to develop new professional services and IT services capabilities. They have natural and unique advantages in terms of access to varied data sources at Bhandariscale.”considers technology to be at the heart of network automation.

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With TCS well placed to help, Bhandari insists “there is an opportunity for telecom operators to acquire system integration capabilities (either inhouse or through the right partner) to go up the value chain and launch new products and services to witness stronger revenue growth and deliver superior customer experience”.

“Systems integrators have taken advantage of the rapid transformations and new-age technologies to gain a foothold in the global telecom service marketplace.

“Systems integrators have taken advantage of the rapid transformations and new-age technologies to gain a foothold in the global telecom service marketplace” SINGH BHANDARI HEAD OF SYSTEM INTEGRATION, TCS

5G private networks the future of enterprise

2. THE TELCO PRIME MODEL: Second is where the telco leads the mar ket rolling out new services, with System Integrator playing a secondary partner with no /limited visibility to customers.

3. THE SOLO MODEL: The third is where the telco is building and using in-house capability without the need for a systems integrator. This would call for complete overhaul of their business model (which has already been perfected by the System integrators) to deliver [Source]profitability.

Engagement models emerging between the system integrators and CSPs

The first model is where the telco works closely with a systems integrator for roll ing out new services—both bring complementary capabilities and decide who leads the engagement in a specific mar ket (usually the system integrator).

1. THE SI PRIME MODEL:

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As telecoms are beginning to adopt professional system integrators to efficiently integrate network security and network monitoring solutions within their existing network infrastructure, professional system integrators facilitate the telecom industry by reducing the risks associated with integration and offering stability to the network infrastructure. This transition includes the migration from a wired to a wireless network, IPv4 (32 Bit) to IPv6 (128 Bit and more compatible for mobile), and the evolution of 5G. Bhandari suggests there’s a “growing need for telcos to go beyond offering commoditised voice and data services to add new revenue streams and provide digital experiences to theirEdgecustomers.”computing enabled by 5G is, he argues, a “perfect opportunity for communications mobile-magazine.com

Crossbeam Explains: What are System Integrators? 94 July 2022

service providers (CSPs) to offer innovative services to subscribers and enterprises”. Enterprises are seeking 5G-enabled private wireless networks to support their communication requirements, with a low-latency experience vital to a positive customerBhandariexperience.adds:“While several models are being explored worldwide, systems' integrators are likely to play a crucial role in helping enterprises accelerate their 5G private networks journey. There are significant interoperability issues ,and telecom operators lack the skill sets to put everything together. For instance, Telefonica Tech has recently collaborated with Microsoft to offer private 5G and on-premise edge computing to meet the needs of enterprises.”Similarly,according to Bhandari, network slicing is a key aspect of 5G. “A private network, once created, can potentially back feed to the telecom network to expand and enhance its network coverage. There is a role for multiple orchestrations of use cases”. Telcos may not want the burden of being system integrators Gary Smith has been the CEO at transport networking technology specialist Ciena for almost 20 years, building its business with hyperscale cloud platforms such as AWS, Google and Azure.

“As ever, operators wish to avoid the dreaded ‘lock-in’ and maintain an element of flexibility and ‘not a walled garden’,” according to Smith. “They don't want to be tied from a software point of view to some customised, closed piece of software,” Smith adds.

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Speaking to telecomtv.com, Smith says: “Network operators are keen to break down the ‘walled gardens’ of traditional, closed networking systems and embrace bestof-breed disaggregation, but they really don’t want to take on the role of systems integrator and be burdened with stitching together multiple networking elements from different suppliers.” Smith suggested that telcos wish to break free from the constraints of closed, inflexible systems but still prefer everything to be pre-packed.“Thetrend towards disaggregation, this is always a consideration, but for a lot of the service providers, they don't want to have to be the systems integrator, and, certainly towards the edge of the network, it's just not worth it for “Becausethem.theeconomics are such that you can package and bundle all that together –it’s a lot easier for them operationally. There's no benefit to splitting it all out, provided they've still got the high-level software control and they're not tied into the classic sort of monolithic operating systems.”

“Network operators are keen to break down the “walled gardens” traditional,of closed networking systems and disaggregation”best-of-breedembrace

GARY SMITH CEO, CIENA

96 July 2022

Making the

Rasheed Mohamad of ALE: Unpredictable,

Unpredictable,ALE: Predictable mobile-magazine.com 97 PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY WRITTEN BY: İLKHAN ÖZSEVIM ALCATEL - LUCENT ENTERPRISE

Rasheed Mohamad, Executive Vice President at Alcatel Lucent Enterprise, gives insights into transformation, automation and the importance of predicting outcomes

F or any modern business to be successful in procurement, supply chain and logistics, ‘systemisation’ is the name of the game. Rasheed Mohamad, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Business Technology and Quality of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, knows that for a business’ transformation journey to be successful, this systemisation must be applied to its entire infrastructureincluding its internal processes.

Mohamad began his career as an engineer with SFO technologies in India, moving on to network design roles with the Indian government, before finally joining Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (‘Alcatel’ at the

98 July 2022 ALCATEL - LUCENT ENTERPRISE

“It is important that innovation is approached holistically, rather than being confined to one department or an isolated aspect of your business,” he says.

Mohamad manages the end-to-end (e2e) delivery of the whole quote-to-cash (q2c) ecosystem at ALE. After a customer places an order, the procurement, planning, supply chain and logistics all work together as an e2e delivery process. He is also responsible for business technology, which is a CIO function, ensuring that all of the tools, infrastructure, and, he says, “perhaps most importantly, the mindset of the people” are kept in accordance with ALE’s transformation and “coined with quality”, to make sure that they deliver the best results for their customers.

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time) in 2000. Here, he journeyed through different aspects of ALE’s divisions such as Operations, Finance, R&D and ManagementjoiningManagementProgrammeuntiltheExecutiveteamin

Rasheed Mohamad of ALE: Making the Unpredictable, Predictable

RASHEED MOHAMAD EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

2017.

ALE’s uniqueness derives from several elements working in unison. They provide an extensive e2e portfolio of network, communications and cloud solutions for enterprise customers with flexible business models in the cloud, on-premises and hybrid. This means that ALE customers can choose solutions that are tailored to “Our challenge is to turn unpredictabletheintothepredictable”

customerorganisationsagilityreliability,onofourglobe.”toapplicationsandcommunicationsdigitalindustry-specificdeliveragenetworking,cloudsolutions,andservicesenterprisesacrosstheHesays,“Now,valueslieattheheartwhatwedo.Focusingcustomercentricity,speedandenablesustoofferatotalexperience.”

ALE (then Alcatel), is a 100-year-old telecoms company, and though now global, it started out from humble beginnings in the Alsace region of France. In the second half of the 20th Century the company became decidedly more disruptive. Following acquisitions, Alcatel merged with Lucent Technologies to create Alcatel-Lucent – a global communications powerhouse. “Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise separated from the Alcatel-Lucent Group in 2014,” explains Mohamad, “and we moved away to

ALE is focused on four verticals: Healthcare, Education, Transportation and Government. “Transformations used to be confined to a single department or area within an organisation,” says Mohamad, “but to deliver the highest level of efficiency and customer satisfaction, we believe innovation has to take place in every single department, in synergy with the whole business. In this regard, we also make sure we are using our own products for transformations. In recognition of this, we have been consecutively awarded the prestigious CIO 100 award for the past two years, and also for our work in several other domains.”

COVID-19 lockdowns pushed ALE into remote operations, accelerating its transitional process. This helped ALE generate a platform where they could do e2e tracking from order to delivery.

BIOEXECUTIVE RASHEED MOHAMAD

Rasheed is an expert executive with global leadership experience in business transformation at both strategic and operational levels. He currently leads the Global Operations, Business Technology and Quality teams at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. Rasheed’s success in transforming operations by delivering the highest level of efficiency and excellent customer satisfaction has been recognised by international awards. As sponsor of the ALE #GoGreen programme, Rasheed is committed to finding new technologies that contribute to protecting our natural capital, building sustainable cities, and limiting global climate change. Rasheed has over 20 years

TITLE: EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL OPERATIONS, BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY AND QUALITY INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

LOCATION: CALIFORNIA, US their unique needs and business goals. Mohamad says: “ALE’s uniqueness stems from our distinctive go-to-market offers. Our solutions are tailored to each industry and we have a commitment to our 3400 business partners to ensure continuous customer proximity.”

Asked about ALE’s digital transformation process, Mohamad says: “when we started this journey in 2019, just prior to COVID19, we had a five-year plan. The key to a strong delivery was creating clear processes, procedures and business enablers. To implement these successfully, we first had to gather accurate information on ALE’s infrastructure. Only then, could we develop efficiencies such as automating regular processes, and using AI (Artificial Intelligence) and NLP (Natural language Processing). Anticipating outcomes was our goal, and in the supply chain world, what is most important for a customer is on-time delivery at the most optimised cost possible.”

ALCATEL - LUCENT ENTERPRISE

Find out more We shape the world of logistics. Every day, we go above and beyond to meet the needs of our customers. By anticipating challenges and applying our visionary mindset, we advance global trade and bring communities together.

The Art of Supply Chain Orchestration

“ALE has full visibility on all events in our visibility portal’. We use advanced tools such as a Transport Management System (TMS) with strong dynamic planning and optimisation capabilities to automate processes, and our own in-house collaboration platform for customer service, which provides a single point of contact for all requests and deviations relating to order life-cycle execution. The ability to execute request trend-analysis and determine rootcauses really drives improvement!”

As Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s 4PL provider, Kuehne+Nagel leverages its data-centric IT architecture and its global control tower footprint to support ALE’s competitive positioning.

In December 2019, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, one of the world’s leading networking, communications and cloud solutions, chose Kuehne+Nagel as its 4PL partner for Europe. Kuehne+Nagel maintains a network of partnerships with other supply chain operators, innovators and disruptors throughout the world – customers can achieve a distinct competitive advantage by leveraging its Software AND a Service delivering three key advantages, visibility, resilience and sustainability With ALE, seamless integration is ensured using a full EDI set up (based on EDIFACT messages) between the two partners, the European Distribution Centre, and carriers, explains Mark Edenburg, Global Business Manager High Tech at Kuehne+Nagel.

Kuehne+Nagel’s flexibility of service makes its customer’s supply chain more resilient. For example ALE’s volumes fluctuate, with peaks at year- and quarter-end. ”We have a transactional model in place. The shared multi-customer environment in our Luxembourg control tower is a key enabler when handling these spikes in volumes”. Kuehne+Nagel takes the burden from ALE in a multitude of ways, such as managing its relationships with carriers, KPIs, the lifecycle of complex tariff arrangements and, very importantly, continuous improvement (CI).

“CI is the next step in the evolution of our partnership with ALE,” says Edenburg. “It’s key, especially in these times, to concentrate on supply chain optimisation and – together –find effective answers and solutions.”Findout more

“The transformation helped to provide that fundamental baseline of forecasting, like optimising our supply chain, flow and delivery,” he says. “The good news in terms of the structures we’ve implemented alongside the reactive and proactive teams, which we have called ‘daily escalation’ and ‘the shortage target teams’, is that we were able to effectively manage the entire process and haven’t had to cancel a single order, which is a great thing”.

With lead times now at 70 weeks - which we see continuing into 2023 - and with price increases across the globe, we need to be vigilant and dynamic in terms of anticipating those outcomes that yield to calculation and therefore prediction.

Rainbow (ALE’s cloud-based communications platform), provides connectivity across voice, video and messaging, enabling remote connectivity for all employees globally.

KNOW...YOUDID

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“It's a great tool,” says Mohamad, “which provides us with some features similar

“Historically, the accuracy of our data has allowed us to provide trends for that, so we can plan and project outcomes,” says Mohamad. “When COVID-19 hit, we had to identify the challenges which arose, but because we already had the infrastructure in place, we had the capability enabled on our internal platform ‘RainbowTM by Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’, which allowed us to fully transform. Of course, the supply chain also transformed along with that, and we were able to identify clear goals in terms of our expectations and resilience towards customer needs.” In 2020, COVID-19’s knock-on effects worldwide, began leading to material shortages – shortages that only began to increase at the start of 2021.

“Typically, the lead time of the components was 16 weeks,” says Mohamad, “but it went up to almost 70 weeks, which meant that we had to anticipate for 18 months in advance when securing components. This unusually long lead-time made forecasting really challenging.”

RASHEED MOHAMAD EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

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“Innovation must take place in every single department in synergy with the organisation”whole to those offered by other vendors in the industry, but it’s far more unique and tailored to the business’ needs, and because it also integrates the backend, this makes it an incredibly powerful tool. The Rainbow platform provides much more than just simple communications, it also provides tracking of all of our orders. We have also developed chatbots, called ‘ALE delivery chatbots’, and these enable access for ALE colleagues and business partners to realtime stock estimation, the ability to order directly and highly accurate order tracking capabilities. It’s our cloud-based go-to marketOperationally,tool.” all of ALE’s systems are driven to streamline processes as much as possible, ensuring maximum efficiency. Mohamad says: “The Digital Age Communications’ (DAC) three pillars – Digital Workplace, Enterprise Agility and Flexible cloud models – support enterprises in their digital transformation journey”. Because many office-based businesses have now adopted remote working, it is important to facilitate digital workspaces. “This is where we stand out,” says Mohamad.

“We have our cloud platforms including Rainbow Office powered by RingCentral which enables the connection of devices, people and processes, and we’ve recently signed a strategic partnership agreement with Avaya that extends the availability of Avaya’s OneCloud CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) composable solutions to ALE’s global base of customers, while also making ALE, people are our strength and we work like a family”

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“Another great change that came out of this situation was that we had to push the subscription model with more total cloud-enabled solutions,” says Mohamad.

“Then there’s enterprise agility, where connectivity has to be both seamless and flexible, and our Digital Age Networking (DAN) solutions help to achieve this. Lastly, we have flexible cloud platforms that connect all of these things together, so that everybody can work collaboratively within one integrated system.”

ALE’s unanticipated remote operations meant that they had to identify how best to adapt their q2c chain under such challenging circumstances and to understand how predictability could be improved as a system. But this obstacle delivered unexpected results for their processes as well as their outlook.

“At

RASHEED MOHAMAD EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

ALE’s digital networking solutions available on a global basis to Avaya customers. So we have all the geared solutions available, and this structure has been focused to provide the growth that we actually need for our five-year plan.”

Automation assumes regular and uninterrupted processes. But irregular events like material shortages, pandemics and regional conflicts are of a different ilk and have an unavoidable impact on entire ecosystems.

To understand ALE’s present processes, you need to consider them in context of the transformation journey they had a few years“There’sback.no shortage of processes in our company,” says Mohamad. “As well as being ISO certified, our operating model identifies and defines key areas to optimise the company's quality system. Giving our processes a definition allows us to run the business in a systematic and structured way. Most importantly, we automate any processes that are routine.”

“So how do we integrate such variables into our system to enhance reactivity when they arise?”, asks Mohamad. “When I look at challenges, I classify these into three areas: the first are internal challenges, which are ever present; the second are external-predictable challenges; 108 July 2022

RASHEED MOHAMAD EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

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K&N Engineering is a fundamental element of ALE’s partner community, ensuring that the supply chain is resilient, and the third are external-unpredictable challenges, which are essentially the unknowns. Our focus at ALE is to make sure that all predictable challenges, whether they be internal or external, are handled by automation processes supported by AI to ensure that we work as flawlessly as possible. If the predictable systems are optimal, then we are able to focus on the unpredictable and react effectively, thanks to data analysis.”

as a whole, but behind the scenes, it’s the people at ALE - their minds and creativity - who are the heart of the organisation. “At ALE, people are our strength and we work like a family,” says Mohamad. “We help each other to make things happen, and it is the foundation of our teamwork, and it is very important to us. This is also very personal to me as I've been with the company for 20+ years now. The satisfaction you get when you are working on something with a purpose is fundamental to ALE, and I attribute that mainly to the people that I’m working alongside, and their mindsets to make things happen. Culture plays a key role at ALE, and we place a lot of importance on it.”

This is where ALE’s adaptability and agility comes in. “We optimise according to requirements on a regular basis, tweaking the systems as needed to reach KPIs,” he says.

The optimisation of systems, digitalisation and automation are critical to the business

“It is important that innovation is isolateddepartmentratherholistically,approachedthanbeingconfinedtooneoranaspectofyourbusiness”

There are other notable developments too. Mohamad is a sponsor of ALE’s #GoGreen program. This initiative aims to find new technologies that will contribute to protecting natural capital, building sustainable cities and limiting global climate change.

“It's almost the fifth year of our partnership,” explains Mohamad. “K&N’s innovation and technology continues to hugely benefit us as well as aligning with our willingness and vision to undergo such a technological evolution. Working together as a team to make this happen has been great. And as a bonus it’s also one of the reasons for our improvement in on-time deliveries over the last few years, which has made our customers very happy, of course.”

“With price increases continuing across the globe, we need to be vigilant and dynamic when anticipating outcomes which yield to calculation and therefore prediction”

RASHEED MOHAMAD EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

explains Mohamad. “At ALE, we continue to encourage remote work, and an important part of this initiative is enabling effective hybrid-working which contributes to cutting travel emissions. As part of the effort, we are also utilising our facilities to host key events remotely, such as our annual Connex conference.”

Orienting himself with an eye to the future, Rasheed Mohamad concludes: “With all of these changes, we predict a huge increase in uptake for our subscription model. Significantly, with lead times now at 70 weeks – which we see continuing into 2023 – and with price increases continuing across the globe, we need to be vigilant and dynamic in terms of anticipating those outcomes that yield to calculation, and therefore prediction. Integrating intelligence throughout the supply chain will result in precise forecasts, tracking and automated pick and pack with added valueUltimately,activities.”atALE, Mohamad and the wider team always strive, he says, “to turn the unpredictable into the predictable.” and as a 4PL partner (Fourth Party Logistics), provides ALE with the ecosystem to make sure they have a clear e2e delivery mechanism for their system.

“The ALE #GoGreen programme aims to decrease the organisation's overall carbon footprint. By reducing paper files and the use of excessive emails, as well as sharing files in a more ecofriendly, agile and efficient manner, we can reduce our overall CO2 emissions,”

mobile-magazine.com 111 ALCATEL - LUCENT ENTERPRISE

multi-access Foretelling the future of COMPUTINGEDGE 112 July 2022

COMPUTING With edge enjoying time in the spotlight, we contemplate the future of multi-access edge computing in conjunction with the cloud, 5G and the IoT WRITTEN BY: JESS GIBSON mobile-magazine.comIOT113

Getting to the nitty-gritty of multi-access edge computing In essence, multi-access edge computing is a way of increasing the proximity of tech resources to the end user. Computing of data traffic and services is moved away from a centralised cloud to the network’s 114

he year 2021 was widely declared to be the year of edge computing. It was poised on the cusp of greatness, soon to be on the tip of every CDO’s tongue and raking in lucrative returns. Of course, the proliferation of commercial 5G, widespread shift over to the cloud, and modernisation of mobile networks post-pandemic were all credible indicators of this trajectory, so it’s hardly surprising that many telcos began seeking partnerships in the latter half of 2021 to fully realise their edge capabilities. Value is a key driver behind the rapid adoption of the edge. To this end, telcos with an edge strategy have set their sights on the dizzy heights of multi-access edge computing (MEC) in the near-future. Not only does it have endless potential for innovation across the IoT, it can help to drive down costs associated with collecting and processing data via the cloud, as well as reduce associated latency – and it’s already taking telecommunications by storm.

July 2022

“Equinix heavilyinvestingistohelpourcustomersenhancetheirexistinginfrastructureandlaythegroundworkforfulledgefunctionality” RUSSELL POOLE MANAGING DIRECTOR,EQUINIXUK, mobile-magazine.comIOT115

www.africadatacentres.com | enquiries@africadatacentres.com E mpower your business by connec ting to the lar gest Pan-African network of data centres A busi n ess o f Find out more NORWAY THE WORLD’S MOST SUS TAINABLE DATA CENTER NATION? With surplus of renewable energy, low electricity prices, good digital infrastructure and a cool climate, Norway presents a strong value proposition. www.norwaydatacenters.com DOWNLOAD OUR REPORT TO LEARN MORE 116 July 2022

edge, thus bringing it closer to the customer via regional and then localised routes. This distributed cloud architecture means that the cloud itself is bypassed in favour of the edge network, which then collects, analyses, processes and stores data.

The potential benefits of this for customers are numerous, with the proximity allowing for ultra-low latency, connected homes with real-time gaming possibilities (such as significantly reduced lag), and the enhanced performance of high bandwidth applications. For telcos, however, the benefits could be even greater. Aside from an abundance of potential use cases – including new services and revenue streams – there’s also MEC’s real-time analytics capability providing predictive and prescriptive insights, reduced costs due to localised data, and stronger levels of security and compliance to consider.

IOT117

Edge computing itself is a relatively young concept, birthed following the dawn of cloud computing in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The more global organisations and networks adopted the cloud, the more they experienced latency, low bandwidth struggles, and increased privacy concerns. Edge computing was consequently conceived to alleviate these difficulties and amplify its capabilities for different use cases. We are now in the period of further exploration via multiaccess edge computing, enabled as a result of widespread 5G rollout and localised networks. In terms of traditional infrastructure, MEC is typically implemented via data centres distributed at the edge (hyperscalers) or via a device mobile-magazine.com

(manufacturers). However, for telecom operators – who have been developing distributed network infrastructure for 4G and 5G over the past decade – the edge exists across distributed cloud architecture, which is constantly scaling up and bridging connectivity. Which telcos are combining MEC with 5G and local processing?

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Defined as a next-generation network, multi-access edge computing combined with 5G is called mobile edge computing. Thanks to the powerful combination of existing distributed mobile networks and the rollout of 5G, MEC platforms have the ability to innovate in terms of virtualisation, performance and reliability, and reach – and some of the biggest names in telecommunications have already begun.

DR EVARISTUS MAINSAH GENERAL MANAGER, IBM HYBRID CLOUD & EDGE ECOSYSTEM “When it comes to telco and edge, the need for environments”natureheterogeneousofgreaterplatformaroundecosystemanbasedacommonisbecausetheintrinsicofthose

Vodafone, meanwhile, is utilising its existing networks to analyse data traffic and mobile network performance events before making any network-changing decisions. The idea underlying this is based on the understanding that Vodafone can simultaneously add MEC capacity and integrate new network connectivity, while also managing efficiency and services on both a highly-localised and international level. Johan Wibergh, Chief Technology Officer of Vodafone, says: “As the needs of our 300 mn plus mobile customers evolve, so will our network using this new platform. It is a global data hub that gives us a real-time view of what is happening anywhere on our network, uses our global scale to manage traffic growth cheaper and more efficiently as customer data consumption grows by around 40% per year, and supports the full automation of our network by 2025.”

“With 5G in place, you need to bring together these ecosystems and ensure that the solutions are commercially consumable, and that takes a bit of time, but we were seeing tremendous traction, especially in those mission-critical areas.”

Russell Poole, Managing Director, UK, Equinix, says: “Emerging edge use cases require a fundamental change in underlying digital infrastructure. Equinix is investing heavily to help our customers enhance their existing infrastructure and lay the groundwork for full edge functionality. If a customer in the UK wants to trial an edge use case, they can do so through our Equinix Solution Validation Centers, where companies can validate transformational 5G and edge technologies.”

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“When it comes to telco and edge, the need for an 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,” mobile-magazine.com

For other organisations, partnerships are key. IBM, Intel and Wipro, for example, are collaborating to create a strong digital ecosystem for telco clients with their 5G Edge“Howsolution.those come together is an ecosystem of ecosystems,” says Eric Levander, GM, Global Solutions & Scale, Network & Communications Sales, Intel.

Equinix, a global digital infrastructure company, says it is “actively standing up novel 5G use cases”. The first use case is Secure Edge from Exium, which enables highly secure, seamless multi-access edge compute functionality with tightly integrated security and network functions between the cloud, edge locations, and the devices themselves.

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So it’s time for telcos to not only start reimagining what’s possible with MEC, but also to start equipping themselves with centralised orchestration and automation capabilities to manage, as well as overhauling and modernising network infrastructure to increase processing capabilities.

Currently, organisations are creating –or looking to create – on-premises and near-premises edge-based platforms for smart cities, industrial sensors, and wearables (used in healthcare, insurance and finance); progress in this direction is expected to continue into 2023 as providers realise the positive business implications.

JOHAN WIBERGH CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, VODAFONE says Dr Evaristus Mainsah, GM, IBM Hybrid Cloud & Edge Ecosystem, whose team focuses on systems integrators, looking to build solutions around IBM’s technology and partners for cloud and telecommunications – which includes edge computing.

A bright outlook on the horizon

Now that edge computing is evolving to include the convergence of residential, business and mobile networks and virtualisation, telcos will be hard pushed to find valid reasons for delaying the adoption of MEC; the competition and potential innovation opportunities are hotting up. the needs of our 300 mn plus mobile customers evolve, so will our network using this new platform” mobile-magazine.com

Between 2023 and 2025, the remit of edge computing is expected to expand to further advance manufacturing quality control and the remote control of heavy machinery, with the potential for vast change across the agricultural landscape.

Projections suggest that, post-2025, certain multi-access edge computing platforms could form the basis of fully autonomous tech, such as self-driving vehicles, remote surgery, and industrial robots – all of which are excitedly anticipated by consumers.

“As

Multi-access edge computing: now and in the future

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The pandemic has succeeded in highlighting the sheer importance of telecom networks across both consumer and enterprise domains, serving to accelerate the need for – and subsequent adoption of – edge computing capabilities.

While this has led to novel healthcare, manufacturing and retail solutions already, it has the potential to elicit more, particularly in conjunction with IoT use cases. Increased demand is going to require increased infrastructure, causing the processing environment to become unmanageable.

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TOMORROWSTREET NURTURESOFECOSYSTEMSTECHTHEFUTURE mobile-magazine.com 123 PRODUCED BY: WHITEGLEN WRITTEN BY: ASHCROFTSEAN TOMORROW STREET

Tomorrow Street – a joint venture between Vodafone and the Luxembourg government – is bridging the divide between scale-ups and corporates T he most successful economies are a joined-up network of ecosystems that are fuelled by synergies and shared goals –essentially, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This model can be seen at work in the smart offices of Tomorrow Street, situated in the ever-expanding business district of Luxembourg City. Tomorrow Street partners with young companies who have innovative tech, helping them to scale across the globe.

“The other goal is for us to help support the development of the tech ecosystem in Luxembourg through attracting scaleups to Luxembourg and hosting them in the Tomorrow Street offices.”

“We have two primary objectives,” says Kenny Graham, the Scotland-born CEO of Tomorrow Street. “For Vodafone, we identify tech that can be used to help transform and evolve its network, IT, and digital estate – or to enable new customer propositions.

It is a venture that connects scaleups, corporate partners and Vodafone functions to establish and grow new business opportunities. It is a joint project between Vodafone’s procurement business, based in Luxembourg, and the Luxembourg government’s national tech incubator, Technoport.

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Kenneth (Kenny) Graham, CEO, of Tomorrow Street mobile-magazine.com

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Key corporate partners

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Accenture and Exclusive Networks

“We work very closely together, sharing our scouting pipeline of startups and scaleups, and looking for opportunities to take those technologies and scale them across the Vodafone ecosystem together,” explains Graham.

Tomorrow Street defines a scale-up as a company that already has significant funding and a growing revenue stream, generated from a product relevant to Vodafone’s strategic“Typically,priorities.we'relooking for companies that have got around 100-plus employees, because that gives a large global company like Vodafone the confidence that they’ve got what it takes to scale – the support infrastructure, including operational people you need to put a company out to a global playing field.”

Tomorrow Street has two corporate partners in Accenture and Exclusive Networks, the latter of which is a global cybersecurity specialist.

KENNETH (KENNY) GRAHAM

TITLE: CEO COMPANY: TOMORROW STREET

In addition to Quantexa, Tomorrow Street partners Vizibl, Sitetracker and BlockGemini are all providing Vodafone with solutions that have digitised its operations. New customer propositions have also been launched with Security Scorecard and Digital Barriers. Security Scorecard provides organisations with an executive summarystyle assessment of their cybersecurity risks. Its partnership with Tomorrow Street has helped it expand into Europe.

customers300mnpartnercountries2149marketsworldwide

Kenny has held a number of leadership roles over a 20+ year career at Vodafone covering a wide range of disciplines, including, Technology Strategy, Product Development, Business Planning and Supply Chain Management.

TOMORROW

One such company is Quantexa, who were introduced by Accenture, which has 500 staff and is performing strongly in the financial crime sector, detecting fraud and money laundering. “They have a powerful technology that can ‘connect the dots’ in different data sets,” says Graham. “We've now brought them into Vodafone, and they're using that technology to help Vodafone better understand their customer base. They're a company that is very well funded with a strong range of products, and are now moving into different industry sectors.” Tomorrow Street scaleup partners are enabling digital transformation and new business products Tomorrow Street has partners covering a range of technologies important to Vodafone and the Luxembourg ecosystem.

STREET

Kenny is the CEO of Tomorrow Street, a joint venture between Vodafone and Luxembourg’s technology incubator, Technoport. Tomorrow Street partners with innovative young companies and supports them to scale across the globe.

INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: LUXEMBOURG

Graham and his team say they feel lucky to meet so many exciting young scale-ups, but that sometimes the job can be tough, as not all of them come through the robust evaluation process to become partners.

“We have to focus our time and energy on those companies that best fit Vodafone's needs and the needs of Luxembourg’s ecosystem.”

Expeto is another example of an innovative tech company whose mobile private network solution is being deployed by Vodafone Partners.

Tomorrow Street nurtures tech ecosystems of the future

Digital Barriers has a leading-edge video surveillance solution already proven in the security and defence sectors, but that is now productised for commercial use with Vodafone customers.

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One of the main ways Tomorrow Street helps bridge the divide between scaleups and big corporates is to provide operational support.

“Abusiness”ispositiveteamhigh-performingwithadynamicvitalforany

Corporates & scale-up have different mindsets and priorities According to Graham, the other main challenge is that both corporates and scale-ups have different mindsets, processes, constraints and priorities to contend with.

• Continuing to evolve its model, so the companies with which it partners can scale at pace.

• Developing a vibrant global ecosystem that allows it to identify young companies able to support Vodafone’s strategy and Luxembourg's tech nation goals.

“It’s all about achieving our end goals,” says Graham, “which are to bring innovation to Vodafone and both tech talent and young companies to Luxembourg.”

KENNY GRAHAM CEO, TOMORROW STREET

• Creating an inclusive, growth-focused culture, both within the Tomorrow Street team and the community in which it works.

“So we have to chart a course for both parties to get to a successful outcome,” Graham says of bridging that divide.

He adds that there are three key elements to Tomorrow Street’s strategy:

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Rhys Astoralli is the Arch Summit Lead at Tomorrow Street, and oversees the Arch SummitThoseevents.delivering keynotes at the 2022 Arch summit include the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, who has also attended past events.

Also speaking is Sophia Kianni, the noted Iranian-American environmentalist and climate activist, who is the youngest female appointed to the UN's youth climate change group.Then there is Rana el Kaliouby, an AI thought leader and author of the book, Girl, Decoded . 2022 Arch Summit is ‘keenly anticipated’ “We are massively anticipating this year’s Arch,” he says. “The whole purpose of the event is to use networking as a way to close the gap between the world of corporates and the organisations in the start-up and scale up ecosystems, and everyone has missed that these past two years.”

Growing and strengthening Vodafone's tech scaleup ecosystem – and that of Luxembourg – is the main purpose of one of Tomorrow Street’s most important undertakings: its annual Arch Summit event, first established in 2018.

It established Arch as a means to bring the two groups together and further close the gap between corporates and scale-ups, while adding leading technologists, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders to the mix. The purpose of the event is to create new opportunities through human contact, of which there was precious little during the pandemic.

KENNY GRAHAM CEO, TOMORROW STREET

“Together with Vodafone, we spend a lot of time navigating the scale-ups, with the end goal being bringing their innovation to Vodafone. We support their procurement processes, sales enablement and productisation processes, and also provide both project management support and technical support.

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131 TOMORROW STREET

“We've got a dynamic team with a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences, and we apply that to whatever challenge or opportunity we face to help advance that company into the Vodafone ecosystem.”

“Tomorrow Street’s goal is to identify young companies able to support Vodafone’s strategies and Luxembourg's tech goals”

Growing Vodafone and Luxembourg's tech ecosystem is a key goal

Unsurprisingly, what with the past two years, the last event took place in 2019, when 5,000 people attended over the course of two days – around 40% of whom were entrepreneurs and senior leaders - mixing with people from industry and specialist organisations. In all, there were around 100 corporate exhibitors, and roughly the same number of start-ups. And then came COVID-19, which saw Arch Summit shelved for two years.

He adds: “Large organisations will typically use scale-up technology to solve an internal business problem, or they'll look at how they can use it as part of their product portfolio or marketAstorallipositioning.”saystheevent

New Zealand-born Astoralli adds that the event is particularly effective at “identifying and exploring different areas of value generation”.

“One of the difficulties for start-ups and scale-ups is access into large corporates, which is where the human connection aspect of Arch is important,” says Astoralli. “What we've seen with past events is that, when you bring these two worlds together, you can actually become more efficient in terms of product development or the way in which you orientate yourself in building solutions.”

He adds: “There are panel discussions, thought-provoking keynotes and masterclasses, all driven by thought leaders across many areas, and so conversations and dialogue are very rich.

“We connect such people with those scaleups and start-ups most likely to be of interest to them,” explains Astoralli. “Without Arch, 132

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Curated walk-abouts a feature of Arch Summit Tomorrow Street is mindful that the networking element of Arch Summit is as effective as possible, which is why it stages carefully curated event walk-arounds with corporates and industry thought leaders.

is also vitally important in another regard: giving start-ups and scale-ups access to large organisations.

“You don’t get that when you’re sat by yourself, studying technology or a problem. You look at it through a single lens. But when you bring other parties to that discussion, you're able to explore where the tech needs to evolve and how it might be consumed by corporations or consumers.”

“Technology is creating the future, so we all need to ensure that it takes everyone with us” RHYS ASTORALLI ARCH SUMMIT LEAD, TOMORROW STREET Rhys Astoralli, Arch Summit Lead, Tomorrow Street. mobile-magazine.com 133

or an event like it, connecting with a large corporate or a thought leader can be very complicated and difficult for start-ups.” He adds: “If you are an organisation of 20 people and want to sell into an organisation of 50,000, where do you go? Who do you talk to? How do you go about it? At Arch, we make those people connections, and, by doing so, we can help unlock some of the synergies that naturally exist.”

“Arch Summit is an event that’s about existingnaturallytoconnections,meaningfulmakinghelpunlocksynergies” RHYS ASTORALLI ARCH SUMMIT LEAD, TOMORROW STREET 134 July 2022 TOMORROW STREET

This year’s Arch event will have a slightly different feel to previous ones, because of the huge importance that ESG has assumed in recent years.

How do we make sure that we have more young girls going into stem subjects such as aerospace, biological sciences and chemical engineering?”

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“When we think about diversity and inclusion , where is the technology that helps people in their day-to-day lives?

“For us, it was really important to look at Arch Summit through that lens of inclusion and diversity,” says Astoralli. “We want to also promote technology that is more inclusive and doesn't leave people behind; it's really important to shine a light on that.

WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND OPERATORSNETWORKMOBILEGLOBAL 136 July 2022

With mobile adoption central to so many new technologies transforming global commerce, we take a look at the top 10 network operators M obile Network Operators (MNOs) provide communicationswirelessservices to consumers, private companies and businesses around the world. In recent years, we have come to realise how vital the mobile industry is in keeping us connected, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when many, if not most, of us were made to work remotely from home, making us reliant on mobile networks, mobile technology and connectivity. From fintech and insurtech, to health apps, communications, shopping and more, a frictionless mobile technology experience has never been so critical.

TOP 10 mobile-magazine.com

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TOP 10 0810 09 As one of the world’s leading providers of technology, communications, information and entertainment products, Verizon is transforming the way people, businesses and things Theconnect.company offers voice, data and video services and solutions on its award-winning networks and platforms, delivering on customers’ demand for mobility, reliable network connectivity, security and control. Verizon was also the first company in the world to launch commercial 5G for mobility, fixed wireless and mobile edge computing. Verizon Founded: 1983 CEO: Hans Vestberg Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global broadband,lineservices,includetheHeadquarteredcustomersAfrica,18companytelecommunicationswithoperationsincountriesacrossAsiaandandover403millionacrosstheiroperations.inNewDelhi,company'sproductofferings2G,3Gand4Gwirelessmobilecommerce,fixedservices,highspeedhomeandmore. Airtel Founded: 1995 CEO: Gopal Vittal 138 July 2022

Telefónica Founded: 1924 CEO: José Álvarez-PalleteMaríaLópezTelefónicaisoneofthelargesttelecommunicationscompaniesintheworldtoday,intermsofmarketcapitalisationandnumberofcustomers.Theyhaveaninnovativerangeofdigitalanddataservices,andarewellpositionedtomeettheneedsoftheircustomersandcapturegrowthinnewbusinesses.Thecompanyalsoprovidesfixedandmobiletelephony,broadband,andsubscriptiontelevision,operatinginEuropeandtheAmericas. 08 07TelekomDeutsche Founded: 1995 CEO: Timotheus Höttges Deutsche Telekom is one of the world's leading corporate(ICT)andconsumers,IPTVcommunications,fixed-network/broadband,businessinnovativethelines.lines,customers,withtelecommunicationsintegratedcompanies,some242millionmobile27millionfixed-networkand22millionbroadbandTheyaresuccessfullyshapingdigitalworldoftomorrowwithsolutionsforprivateandcustomersbyprovidingmobileInternet,andproductsandservicesforaswellasinformationcommunicationtechnologysolutionsforbusinessandcustomers. mobile-magazine.com 139

06 A BizClik Media Group Brand Creating Digital Communities in TOP 100 Women NEW ISSUE OUT NOW Read now TECHNOLOGY Meet who runs the world. In Association with:

As a mainlandservicestelecommunicationsleadingproviderintheofChina,China Mobile provides full communications services in all 31 provinces, autonomous regions and directlyadministered municipalities throughout the mainland of China and Hong Kong, and boasts a worldclass telecommunications operator with the world’s largest network and customer base. The company’s main business focus consists of mobile voice and data, wireline broadband and other information and communications services. China Mobile

TOP 10 06 05

América Móvil is Latin America's largest wireless company and, in terms of equity subscribers, the third largest wireless provider in the world. They are headquartered in Mexico City and have operations in 18 countries across the Americas, with more than 265 million mobile customers and more than 31 million fixed lines. Their mission is to be ‘the agent of change in the region by offering new products and services that will contribute to positively transforming our customers’ lives in the years to come’.

América Móvil

Founded: 2000 CEO: Daniel Hajj Aboumrad mobile-magazine.com

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Founded: 1997 CEO: Don Xin

Vodafone

MTN Founded: 1994 CEO: Ralph Mupita MTN Group Limited entered the telecommunications scene at the dawn of South Africa’s democracy, in 1994. They offer an integrated suite of communications products and services, including traditional mobile voice and data, digital and mobile financial services, as well as enterprise services. Through their extensive investment in advanced 230indecades,infrastructurecommunicationoverthepasttwotheynowhaveapresence21countries,connectingovermillionpeople.

TOP 10 04 03

Founded: 1982 CEO: Nick Read Vodafone is a telecommunicationsleading company in Europe and Africa and their business operations are led by their purpose to connect for a better future. They develop a range of leading products and services to connect their customers and help build digital societies of the future. They connect more than 300m mobile customers and 27m fixed broadband customers across 21 markets and 48 partner markets, while also operating the largest 5G network in Europe.

Orange Founded: 1993 CEO: Stéphane Richard Orange, present in 26 countries and one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with sales of US$42.3bn in 2020, has a total customer base of 259 million customers worldwide as of the 31st December 2020. Under the brand Orange Business Services, the company is also a leading provider of global IT and telecommunication services to multinational companies. In December 2019, the Group presented its new Engage 2025 strategic plan, which, guided by social and accountability,environmentalaimstoreinvent its operator model. While accelerating in growth areas and placing data and AI at the heart of its innovation model, the Group will be an attractive and responsible employer, adapted to emerging professions. Orange net worth as of May, 2022 has a valuation of $31.99bn

02 mobile-magazine.com 143

TOP 10

TOP 10 144 July 2022

“The first truly modern company”media

TOP 10

AT&T Founded: 1983 CEO: John Stankey As the first truly modern media company, AT&T has been changing the way people live, work and play for more than 140 years. They are one of the largest telecommunications companies in the United States of America, and their mission is to use their ‘network, labs, products, services, and people to create a world where everything works together seamlessly, and life is better as a result’. As a broadband connectivity provider, their high-speed fibre and wireless broadband networks connect people and businesses across the US. AT&T is also one of the biggest mobile networks globally, with a net worth of US$152.42bn as of May 27, 2022.

WHAT CHASSAR?INSPIRES

CHASSAR, CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER AT CLAROTY

Simon Chassar, Chief Revenue Officer at Claroty discusses his career journey, what inspires him, and his proudest moments from his career so far J oining Claroty 18 months ago, Simon Chassar is currently the Chief Revenue Officer for the global cyber-physical security organisation. Prior to Claroty, Chassar ran the cybersecurity sales business at “In my time at NTT I observed a rise in the number of attacks on industrialthecriticalinfrastructureenvironments,sowhenIwaslookingatmy next career move, I homed in on OT and IOT security as the next step,” says Chassar. “My favourite thing about the industry is the conversations around protecting our lives and society as a whole. Things like fuel, shelter, food, and energy, these are the things that we consume every day, they are critical to our wellbeing as a society and as human beings. So for me, the business discussion around protecting these critical environments is an interesting sector to be in.”

SIMON

In his career, Chassar is inspired by the ability to go on journeys with people, to meet new people, and to evolve people and their understanding for the better. “I like to take people on a journey with me. We like to make sure that as an organisation we are enjoying ourselves and making sure that we learn from each other and support each

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Claroty CEO: YANIV VARDI INDUSTRY: CYBERSECURITY HQ: NEW YORK, USA five security companies together. I think seeing people come together as one company, and the success of integrating into one organisation, was another huge milestone in terms of career satisfaction.”

others’ wellbeing. So I take inspiration out of seeing others develop and enjoy what they do,” says Chassar. He adds: “Aside from my family, my proudest achievement from a career point of view began when I joined VMware in 2007, at the start of the technology virtualisation journey within servers. During my time at VMware the growth and demand in the market really stretched my abilities as an individual to develop myself and learn new skills and new technologies.

“That then set me up for when I joined NTT and had the opportunity to integrate

CLAROTY “IF AN CRO,SimonONETHENORDOESN’TORGANISATIONHAVEAPOLICYPROJECTUNDERWAY,THEYSHOULDSTARTIMMEDIATELY”ChassarClaroty

Claroty: protecting society with cyber-physical security

Chassar discussed how to achieve unmatched visibility, protection and threat detection across Industrial (OT), Healthcare (IoMT), and Enterprise IoT assets in his TECH LIVE LONDON keynote on ‘XIoT’.

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VODAFONEBUSINESS ENABLES GROWTHSECURE IN DIGITAL ADOPTION 148 July 2022 AD WRITTENFEATUREBY: SWALLOWTOM PRODUCED BY: WHITEGLEN

DIGITAL mobile-magazine.com 149 VODAFONE BUSINESS

Head of cyber security at Vodafone Business, Andrzej Kawalec gives a comprehensive view of cyber security and the demand from customers to simplify

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cross all forms of digital technology, the threat landscape is increasing, exacerbated by unprecedented global events that have shifted the way we consume digital tech and telecommunications. The COVID pandemic poses as an example of the dependency that individuals and businesses have developed on connectivity, as it saw many corporations shift to a work-from-home operating model and distanced technical capabilities had to adjust to meet the growing number of decentralised teams across the globe.

While telecommunications has been around in one form or another for centuries, it takes a major shift in operations to understand just how critical connectivity is and, equally important, how vulnerable it can be. To sustain a business in the digital world requires the correct expertise to get teams online, but also the ability to protect them from the vulnerabilities that come from extended digital ecosystems. This is where Vodafone Business’ role begins: with a recognition that digital adoption – particularly among small businesses – left a void that could easily be filled with cyber threats and ransomware attempts. In comes the cybersecurity team at Vodafone Business, led by Andrzej Kawalec, Head of Cybersecurity, and responsible for the telecom giant’s cybersecurity portfolio, helping companies minimise exposure to threats.

Asolutions

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Vodafone Business enables secure growth in digital adoption OF CYBER SECURITY,

Securing businesses for the day-to-day Kawalec cites the global pandemic as a “microcosm of a rapid adoption of technology”, which, as one of the major catalysts of the industry, is a big challenge that Vodafone Business has been faced with over the past few years when it comes to cyber threat defence. Putting this into perspective, Kawalec gives an overview of the shift and explains how digital solutions have become embedded in most aspects of business.

ANDRZEJ KAWALEC HEAD

VODAFONE BUSINESS

“ We're going to see greater focus, not just on large single targets, but across many organisations”small

“The principal way of doing most things was analogue or physical, and we actually shifted to the primary way of doing most

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things in our day-to-day lives, digitally,” says“WhetherKawalec. that was telemedicine, whether that was online, home education, hybrid working or transacting and banking, the delivery of food and groceries – the access has shifted towards digital as the primary mechanism, and then hybrid and physical secondarily.”

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

TITLE: HEAD OF CYBERSECURITY

ANDRZEJ KAWALEC

153 VODAFONE BUSINESS

Andrzej Kawalec is the Head of Security Portfolio at Vodafone Business. Andrzej manages Vodafone Business’ global portfolio of security offerings. An inspirational and creative leader in the use of advanced information technology, Andrzej is constantly working to refine the balance between securing and enabling information assets. Andrzej is widely recognised for his expertise in cyber security and digital change. A former CTO himself, he has a vast amount of experience working at the board-level across public and private sectors, helping to define and promote cyber security strategy. He believes that Security is the enabling layer for innovation. From autonomous driving to digital healthcare, the technologies and societies of the future will not reach their full potential without secure digital foundations.

As digital transformation takes place at such a rate, what Vodafone Business saw was an increased level of concern around trust and privacy. This was particularly evident among small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), which lacked sufficient capabilities to ward off cyber Addressingattacks.these two ‘waves’ of change, he completes the trio of digital trends by discussing the regulatory shift that took place during COVID-19 as a reaction from governments and industry bodies to the increased level of digital adoption and threats. Ultimately, as explained by Kawalec, “those mobile-magazine.com

BIOEXECUTIVE

ANDRZEJ KAWALEC HEAD OF CYBER SECURITY, VODAFONE BUSINESS 154 July 2022 VODAFONE BUSINESS

“We're really proud because it allows you to understand and detect what's happening across your organisation”

“One of the big areas we're really focused on is extending into some really exciting new areas of technology, including how we work at the edge of our networks and deliver cloud computing to companies of all sizes. Also, how we roll out and help people understand and use the internet of things.”

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155 VODAFONE BUSINESS

To support its global network, Vodafone Business develops exciting new initiatives to minimise the threat level for all organisations, which was a particularly crucial function during the pandemic. One of the more immediate projects to be put in place as a response to rising digital adoption is the V-Hub. Specifically developed for SMEs, the V-Hub acts as a knowledge centre for digital adoption and advises leaders on making the right choices in their transition, as well as securing their digital ecosystems.

three things are crashing onto organisations of all sizes”, creating significant stress and strain on businesses. Simplifying security is at the heart of Vodafone Business

One of the key messages emphasised when talking to Kawalec surrounds Vodafone Business’ overarching goal of simplifying cybersecurity for both individuals and businesses. The firm currently serves a global network of 300 million people with connectivity they interact with in their everyday lives, putting Vodafone in a widespread position of trust from its global clientele. Of its customer base, it serves over 6 million businesses globally, ranging from SMEs to large corporations – but the message of trust remains the same.

“We look across, not just the underlying connection of organisations and people, but at how they use technology, be that as an employee or a consumer, how they use cloud and advanced analytics,” Kawalec explains.

Mitigating risks is one area in which Vodafone Business has gained the trust of its clients, but another critical area that the company is proud of is its detection and response capability, formed as a response to the extent of damage that businesses can suffer from in the event of a cyber breach. According to Kawalec, the ability to detect cyber attacks can reduce recovery times from what would usually be 21 days.

However, in the grand scheme of things, this is a step in the right direction as the firm undergoes prolonged work to help firms understand their cybersecurity much better.

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“We’re right in the middle of rolling out a security risk rating, helping all of our customers understand how they can better protect the things that matter most.”

“It’s something we're really proud of, because it allows you to understand and detect what's happening across your organisation and all of the micro moments; interactions; connections; data that's sent; the services you use; and managing and detecting the behaviour of those things,” says“WhenKawalec.something happens that is out of the normal bounds of behaviour, it could be a great indicator of a cyber attack. That's the moment that you need to put in place a response.”“We'veput in place a series of detection and response capabilities for our customers, allowing them to bring that time right down and reduce the damage or the impact of an attack.” Supply chains and industry demand cybersecurity One of the critical areas for cybersecurity highlighted by Kawalec is the supply chain industry, which also echoes similar messages across other industrialised sectors.

While global insights are necessary for organisations, in terms of securing their operations – particularly in the realm of supply chains – they must also champion solutions that provide pinpoint accuracy in the event of a cyber attack. This narrows down the entry point of an organisation and remedial work can begin much faster.

Theoversight.”company’s risk rating product provides organisations with that capability and allows them to visualise their primary risks and the vulnerabilities that are presented through working with otherWithorganisations.theimplementation of the internet of things (IoT) into industrial settings, such as manufacturing and utilities, the key to achieving this successfully is to, again, look at the number of entry points and apply logic similar to that of the supply chain.

“Security is a global game. You really need to understand the global geopolitical trends and be able to track cyber criminal gangs and operations and how they've industrialised their activities across borders and different technology types.”

“How does this trade off in the supply chain? Well, understanding and knowing all of the organisations that you as an individual company work with, being able to track and understand their risks, and to highlight and understand trends across those suppliers – these are things that you can only get with that global scale

Vodafone serves over customers across the globe, including over business customers 300mn6mn mobile-magazine.com 157 VODAFONE BUSINESS

“Industrialisation has lowered the price point for cyber criminals to attack and allowed them to prosecute attacks at a much greater scale. They're able to then directly monetise both the extortion of the data that’s released and secondary sale on the black market or the deep web,” explains Kawalec.

As the attack surface increases and businesses, both large and small, adopt more sophisticated systems for their day-to-day operations, the battle against cyber crime continues, albeit with an increased number of criminals focusing on ways to access data much easier and at a lower cost to them.

The remedial work carried out by cybersecurity teams is paramount to ensure that digital ecosystems are secure

that support customers at their most vulnerable and distressed. By leveraging a strategic partnership network, the strain on users worldwide is eased.

Bringing together best-in-class solutions

“Big, global, exciting new partners. Our job is always to integrate those solutions, delivering them and translating them to our customers,” he says.

This is what sets the Vodafone Business service apart: offering a range of solutions

In order to maintain its global network, Vodafone Business works with best-in-class solution providers to ensure the best possible outcomes for organisations. Citing work with the leading information technology company Accenture, Kawalec expands upon the nature of their contributions.

158 July 2022 VODAFONE BUSINESS

“We're going to see greater focus, not just on large single targets, but across many small organisations as the price per attack decreases. We're also going to see a greater focus on the user. This is where emerging trends like ‘zero trust’ really come to the fore,” Kawalec says.

mobile-magazine.com 159

To expand business globally and securely, organisations must look at their threat landscape, as well as their detection capabilities and strategies for minimising the damage inflicted by impending cyber threats. Luckily, Vodafone Business’ Head of Cybersecurity is on hand to help, believing that simplifying cybersecurity for its customers is the key focus for success.

or as intelligent as possible to manage the abundance of threats to which companies are exposed. As businesses hand out digital devices to their employees, Kawalec believes this will facilitate a shift in the way cyber criminals target them, finding their entry points on the edge instead of conventional infiltration methods.

LUMENtargetsTECHNOLOGIES apps, SASE and network security 160 July 2022 PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS

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One key focus is Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), an emerging cybersecurity concept first devised by Gartner three years ago. In essence, the idea of SASE is to offer secure network services anywhere from which a user might connect, and this converged solution should ideally both optimise and extend the performance of 162

“Everyvision.company we sell to is becoming a technology company – and our job is to support that,” says Smith, summing up the global challenges and opportunities. “Our business is about application experiences for our customers.”

Lumen believes its platform is among the fastest and most secure for nextgen apps and data, providing a strong foundation for a SASE solution portfolio n our Zoom call, I can just make out ‘Talent Winner’ draped behind Chris Smith, VP of product management platform applications at Lumen Technologies, and then spot a stack of exhibition lanyards hanging from the office wall – two small yet tangible symbols of his industry stature and customer-facing profile. For the next hour, we journey down more virtual avenues. In one of the most telling comments, Smith discusses how Lumen is transitioning from an asset supplier into a ‘technology experience’ company; certainly, the sheer variety of products and solutions under its portfolio are testament to its current output and future

July 2022 LUMEN

Excluding Special Items, Diluted EPS of $0.63 per share for the first quarter 2022, compared to $0.44 per share for the first quarter 2021 Generated Adjusted EBITDA of $1.966bn compared to $2.165bn, excluding Special Items of $52mn and $8mn,

BIOEXECUTIVE CHRISTOPHER SMITH TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, PLATFORM APPLICATIONS INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: COLORADO, UNITED STATES

Smith consistently creates world class product experiences through solid product management practices. He has a keen ability to identify and solve customer business problems paired with more than 20 years of experience developing and managing products and applications for the enterprise market. Smith currently manages Lumen’s Platform Applications portfolio, which includes management and investment oversight for the security, SD-WAN/SASE, UCC, voice, and CDN product portfolios, as well as revenue responsibility for these portfolio globally. Prior to joining Lumen through the Level 3 acquisition, Smith was Vice

ReportedrespectivelyNetCashProvided by Operating Activities of $1.375bn Generated Free Cash Flow of $846mn, compared to $850mn, excluding cash paid for Special Items of $48mn and $41mn respectively Full-year 2022 financial outlook measures updated due to the closing of the 20-state ILEC transaction now being expected in early Q4 2022

Q1 2022 HIGHLIGHTS Reported Net Income of $599mn, compared to reported Net Income of $475mn for Q1 2021 Diluted EPS of $0.59, compared to $0.44 per share a year earlier.

portfolio.globalsolutionsenterpriseresponsibleManagement,ofPresidentProductforvoiceandthedatacenter

applications spread across individual users, premises, edge, and securetheitsnecessary.andenterpriseminimisesenvironment,applicationSASEcloudpublic/privateenvironments.NotonlydoessimplifytheoperatingittheIToversightmanagementLumenbelievesplatformisamongfastestandmostfornext-generation

SHAWN DRAPER VICE PRESIDENT

The SASE framework represents abethatapproachfunctionsandSD-WANcomprehensiveaimtechnologiesseveralconvergencetheofestablishedthattomergecapabilitiesnetworksecurityintoaunified–onewillultimatelybettersuited,in4IR(4thIndustrial Revolution) era, to meet the needs of enterprise data workloads and applications.

OF ENTERPRISE PLATFORMLUMENENGINEERING, 164 July 2022 LUMEN

applications and data, providing a strong foundation to support a comprehensive SASE solution portfolio.

“Never before in the history of ofcustomersengineeringnetworkhavehadthelevelflexibilityonwheretheywanttoputtheircomputeandhowtheywanttoconsumenetwork”

SHAWN DRAPER

Draper has more than 20 years of experience developing and supporting applications across all segments of the Enterprise and Consumer markets. He currently manages the development of applications and platforms that span all segments of the Enterprise market with responsibility domestically as well as globally.Priortojoining Lumen through the CenturyLink acquisition, Draper was Vice President of Application Development, responsible for the company’s systems development and support across all facets of the operation. Over his time in the industry, he has built an extensive portfolio of experience supporting the company’s merger and integrations.activitiesacquisitionandsystems

It used to be that companies hosted their applications in their building, but no one’s doing that anymore, as the cloud is more convenient, offers more scale and is decidedly more cost effective.

“We’ve created optional packages, too, such as a SASE advisory service, where we can look at your environment over three months and create a roadmap from a consulting perspective,” says Smith.

BIOEXECUTIVE

TITLE: LOCATION:

Draper brings a passionate and visionary approach to transformation and the application of technology to solve real world challenges. His goal is to revolutionize the way customers consume network to meet the need created by the expanding role it plays in today’s environment.

VICE PRESIDENT ENTERPRISE PLATFORM ENGINEERING INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY

Cloud convenience and Edge distribution benefits Its 450,000-route fibre miles provide less than 5ms latency across 97% of Lumen’s US customers, as well as those in EMEA, APAC and Latin America, spread across more than 60 countries.

KANSAS, UNITED STATES

Organizations are focusing on digital acceleration by investing in modern technologies across many network edges such as LAN, WAN, campus, data center and cloud. Fortinet is the only vendor to provide the convergence of networking and security consistently across all network edges with AI-powered threat protection to deliver better user-experience. These innovations enable a Zero Trust Edge strategy, which requires consistent convergence across all edges for your hybrid work-force. Fortinet,

Digital everywheresecurity,you need it.

“We built the cloud edge for two reasons: for customer applications and to build products,” says Smith. “We repurposed buildings into mini data centres, and that’s the foundation for the cloud edge, which is now paying dividends.

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“As we’ve built the platform, we can push software down it – it will look more like a smartphone upgrade – and the cool thing is that it future proofs our customers’ technology position,” adds Smith.

“Thenetworksoftwarehardware,andworlds are coming together –but the reality is that it’s already here”

Fast-paced changes mean that the days of sending drivers out in a van are being consigned to history.

“The reality is that we are no longer looking to deliver a host of services through network boxes, but are instead bringing the platform to your location, which gives you the ability to consume at the initial level and add functionality – when and how customers want to do it.”

Lumen recently announced it is providing enterprise-grade servers at the edge of the network, enabling blockchain ecosystem Flux to launch new staking nodes and accelerate building Web 3.0 – a decentralised, next generation of the internet built on blockchain. mobile-magazine.com

SHAWN DRAPER VICE PRESIDENT OF ENTERPRISE PLATFORM ENGINEERING, LUMEN

“There are certain application experiences that don’t work in the public cloud – so we made a big investment in the Lumen cloud edge, as it’s highly distributed.”

Since then, many Horizon customers have made the move from perpetual to subscription, making VMware’s End-User Computing business a leading driver of the company’s SaaS transformation.

Currently, it is working with VMWare, Fortinet, and Versa, with Palo Alto Networks set to come on board later in the year.

Lumen positions itself as ‘partner inclusive’, meaning that multiple partners can be added quickly to its platform.

LUMEN

Smith highlights three distinct customer journeys: ‘Do it yourself (DIY)’; ‘Do it together’; and ‘We’ll do it for you’, the latter of which is the fastest growing area.

Fortinet secures the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organisations around the world, empowering customers with intelligent, seamless protection across the expanding attack surface and the power to take on ever-increasing performance requirements of the borderless network.

KNOW...YOUDID 168 July 2022 LUMEN

The Fortinet Security Fabric architecture can deliver security without compromise to address the most critical security challenges, whether in networked, application, cloud, or mobile environments.

VMware is focused on accelerating growth of its subscription and SaaS portfolio, providing customers the flexibility. VMware Horizon is its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and apps software - one of the first products to go SaaS with the release of Horizon Universal Subscription at VMworld 2019.

Smith highlights three distinct customer journeys: ‘Do it yourself (DIY)’; ‘Do it together’; and ‘We’ll do it for you’, to help address varied needs of customers, most of whom would benefit from Lumen’s Managed and Professional Services to successfully implement their SASE solution. ADOPTS ‘PARTNER INCLUSIVE’ APPROACH

VMware streamlines the journey for organisations to become digital businesses that deliver better experiences to their customers and empower employees to do their best work. Its software spans App Modernisation, Cloud, Networking & Security and Digital Workspace.

Customers not only have access to Lumen’s fibre-optic network, whether through public or private means, but can also extend it to the cloud provider of their choice. mobile-magazine.com

CHRISTOPHER SMITH VICE PRESIDENT PRODUCT MANAGEMENT,APPLICATIONS,PLATFORMLUMEN

“As we’ve built the platform, we can push software down it – and the cool thing is that it future proofs our customers’ technology position”

Also attending the call is Shawn Draper, vice president of enterprise platform engineering. Lumen is the amalgamation of dozens of acquisitions over the years, with Draper working at CenturyLink for over 20 “Lumen’syears.ability to be able to deliver platform capabilities over its high-speed, highly secure network gives it the ability to allow customers and business units to create unprecedented levels of capability,” says Draper.

169

“Never before in the history of network engineering have customers had the level of flexibility on where they want to put their compute and how they want to consume the network,” he says. “Our low latency network enables customers to place their computer where it’s needed most and that’s the premise behind edge – the ability to operate closest to where the capability is being consumed or data is being created.”

LUMEN171

around the US aseeingindustryelection,Presidentialthewasaroundmillionattacksamonth

“We give the ability to consume SD-WAN across a variety of providers, and expect this year to deliver our SD-WAN services ‘over the top’ – as an Edge Gateway or softwarebased capability and full digital experience. That’s not just installation but extends all the way through activation and management, paired with firewall capabilities.”

”

LUMEN GOES DIGITAL TO COMBAT DDOS THREATS

DDoS is a nuisance, to put it mildly. Lumen mitigated attacks that targeted one company more than 1,300 times – but this number is just the tip of the“Aiceberg.yearago, around the US Presidential election, the industry was seeing around a million attacks a month – it was overwhelming for our operations team as we were doing it manually,” says Smith. “Now it’s digital – you go to our marketplace, agree to a few commercial terms, point-andclick, hit ‘scrub’ and we fix it for you.”

mobile-magazine.com

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic.

Smith describes the current focus on experience as the ‘wrapper’. “We’ve done a lot of work to simplify our offers and provide an Amazon-like experience,” he says. “We are reinventing ourselves.” ago,

“For years we’ve said that the hardware, software, and network worlds were coming together – but the reality is that it’s already here. So, we’re reimagining how we deliver network, security, compute and application integration and support, over the top, as a platform,” he says.

“A year

CHRISTOPHER SMITH VICE PRESIDENT PRODUCT MANAGEMENT,APPLICATIONS,PLATFORMLUMEN

KNOW...YOUDID

172 July 2022

Operating in a TelecommunicationsDynamicMarket EUROFIBER mobile-magazine.com 173 PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING WRITTEN BY: SAM STEERS

urofiber is a fibre-optic network provider in the business market and was founded in 2000 in Belgium. CEO Alex Goldblum leads the company and has been part of its journey for more than 16 years.

Explaining what Eurofiber does from his office at home, Grevengoed says: “Utilising our own fibre-optic network and data centres, we provide smart, open, futureproof cloud infrastructure and connectivity solutions to companies, government bodies, and non-profit organisations. Customers have complete freedom to choose the services, applications, and providers they need, allowing them to tap into the full potential of digital innovation.”

HERBERT

174 July 2022 EUROFIBER

He adds: “Eurofiber companies Dataplace, FullSave and Eura DC operate eleven data centres in the Netherlands and France. Supplementing that vital infrastructure, we also offer interconnectivity between “Utilising our own fibre-optic network and data centres, we provide smart, open, future-proof connectivityinfrastructurecloudandsolutions to companies, government bodies, and organisations”non-profit GREVENGOED DIRECTOR CUSTOMER PROCESS AND QUALITY, EUROFIBER

Herbert Grevengoed, Director of Customer Process and Quality at Eurofiber, discusses the company’s journey as a fibre-optic network provider, operational processes, and data challenges

Currently, the company is establishing hyper-automation in its primary processes to automate all manual, repetitive tasks to help the employees focus on the customer.

Eurofiber’s first venture was a 500km connection project called RandstadRing, which linked the four biggest cities in the Netherlands: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Hague, and Utrecht. From there onwards, the company grew gradually within Belgium and the Netherlands, where it became the leading altnet provider. In 2016, Eurofiber branched out to colocation and cloud infrastructure services, before three years later becoming a European player by acquiring several French companies. Then, in October 2020, it welcomed Dutch pension fund PGGM as a new shareholder, in addition to Antin Infrastructure Partners, which has held the majority of Eurofiber shares since 2015.

Last year, Eurofiber partnered with German network operator NGN which adds another 19,000 km to our European footprint. Today, the company operates a fibre-optic network of 60,100 km in 4 countries and 11 data centres in the Netherlands and France. According to Eurofiber’s Customer Process and Quality Director, Herbert Grevengoed, the company has more than doubled its staff from 300 to almost 700 over the last four years – an impressive feat in a competitive market.

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If Eurofiber were to be defined by a central theme, it would be dynamism, Armand Rouw, Head of Corporate Communications at Eurofiber, explains. “We are in a very dynamic market, with rapidly changing technologies and market demands - for example, in demand for hybrid cloud solutions. We have a leading position there and we are very active in M&A and establishing joint ventures, but we are also growing organically and as people. All these aspects, together with a tight labour market means that managing growth is of the essence to Eurofiber,” he says.

As the company continued to grow throughout the 2010s, it noticed an increasing need for high-quality data. “This started several initiatives, like data governance, data cleaning and data migration,” Grevengoed says. However, he adds that a lot of those earlier projects failed, prompting a fresh start in 2018 with a new data quality project to clean and gain control of our data.

Grevengoed explains that “by this time, we figured that data is not to be handled on its own”. But why is that the case? “It is tangled with processes, culture, and organisational structure. Therefore, we started to set up a data organisation to not 176 July 2022

nearly all carrier-neutral data centres in The Netherlands and Belgium through the DCspine platform.” The Eurofiber Group consists of an extensive number of subsidiaries: Eurofiber, Eurofiber Cloud Infra (including Dataplace, DCspine and MatrixMind, The Netherlands and Belgium), FullSave, Lumos, Netiwan, Eurafibre, ATE, and Eura DC (France).

Spotting a requirement for high-quality data

customer

Herbertflourish”Grevengoedwas born in the Netherlands. As Director Customer Process and Quality at fibre-optic network and cloud infra provider Eurofiber, his role includes being responsible for the vision and the strategy around the company’s data and processes.

HERBERT GREVENGOED TITLE: CUSTOMER PROCESS AND QUALITY DIRECTOR EUROFIBER LOCATION: ALMERE, FLEVOLAND, NETHERLANDS mobile-magazine.comEUROFIBER177

“With many of our partners, we have been on a great journey of continuous improvement and innovation, as we grow together and help the economies and societies in which we operate

atFibreAccelerateRolloutScale Celebrating partnership with Eurofibre Connect

skilled labor, regulatory

About Prodapt Prodapt has a singular focus on the Connectedness vertical. Prodapt partners with the leading creators of our hyper-connected world. Prodapt’s customers range from telecom operators, digital/multi-service providers (D/MSPs), technology and digital platform companies in the business of Connectedness. Prodapt builds, integrates, and operates solutions enabling next-generation technologies and innovations. Prodapt services global leaders including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, Adtran, Vodafone, Liberty Global, Windstream, Virgin Media, Rogers, Deutsche Telekom, among many others. Prodapt’s customers help more than a billion people, and five billion devices stay connected. Prodapt has offices in North America, Europe, Latam, India, and Africa. It is part of the 120-year-old business conglomerate, The Jhaver Group, which employs over 22,000 people. is the future. The future is

FibreAccelerateDesign&Rollout scalingoperatingLeanmodelforservicedelivery AcquisitionAccelerateCustomer&ProductRollout ManagementNetworkDigitiseDataInsightsdriven&Analytics Key Business Value Propositions Cycle reductiontime Reduction of Field Visits TruckNon-productiveandDispatches 100% ComplaintsAuditingRemote& High HandoffandNetworkQualityDesignLowerFailures NPSinImprovementMTTRand Less–HyperautomationDoMorewithWorkforce RepairsandMaintenancePredictiveProactive Fibre

The adoption of fibre is exponentially growing in Europe, redefining the future digital society. It is predicted to grow by 3X in the next five years. While fiber providers are excited about this, they face serious challenges in their ambitious rollout plans. management, shortage of compliance, local authority management, healthy & and other problems hinder their path to accelerating is accelerating the rollout & digitisation of Europe by enabling of the top 10 intelligence.

safety management,

fiber providers using opensource accelerators, hyper-automation & Artificial

now!

Workforce

fibre rollouts. Prodapt

fiber

only clean data, but to manage it throughout its lifecycle, with people being responsible for it – constantly showing the value of data – and with a good portion of perseverance.

He notes that there's a good mindset of dynamic people that are willing to work hard and willing to work together. “I see a lot of customer focus in there as well, so long as what we do is for the customer. We have a culture of people that can manage all the growth and everything that's coming to them, so we try to facilitate that also with our data team but also, within the whole cultural change, that we enable as a leadership team.”

Struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of demand has been Eurofiber’s biggest data challenge thus far, as increasing numbers of businesses, sectors and industries are beginning to realise its value and shift their priorities – although this challenge can be viewed in a positive light.

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People have been a key part of Eurofiber’s success, growing in tandem with the company itself. “Being experts in their fields, they are continually learning and improving, anticipating and adjusting to the challenges that such a fast-growing company in a dynamic, international environment brings. We manage growth, among other things, by emphasising the importance of collaborating and sharing expertise, and by facilitating that,” states Grevengoed.

“One of the unique factors of the process was that we were showing the value of clean data, the value of data on its own, and making sure that people notice that there is something in it for them. So that was a big cultural change there,” he says.

Customer

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Executive Profile: Herbert Grevengoed, Director Process and Quality, Eurofiber

“To have a central organisation facilitating decentral business units and requests is a challenge we are facing this year, and in the coming years,” Grevengoed comments. Data quality management and its benefits for Eurofiber’s customers and employees Data quality management is one of several processes implemented by Eurofiber to greater accuracy and efficiency and data quality is essential for both Eurofiber’s customers and employees. “For example, if the data of our installed base is missing or incorrect, this will reflect on the invoice we send to our customer. We could end up billing the wrong amount, which is not something Eurofiber stands for,” says Grevengoed.

“We thrive on optimal customer experience; knowing what is relevant for our customer is one of the biggest factors contributing to that. If you are looking at technical data, we can say 182

“The challenge is actually one of luxury from my perspective,” Grevengoed says. “There has been a great hunger for data over the last couple of years. In all corners of the company, people are starting to work with data to base their decisions on. Data that is needed to better serve our customers, facilitate our employees, and improve the organisation; anywhere, anytime.”

He points out that another problem with the potential to arise if the quality of the data isn’t managed effectively is that the company fails to register customer interactions, which will lead to an incomplete view of the customers’ needs.

“Data is not to be handled on its own. It is tangled with processes, culture, and organisational structure”

July 2022 EUROFIBER

HERBERT GREVENGOED DIRECTOR CUSTOMER PROCESS AND QUALITY, EUROFIBER

“Together with our goals for process automation – which needs data, of course – we almost can’t handle all the requests. It is therefore also a challenge to manage the meta data, such as definitions, business ruling, privacy and security, in one place, so everyone is looking at the same truth.”

that having poor data quality can lead to great inefficiency and costs for our contractors. When we have a cable in the ground that is registered in another location, we could end up digging in the wrong place, breaking a cable already there, or searching for it without steering. So there are a lot of consequences around that,” he says.

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Eurofiber is also using artificial intelligence. “Having good data quality is one of the main focus areas, but we are now exploring AI as an enabler to improve data quality management. We could use ML algorithms that help us in auto-classification of data, self-healing etc., in order to quickly merge our disparate European business units into one way of working,” explains Grevengoed. The company is working on this with its partner, Prodapt, a leading global consulting, technology & managed services provider to the Connectedness industry. Prodapt is also Eurofiber’s partner in digital transformation. 2000 Year founded 675 Number of staff Eurofiber is a fibreoptic network and cloud withservices,providerinfrastructurebasedintheNetherlandsAswellasdigitalconnectivityEurofiberisalsoinvolvedcolocationandcloudservices mobile-magazine.com

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In terms of future trends in the data industry, Eurofiber expects further acceleration of both the roll-out of fibreoptic networks and the demand for cloud infrastructure services, like hybrid cloud platforms throughout Europe. Grevengoed also says that digitisation will become even more vital for economies and societies, and the industry will grow further driven by cloud adoption, smart cities, remote working, 5G, IoT, and edge computing. mobile-magazine.com

“Collaboration and partnering are in Eurofiber’s DNA. We believe in andvalues,onrelationshipslong-termbasedsharedgoalsandexpertiseambition”

HERBERT

GREVENGOED CUSTOMER PROCESS AND QUALITY, EUROFIBER Grevengoed says they inspire him with the new technologies in the data field and provide AI guidance. In addition, Eurofiber is looking into the possibility of predictive maintenance, which could aid the company’s network quality andDiscussingconsistency.Eurofiber’s partner ecosystem, Grevengoed says that the company is part of the digitisation chain – together with suppliers of equipment, software and other resources, contractors, managed service providers and, of course, end customers.

DIRECTOR

“In this chain, there is a strong interdependence as we all have our own specialisation. Therefore, collaboration and partnering are in Eurofiber’s DNA. We believe in long-term relationships based on shared goals and values, expertise and ambition,” commented Grevengoed. “With many of our partners, we have been on a great journey of continuous improvement and innovation, as we grow together and help the economies and societies in which we operate flourish.” Preparing for future company growth by enhancing the data organisation structure Looking towards the next 12 to 18 months, Eurofiber is focusing on further expansion. “We are developing our data organisation structure even further, to be ready for future company’s growth,” Grevengoed says. “We are delivering value with data science, having our first business results ready so our colleagues can get familiar with the concept and directly see the benefits. This fits in our data strategy, that we transform into a datadriven organisation by showing ‘what’s in it for me’ to the people that it impacts.”

186 July 2022 PRODUCED BY: MALTBYBEN WRITTEN BY: GRAYCATHERINE

mobile-magazine.com BACKMARKET187

Back Market’s Quentin Le Brouster outlines how his company looks to transform tech consumption by offering refurbished products as an alternative to new onsumer behaviour is undoubtedly changing. As governments, businesses and individuals become increasingly climateconscious, people around the world are making more responsible decisions when it comes to the environment.

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“We are bringing tech devices back to life by extending their lifespan, building immortal machines that will last forever,” says Le Brouster.

Insight by Deloitte suggests that consumers are selecting different measures with the aim to shop more sustainably. The consulting company found that people have embraced the reduction of single-use plastics and opt for the more sustainable brands on the instead.

Keen to be part of this shift, Thibaud Hug de Larauze, Quentin Le Brouster, and Vianney Vaute founded Back Market in 2014 to revolutionise the technology marketplace.

QUENTIN LE BROUSTER CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, BACK MARKET

“Our mission at Back Market is to empower people to save the planet; this can only be done with a team that has different perspectives and experiences”

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marketplace and wants to lead the way in the transition towards a circular economy. “To understand Back Market and why this is important: to produce a new smartphone, for example, you have to use 82,300 litres of water to create a new product. To put back on the market a product that is going through refurbishment you only need 13,900 litres,” outlines Le Brouster.

On a mission to restore trust and desire for refurbished devices, Le Brouster explains: “The new electronic device market remains larger than the refurbished market. We are really willing to challenge the way we consume tech.” In the eight years since its founding, the Paris-based company has become the world’s leading renewed technology

Quentin Le Brouster is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Back Market. Passionate about tech, from an early age Quentin was already repairing computers to give them a second life. He coded his first websites in high school and pursued this passion that droves him at university, where for 5 years he learned to have a 360 vision of a tech project. At the end of his studies, Quentin joined the Neteven company where he spent 3 years understanding the ISs of large manufacturers and integrating the APIs of the largest global marketplaces. It was there that he met Thibaud to create Back Market.

BIOEXECUTIVE QUENTIN LE BROUSTER TITLE: CO-FOUNDER AND CTO COMPANY: BACK MARKET INDUSTRY: CONSUMER ELECTRONICS LOCATION: PARIS, FRANCE mobile-magazine.com 191

In its most recent Series E funding round, Back Market raised US$500mn, led by Sprints Capital, Eurazeo, Aglaé Ventures, General Atlantic and Generation Investment Management. This brought the company’s total valuation to US$5.7bn.

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“What we want there is to reduce the ecological impact of technology. We are fighting to change the way tech devices are consumed for a positive impact on the planet,” he adds. On top of the huge water savings, refurbishing a product produces 6kg of CO2 emissions whereas a new device produces 86.

Overcoming fears with the refurbished tech marketplace

“What makes us successful is that they are always happily surprised. Just when they're scared about scratches and they receive a device good as new, they're like: ‘Wow. Why did I wait so long to switch to refurbished devices?’” he continues.

QUENTIN

Le Brouster, who is also the Chief Technical Officer at Back Market, explains that despite these environmental benefits, there is still a way to go in terms of changing people’s perceptions of refurbished devices: “Even our customers in France have some fears, as the majority of them are consuming refurbished devices for the first time. So they tend to be scared about the scratches on the devices or the quality of the battery.”

“We are really proud of our geographical expansion. We have opened more than 12 countries in the last two years and we are not willing to stop there” LE CO-FOUNDERBROUSTERANDCTO,BACKMARKET

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“As we look to drive forward our mission and as the representation”increasingtech,statuschangescompanythequoinweare QUENTIN LE BROUSTER CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, BACK MARKET Never trust, always verify: Okta as the core of Zero Trust LEARN MORE Okta is the leading independent identity provider. The Okta Identity Cloud enables organizations to securely connect the right people to the right technologies at the right time. 194 July 2022 BACK MARKET

Although he says that the lower price of Back Market’s devices makes the company attractive to a number of consumers, Le Brouster believes it is the company’s mission that has been a key driver for its success over the past eight years.

“There has already been a big boom in France in how people consume smartphones, as they want to change. Comparing this, for example, to the US where 90% of the population are still buying their phone with their mobile plan. As well

He says: “In the end, when people buy at Back Market and we explain our mission, people are engaged in what we are doing and they want to be part of it. People are willing to change their consumer behaviour.”

consoles,watches,alsosmartphones,refurbishedofferingasBackMarketofferssmartgaminghomeofficeequipment,smallappliancesandmore. mobile-magazine.com 195

products we shipped were not working. We replaced them as soon as we could and the customer then had a good experience. But still, the defective rate was higher than we would want. We went into a lot of effort to audit the refurbishing process to assess the quality of the product. We audited all the different types of battery-related issues to the different phone models and built our expertise on that.”

QUENTIN LE BROUSTER CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, BACK MARKET

196 July 2022 BACK MARKET

With consumer experience at the heart of its operations, Back Market also holds customer feedback in the highest regard: “We realised, to be successful with customers is to be really passionate about them. We have customer reviews printed on the wall in the offices, with a process called ‘Everyone Support’. So every employee of Back Market that joins the company does one day of customer support. They will work as a customer care agent to understand and talk to the customer, understand the pain they could have, understand the complexity of the problems they face.”

“We have a dedicated team to manage customer care, but we also have a dedicated team to manage the worst experience and bring some answers to that. So, for example, sometimes we ship products that are working at 99%, but Julybe the Bluetooth is not working well. So it's enough for us to send them a new product, but many of our customers need their mobile phones for work etc. To ensure they aren’t without a device, we send them a temporary phone in the meantime, which they ship back to us when they receive their new one,” he continues. We are successful in France for sure. We are in 16 countries already but there is still a lot to do. We want to be known in the US. We'll keep on working and developing to deliver more refurbished devices,” added Le Brouster. Building trust by focusing on the customer Consumer experience is key to Back Market. Looking to build trust for the refurbished maker, Le Brouster explains that the company is always looking for ways to improve the quality of its product. This is where the CTO plays a key role, ensuring the technology is up to scratch and when it isn’t, finding solutions to resolve it. When we launched Back Market, 15% of the

“Solidarity was really important to us during the pandemic”

“Thanks to this, we managed to reduce this defective rate from 15% to 3%. We drastically improved the quality of the refurbished and that in the end is what will build trust.”

A new phone uses up about 73 hot tubs worth of water. According to Back Market, a refurbished phone saves around 60 hot tubs worth. 381 kg of raw materials need to be dug up to produce a single smartphone - another way buying refurbished helps save the planet. mobile-magazine.com 197

“Save the planet – that is what we are trying to do, basically” QUENTIN LE CO-FOUNDERBROUSTERANDCTO,BACKMARKET 198 July 2022

2014 year founded 650+ number employeesof 17 countries in the EU and USA 5.5k+ tns of wasteelectronicavoided 1k+ refurbishingpartners Quentin Le Brouster, Co-Founder and CTO of Back Market mobile-magazine.com 199 BACK MARKET

200 July 2022

Promoting solidarity during the coronavirus pandemic Going beyond consumer experience, Back Market is dedicated to giving back to its community, particularly in times of difficulty. During the pandemic, the company looked to ways to support struggling families as they navigated homeschooling.

Le Brouster explains: “Solidarity was really important to us during the pandemic. We’ve been helping a lot of NGOs by giving them some materials for families that couldn't afford it. For some families, it was hard for them to have the correct equipment to home school all their children, as many need computers to assist with their school work. Refurbishing is a really good way to make products cheaper and help NGOs and other initiatives that supported families during the lockdowns.” This solidarity feeds into its company culture and the company ensures that its employees feel supported as well. Noting one unique initiative that as co-founder he is particularly proud of, Le Brouster says: “Back Market gives our employees two days where they can attend a strike on a matter that is important to them. One of the days we go as a company, the other day the individual can go to one of their choosing. In March of this year, the company will be going to the World Climate Strike. We will have no meetings on this day and instead, we will walk the streets as part of the protest.”

As well as promoting climate consciousness, Back Market knows that sustainability isn’t as simple as reducing CO2 emissions and water usage. Keen to tackle a number of sustainable development goals, the company is an avid supporter of diversity, equity and inclusion.

“Back Market gives our employees two days where they can attend a strike on a matter that is important to them”

“Our mission at Back Market is to empower people to save the planet; this can only be done with a team that has different perspectives and experiences,” says Le Brouster.

QUENTIN LE CO-FOUNDERBROUSTERANDCTO,BACKMARKET mobile-magazine.com 201 BACK MARKET

He continues: “As we look to drive forward our mission and as the company changes the status quo in tech, we are increasing representation. It's a big job and one that we can't do alone. So we are partnering with amazing organisations like PowerToFly, 50inTech and Women in Tech. And together,

QUENTIN LE BROUSTER CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, BACK MARKET

202 July 2022 BACK MARKET

As the company developed a comprehensive defence strategy to prevent data leaks, Okta proved an important component to ensuring Back Market was well protected. This strategy was essential we're on a mission to educate and provide opportunities for anyone to change the exciting world of tech, regardless of the background.”

“What we want there is really to reduce the ecological impact of technology. We are really fighting to change the way we are consuming tech devices”

Using the cloud to bolster defences Joining Back Market on its mission is cloud software company, Okta. Consistently named a leader by major analyst firms, Okta helps connect organisations with technologies to help them reach their full potential. With different challenges around theft and data security cropping up for the Back Market team, Le Brouster explains that the partnership

was crucial for connecting the company’s devices: “We selected Okta to manage all the rights, all the identities of our employees and allow us to be sure that we could also manage all the rights on the different software we use. And now, if a computer gets stolen, we can turn it into a rock basically and remove everything that's inside. We can wipe it remotely and we can close it remotely.”

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On top of its expansion efforts, Back Market is also keen to focus on its company image. Known for the refurbishment of mobile phones, the company wants to showcase the other products it has to offer; 40% of its products are not mobile devices and Le Brouster explains it is important to expand on what else the refurbished market can offer. He concludes: “We also want to offer the ability for anyone to repair the products through Back Market. So either by themself through self-repair, by having someone that will come to them and fix their product, or going down the street to a repair shop. That is an important domain that we would love to explore.”

“We are really proud of our geographical expansion, opening in more than 12 countries in the last two years and we aren’t willing to stop there. We're in Europe, the US, Japan and we want to expand Back Market in all of Asia. So that will be a big challenge,” says Le Brouster.

as the company had looked to expand since its founding, and will continue to do so as it looks to move into other markets.

204 July 2022 PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT COMMUNITY FIBRE IS MORE THAN LIVING UP TO ITS NAME

COMMUNITY FIBRE mobile-magazine.com 205

206 July 2022 COMMUNITY FIBRE

M any companies will claim ESG “is in our DNA”, but how many can point to their company’s name as evidence it behaves in a responsible and nurturing fashion? Community Fibre can, and its community mindedness runs all the way down from its branding to the communities across London that it serves, by installing fibre-based broadband connections. Unlike most providers, Community Fibre builds, owns and operates its own dedicated fibre-optic network. This means it does not have to rely on anyone else's cables, be it Openreach or any of the other major broadband players. And where most broadband providers use a combination of fibre-optic cable Community Fibre strives for excellence both in the service it provides and the good it does through ESG initiatives

2013 foundedFibreCommunitywas mobile-magazine.com 207

MIKE BROOMAN HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN, COMMUNITY FIBRE

“Our AmbassadorsDigitalProgrammesetsusapartfromourcompetitors”

“We've got a very strong ESG focus at Community Fibre,” he says. “It’s one of our company goals and one of the main reasons I wanted to work here.

COMMUNITY FIBRE 208 July 2022

“As Head of Supply Chain, it’s my responsibility to make sure our supply chain matches and supports those ESG goals and purposes.” To this end, he is part of the company’s Green Team, which is led by CEO Graeme Oxby. The Green Team helps the business focus both on short- and long-term projects designed to reduce its impact on the“Myenvironment.involvement in the Green Team is in supporting those who deliver these benefits, by ensuring they've got access to the products and services they need to deliver to the communities that we serve.”

The company also has a Digital Ambassador Programme (DAP) as part of its strong line-up of ESG programmes. Under DAP, Community Fibre trains members of the community to become qualified ‘digital ambassadors’, who then go on to connected to old copper phonewires, running its open network means Community Fibre’s network is fibre-only.

Fibre by name, fibre by nature – and the same goes for the ‘community’ portion of the company’s proposition – all of which is great news for its customers across 29 London boroughs. ESG element of Community Fibre is very strong The ESG element of Community Fibre’s business is strong, and, as Head of Supply Chain for the business, Mike Brooman is as heavily involved in helping the company deliver in this area as he is helping ensure its customers receive a great service.

The company’s people-minded corporate ethos is also evident in its Community Connect Programme,

Michael Brooman has a track record of delivering improvements in performance, wherever he has worked. He is a strategic head of supply chain with more than 11 years’ experience in senior positions across operations, supply chain and procurement. He says: “I’m an expert in strategic vision and development, and accomplished in transforming supply chains, leading teams, managing people and BusinessstudyingofengineeringB2Be-commerce,andsub-contracting,logistics,experienceBroomanchange.”hasbroad-basedacrosstransportandconstructionmaterials,IT,utilities,labourSG&A,andhasalsoworkedine-procurementandoncontracts.HeholdsaMaster'sinmechanicalfromtheUniversitySouthampton,andiscurrentlyforanMBAatWarwickSchool.

BIOEXECUTIVE MIKE BROOMAN TITLE: HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM mobile-magazine.com 209

help residents in their community be more digitally empowered. “Our ambassadors teach everything from online banking to basic internet security,” says Brooman. “It helps prevent members of London’s communities falling victim to the digital divide.” Digital Ambassador Programme is USP for Community Fibre He adds: “DAP sets us apart from our competitors. It’s definitely a USP. It not only supports our commitment to build a better broadband service for London but puts something back into the communities we're working in, and selling to.”

community centre and everywhere in the area. Then we'll add you to the list, and we'll come and connect you.”

Making huge strides on sustainability Sustainability is also hugely important to Community Fibre. Evidence of this can be seen in the big strides the company has been making, with Brooman revealing that it has a batch of 20 fully electric vehicles arriving “very soon.” “We’re well on our way towards moving to an electric fleet. They'll be replacing traditional diesel vans,” Brooman says. He admits that a barrier to a wider adoption of EVs is lack of infrastructure around charging, but this too is something Community Fibre is seeking to address.

Brooman says: “Community Fibre co-founder Tim Stranack is working with local authorities and landlords on a daily basis, seeking to install charging points around our network, for use by our engineers. For us, it's vital that the infrastructure is in place to enable the charging of our vans during the working day.” Brooman says Community Fibre would like to make its entire fleet electric but that, currently, the limited range of such vehicles is a sticking point. “Many of our engineers work and live in London, where you can't necessarily charge a van, because you might not have a driveway to charge it on. Infrastructure for EVs is going to take more than people having a private charging point on their driveway,” heBroomanexplains. adds that, although currently unable to provide a fully electric fleet because of a lack of infrastructure, he believes the company will have made “a significant move” to making the majority of its fleet electric “within the next four years”. through which it connects community centres to gigabit broadband for free. To date, 300 such centres have benefitted from“We'vethis. got many more planned in the coming months,” reveals Brooman. “That's 1GB internet access available to everybody who uses those centres. It helps bring communities together in all sorts of ways – for training, entertainment, and social interaction. It’s all about digital inclusion. It's a really good part of our mission to bring better broadband to all of London. “The scheme is advertised heavily by housing associations and local authorities, as well as by landlords and also on our website. You can go to the Community Connect part of the website and apply to have broadband provided to your

COMMUNITY FIBRE 650+ 210ofNumberemployees July 2022

“We’re well on our anmovingtowardswaytoelectricfleet” MIKE BROOMAN HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN, COMMUNITY FIBRE Community by name and nature mobile-magazine.com 211

The comprehensive solution for all your telecom and FTTx needs We offer fibre cables and connectivity for every requirement Webro cables and connectivity products support many Altnets and Integrators in delivering FTTx throughout the UK and globally y Cables up to 3456 Fibre y Singlemode G652.D G657.A1 G657.A2 y Overhead, Ribbon, Duct, Microduct, Direct Burial, Armoured, and Last Drop Cables y PIA Approved y Connectivity solutions including Pre-terms, Panels, Closures, Cabinets and Cable Management y Products available up to B2ca for high CPR-compliance areas y Most Products Available from Stock CONTACT US

Webro’s future business strategy includes the pursuit of new market areas.

Webro are ISO 14001 certificate holders, so have obligations in terms of Sustainability and Environmental commitments. Chris says, “over the past few years, we’ve adopted the policy of reduction in nonrecyclable plastics.” “In addition, product miniaturisation within select markets will reduce plastic use within both packaging and product manufacture. We’ve also reduced our internal combustion vehicle fleet. Our current profile includes 50% electric vehicles and 25% hybrid, with the long term commitment to completely move away from internal combustion.”

LEARN MORE Webro’s Director Chris Bacon talks Cables and Connectivity

Webro was created in 1980 and is the foremost cable and connectivity provider based in the UK, supplying critical solutions to the wider European market

Chris Bacon is Sales Director of Webro, and has been in the Cable and Connectivity Industry for over 27 years. “I was quite a young man when I started as a Planning Assistant at a local manufacturing company, Raydex, who made cables for communication and RF markets. “Over time, I’ve performed many roles, which have included Technical, Design, Process Engineering, Sales and Business Management.” Webro was created in 1980 as UK agents for Pope. With over 42 years of trading history, Webro has developed business in many different product areas outside of the original wiring, TV and satellite portfolio’s. This includes Industrial, Data, Telecoms, Broadcast, Control and Instrumentation. Webro’s facility, as it stands today, has 4,600SQM of internal warehouse floor space. “Our narrow aisle racking allows us to stack up to four pallets high, resulting in over 18,000SQM of racking storage,” says Chris. “In addition we have over 2,500SMQ of yard space, enabling storage of external product types. With such a large amount of space, our stock value is typically high, helping us to service our customers with ease on a next-day-delivery basis.”

“The company is year-on-year”doublingalmostinsize MIKE BROOMAN HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN, COMMUNITY FIBRE 214 July 2022

As such, strong relationships with Community Fibre’s supply chain is vital. “Furnishing suppliers with robust and accurate forecasts as early as we can is important. We try to get products onto a purchase order as soon as we can, to help offset some of the challenges that we're seeing. Purchase orders always trump forecasts,” states Brooman. 29 Community Fibre serves Londoners across 29 boroughs in the capital mobile-magazine.com

Moving from the ‘community’ element of his job to the ‘fibre’ part, Brooman emphasises that the company is facing serious supply challenges, just like everyone else. Strong supplier network vital for Community Fibre Asked what the main challenges are, Brooman says: “We've got the chip-set shortage, which is creating quite an issue for us. Because the big players are taking so much of the supply, we've had to be quite clever about the way that we're ordering. We've seen some lead times in excess of 60 weeks from some of our suppliers, where they were traditionally 12 to 26 weeks.”

Plus, the company is almost doubling in size year-on-year, which is compounding these supply problems. Brooman says: “We are enjoying exceptionally fast growth, so forecasting far in advance is obviously prone to errors, which means we have to be flexible and quick to react.”

215 COMMUNITY FIBRE

“We've been fortunate enough to be able to get products into the UK and into our warehouses as early as possible,” says Brooman. “So, rather than running as lean as we'd like, we're having to get products in early and stack things high, just to make sure our customers are not let down.”

Securing supply has meant Community Fibre, like so many other companies, has had to move from just-in-time inventory to a just-in-case model.

“This means the competition for products is very high,” he says. “So we make sure to secure raw materials

“Communityisatthecoreofeverythingwedo” MIKE BROOMAN HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN, COMMUNITY FIBRE mobile-magazine.com 217 COMMUNITY FIBRE

Community Fibre is growing fast, yet so too is fibre broadband adoption, which brings further pressures to supply. In 2019 London alone, just 6% of homes had a broadband connection; today, Brooman believes around 65% of homes have access to a gigabit connection.

early, giving our manufacturers order forecasts as early as possible, in order to get products in.” Company training schemes ease struggle for labour Another challenge is the huge demand in London for labour and subcontractors.

“Every supplier in our value chain is importantancoginthewheel”

MIKE BROOMAN HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN, COMMUNITY FIBRE 218 July 2022 COMMUNITY FIBRE

“During any request-for-information process, we assess how closely they match our culture,” says Brooman. “It's tricky assessing the culture of a company from a desk-based assessment, but we do all we can to qualify their claims during this process. Plus, we attend trade shows and engage with trade associations in order to widen our supply chain. This allows us to look at a much wider variety of suppliers and hopefully find those that match our values.”

“To this end, Community Fibre is putting training programmes in place to encourage more people into the industry.”

Community Fibre looks to engage with suppliers who share their values, both in terms of ESG but also, crucially, excellence. But how does it identify such suppliers, exactly?

“It's a tricky one,” admits Brooman. “Our purpose is to provide Londoners with fast broadband at an affordable price, so it's really important our supply chain helps us achieve this.” As it expands its supply chain, the company communicates its story, culture, and purpose to suppliers.

“Everyone is fishing from the same pond, so we work hard with our subcontractor partners to make sure we're a preferred customer. They're not only critical to us being able to deliver our fibre to the homes of Londoners, but also in helping us grow and keep pace with demand.

Brooman reveals that the company’s materials’ suppliers “are always pushing the boundary of innovation” and that their goal is to “bring the best products to market for our customers”. Every supplier ‘is an important cog in our wheel’ “Every supplier in our value chain is an important cog in the wheel, both in terms of the physical assets customers experience and also in

Brooman says its supply chain is focused on delivering customer excellence, stating that “they understand the importance of their role in this”. He adds: “They help us deliver excellence in a number of ways, such as subcontractors delivering high-quality assets that give our customers a fast connection.”

220 July 2022 COMMUNITY FIBRE

helping us deliver post-installation support,” Brooman asserts. “Because of this, we've got the ability to quickly help customers who are struggling with connection issues by using state-ofthe-art tech products. They're a brilliant addition to our supply chain. They all have a huge role to Collaborationplay.”with suppliers is also absolutely key, according to Brooman, who reveals the company “has a strong collaborative relationship with the majority of our supply chain”. He adds: “We work very closely with our fibre-cable supplier, for example, to ensure they have got visibility on our forecasts, changing demand profiles and bill-of-materials changes. Their factories in Europe are aligned

MIKE BROOMAN HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN, COMMUNITY FIBRE

“We collaborate with our technical team and other departments internally to bring new, improved solutions to market”

From its cables under Londoners’ feet and training programmes to the community hubs across the capital that enjoy free broadband, Community Fibre is living up to its name in every conceivable way.

mobile-magazine.com 221

with our demand. They hold our stock and product in expectation of any kind of microvariations of expected build forecasts.”

By way of example, Brooman says the company recently made a decision to upgrade its fibre cable to the ‘armoured’ variety, which reduces the damage from customers accidentally vacuuming the cables or causing damage in other ways.

This allows Community Fibre “to roll with the punches”, so to speak. He adds: “We also collaborate with our technical team and other departments internally to bring new, improved solutions to market.”

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