TELEPERFORMANCE DISH NETWORK VODAFONEFEATURING: LEO-GEERT VAN DEN BERG, Director of Fixed Networks, on innovation, partnership and first-rate customer service GOOGLE What ittotakesleadMTN procurementSmartintelecoms MOLA TV Technology as an art form VodafoneZiggo: A Digital Driving Force
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The Mobile Team JOSEPHINEEDITORWALBANKCHIEFCONTENTOFFICERSCOTTBIRCHPRODUCTIONDIRECTORSGEORGIAALLENDANIELAKIANICKOVÁPRODUCTIONMANAGERSJANEARNETAMARIAGONZALEZ CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER MATTHEW SOPHIE-ANNOSCARCREATIVEJOHNSONTEAMHATHAWAYPINNELLHECTORPENROSEMIMIGUNNSAMHUBBARDMIMIGUNNJUSTINSMITHREBEKAHBIRLESONJORDANWOODCALLUMHOODDANILOCARDOSO VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER KIERAN WAITE DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS MARTA CHIEFTHOMASERNESTEUGENIODENEVEEASTERFORDDREWHARDMANJINGXIWANGJOSEPHHANNAMARKETINGMANAGERJASONANDIKA-SMITHMARKETINGMANAGERALICEPAGE MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR JAMES WHITE PROJECT CHIEFMANAGINGSTUARTDIRECTORSIRVINGJAMESBERRYDIRECTORLEWISVAUGHANOPERATIONSOFFICERSTACYNORMANCEOGLENWHITE JOIN THE COMMUNITY Never miss an aboutDiscoverissue!+thelatestnewsandinsightsMobileMagazine...
In this issue, we’ll be exploring the full spectrum of our burgeoning mobile technologies, spanning everything from the world’s smart factories to the ever-illusive metaverse.
JOSEPHINE WALBANK josephine.walbank@bizclikmedia.com “The metaverse offers opportunities that we can’t even conceive yet, let alone fully prepare ourselves for. This is precisely why the entire industry needs to create proactive, intuitive safety measures that are equally thinking”forward-
MOBILE MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY © 2022 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Mobiles, emergingandmetaverse,themanagingrisks mobile-magazine.com 5 FOREWORD
I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank Charlie Steer-Stephenson, who has contributed throughout the magazine during her internship with us.
In this edition of Mobile Digital, we explore: 5G and data security, the evolution of the hybrid cloud, the near-future of 5G and AI in manufacturing, and the rise of the metaverse, alongside the growing risks running in parallel
Hello Mobile Magazine readers, First off, I’m delighted to be revealing my first issue of Mobile Magazine. It’s incredible to see, first hand, the extent of the innovations within this global sector.
The path forward is hugely exciting. But, we can’t ignore the proverbial Cybersecurityroadblocks.isanincreasingly pressing issue. And, as a completely multi-faceted topic, it includes individual safety, data security, business resilience and legal obligations, to name a few. But, what’s a little more innovation to the Mobile sector?
VodafoneZiggo A driving force of the Dutch digitisation 28 Vodafone Creating a place for Vodafone in the world of FinTech 76 TMT 5G DataandSecurity 68 Our UpfrontRegularSection: 12 Big Picture 14 The Brief 16 Timeline:MobileMagazine 18 Trailblazer:BarbaraHumpton 22 Five Minutes With: Rohit Jha CONTENTS
Google At Google, Supriya Iyer is asking the right questions 102 5G Future of 5G in manufacturing 94 IoT The metaverse in the classroom 120 Tech & Ai Hybrid cloud evolution, and the challenges of managing multi-cloud 148 Mola TV The Mola Experience: Technology is an art form 132
Vodafone Fiji Cultivating connections and enhancing underprivileged lives 156 MTN MTN transforms procurement with digital DNA approach 172 Tech Mahindra Driving forward 5G innovation DISH Network Taking over the US’ wireless market with Open-RAN tech 184 Teleperformance The complexities of inclusion & supply222204 OSN Back to TV-style viewing? The future of media broadcasting 236
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BIG PICTURE NEOM neom.com/ar-sa/newsroom 12 September 2022
“The Line” –modelling the smart cities of the future Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
This design – originally unveiled by Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Chairman of the Board of Directors of NEOM – represents a new model for smart city infrastructure. This vision of our future cities is only 200m wide and 170km long. But it has the capacity to accommodate around 9 million people in an area of less than 34sq/km. The smart city would use 100% renewable energy sources. Alongside this, emissions would be limited to the minimum, as The Line is without streets or cars. Instead, a high-speed train would connect the two ends of the city within a 20-minute journey. mobile-magazine.com
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There’s ourthat'srevenuetogivetheopportunitytremendousaforbusiness.It'llustheabilitygrowlotsofinawaydifferenttocompetitors Dave Mayo EVP Network DevelopmentNetwork Build & MVNO Dish Network READ MORE 14 September 2022
The project, called 6G-ANNA, will be led by Nokia. It’s part of the larger ‘6G Platform German’ national initiative, backed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
COMPANIES WILL USE THE CLOUD TO FACILITATE EXPANSION
800k 2020 3.9mn 2022
WUPDON SEP
NOTHING Nothing phone (1) launched as a smash-hit, with over 200,000 people joining the invite-only pre-order waiting list, engraved$3000on‘Notifyrecord-breakingMe’numbersFlipkart,andoversetforthefirstmodel. EE EE has been RootScoresevenandapproaching5Grunning,forUKRootMetrics’namedbestmobilenetworktheninthyearrecordingavailability50%achievingalloftheUK-wideAwards. SMART FACTORIES AND CYBER SECURITY Shares in Nokia have dropped by 9.84% in the last 12 months, earning just US$0.29 a share. GOOGLE AND APPLE
47% OF GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY
The number of people using TikTok to watch news content has risen by 388% in just two years.
Huawei is the world’s first company to have been awarded the Global First Carbon Footprint Verification for solar inverter products.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) plans to combat Google and Apple mobile browsers’ adominationmarketthroughmarketinvestigation. 2022
mobile-magazine.com
Furthermore, a recent Equinix survey revealed that 71% of respondents plan to move more business functions to the cloud. Of those, 50% plan to make this transition with more of their businesscritical applications.
EDITOR'S CHOICE BY THE NUMBERS
HUAWEI AWARDED A LANDMARK CARBON FOOTPRINT VERIFICATION
NOKIA IS TO LEAD THE NEW GERMAN 6G PROJECT
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After our new website went live, our first magazine quickly followed suit. In July, we unveiled the first edition of Mobile Magazine. Then in August, our sister magazine, Data Centre, joined the group.
2020May THE
THE LAUNCH OF THE MOBILE WEBSITE May 2020 marked the launch of our digital platform (originally titled Mobile World). This allowed us to share daily content, expand our outreach across a global sphere, and lay the foundations for magazine.upcomingthe MOBILEEDITIONFIRSTOFMAGAZINE
2021March
TIMELINE
A REVAMPBRAND
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2020July ANDDRIVINGTM In withindiversitytheForumwithcompanydeeplyNovemberFor THE EVOLUTION
In March 2021, Mobile Magazine got a new brand look. To stand proud as part of the BizClik Media Group Portfolio (while still retaining our individuality), we refreshed our branding, took on our signature colour palette and updated our content strategy.
After hitting the two-year milestone, we took a look back at how the Mobile Magazine brand has evolved and our landmark achievements over the last two years
THE LAUNCH OF CLOUD & 5G LIVE We joined TECH LIVE LONDON and took to the stage for our first hybrid event. Expanding from the written word into the event world proved to be a big hit. So much so, that we’ve become a permanent feature in the global tech 2022Sep
November 2021, we were deeply proud to publish our company report for TM Forum. this report, we worked with TM Forum and the TM Forum D&I Council to create first industry standard for diversity and inclusion (D&I) within the industry.
VODAFONEZIGGOWITHWORKING this month’s edition, we’re thrilled to publish our new interview and report with VodafoneZiggo. always a privilege to work alongside such gamechanging industry giants, and this is a definite must-read. ANDDRIVINGFORUM:DIVERSITYINCLUSION
In
For
It’s
READ MORE TM
EVOLUTION OF MAGA ZINE mobile-magazine.com 17
18HumptonBarbaraBarbaraHumpton
September 2022
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Humpton has also spoken publicly about the importance of finding a work-life balance –a personal interest of hers, as she navigates the balance between CEO responsibilities and duties as a Tograndma.spreadher message and influence more widely, she leads her podcast The Optimistic Outlook, which explores the link between technological innovation and the mission to tackle social issues. Episodes have covered a variety of topics, from ‘What falling ill during Covid-19 taught me about leadership’ to one of the most recent episodes on ‘Accelerating America’s electric future’. In her discussion with CEOs from multiple US companies (including United for Infrastructure, Duke Energy and GoTriangle) about electric vehicles (EV), Humpton explains how Siemens’ commitment to a national EV charging network will accelerate the accessibility and equitability of EV for people across the US. A role model for #WomenInTech Prior to her twelve years at Siemens, Humpton held multiple leadership roles at various US companies, including overseeing border security and managing programme performance at the Department of Justice and Homeland Security. Since 2011, Humpton has dedicated her career to the Siemens technological mission. Starting out as Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) for her first four years there, Humpton soon proved her ability to deliver the most effective and efficient processes to Siemens’ federal customers in infrastructure, energy and healthcare. She was then promoted to President and CEO of Siemens Government Technologies for a further three years, where she led the production and promotion of Siemens’ technologies and services for the federal government.
TRAILBLAZER 20 September 2022
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“I’mwork-lifeandSTEMaboutpassionatediversity,educationwhatIcallablend”
Since 2018, she has served as the US CEO of Siemens, leading strategy and operations in the company’s mission to digitise its largest market: the US. As well as acting CEO of Siemens, she is also the Chairperson for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a policy research institute that advocates new ways of thinking about international competition and defence. mobile-magazine.com
Rohit
FIVE MINUTES WITH... JHAROHITROHITJHA22 September 2022
.
Jha is the CEO and CoFounder of Transcelestial With his team, he is designing and implementing the next generation of wireless fibre optics. Their technology offers the speed, dependability and easy implementation required to cater to the world’s everincreasing connectivity demands
“IF YOU HIRE SMART, MISSION-DRIVEN PEOPLE AND EMPOWER THEM WITH THE RIGHT GOALS, THEY WILL PUSH THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT’S POSSIBLE”
» Communication technology in Singapore, as it is around the world, is dominated by two types of technologies: fibre optic cables and radio waves. While these technologies have helped build our communications infrastructure, there are challenges that remain in providing connectivity for Transcelestial'sall.vision is to improve the connectivity experience for the next billion people. To build on this, we have developed a high-speed (up to 10Gbps) wireless laser communication device. The device we’ve developed, CENTAURI, transmits the lasers through the air instead of through fibre optic cables. This allows for a far more rapid deployment than deploying the standard underground fibre infrastructure.Whiletheconcept of using lasers to power connectivity is not new, there has been a major gap in getting it to the market. Our technology and IP make it possible for industry players everywhere to utilise next-generation lasers, which are the best in class (when compared on a price-to-performance basis). Transcelestial’s technology can be deployed in multiple industry applications including, but not limited to, telecoms, ISPs, large campus environments, ports and maritime.
Q. WHAT IS TRANSCELESTIAL’S POINT OF DIFFERENCE AS A BUSINESS?
mobile-magazine.com 23Magazine.com
It’s massively groundbreaking, and I am immensely proud to be the world’s leading company in bringing this technology to the commercial market.
Q. WHAT IS YOUR LEADERSHIP »STYLE?
Transcelestial is built on the principle that connectivity is a human right.
If you hire smart, mission-driven people and empower them with the right goals, they will push the boundaries of what’s possible. Transcelestial’s internal culture is about constantly making the improbable possible, securing technologies and solutions that bring faster, cheaper connectivity to the world.
As it is powered by underlying AI algorithms, our technology can sense and respond to weather conditions, to ensure always-on connectivity, no matter the weather. This means we can provide undisrupted communications channels, even in disaster or crisis zones, which is one of the most exciting applications of this
Q. CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES AT »TRANSCELESTIAL?
As a result, I work to be an impactfocused leader, empowering my team to see how their work is contributing to solving civilization's long-term communication needs. By cementing this meaning in the core of our company’s work, our team is both inspired and motivated to work on some of the most technically and logistically challenging problems of our generation.
» Rolling out laser communications has been a huge achievement for us, as the technology is extremely complex.
Transmitting connectivity through lasers is similar to beaming a laser as thin as a single strand of hair onto a smartphonesized window, 3km away, while both the laser and the window are moving and are subject to changing weather conditions.
FIVEtechnology.MINUTES WITH... 24 September 2022
“TRANSCELESTIALHASSETOUTTOSOLVETHEGLOBALDISTRIBUTIONCHALLENGEINCONNECTIVITY,USINGLASERCOMMS”
Transcelestial is an organisation heavily led by its values. We operate as a flat hierarchy and create a space for everyone to contribute.Thatsaid,as the CEO of a highgrowth business, my role is to ensure the long-term health of the company. My responsibilities are mainly to make sure we are focused on the right long-term goals and short-term execution. To that aim, I act as the steward and arbiter of senior management, and our chief strategist. This includes ensuring our strategy is eventually reflected in our products and our business, finding the best leaders and bringing them in, creating the best environment to achieve our goals and making sure the business is well capitalised.
Q. WHAT HAS BEEN THE HIGHLIGHT OF YOUR CURRENT ROLE (SO FAR)?
Q. WHERE DO YOU SEE TRANSCELESTIAL HEADING IN THE NEXT 5 YEARS?
» Transcelestial has set out to solve the global distribution challenge in connectivity, using lasercomms. This mainly includes three major segments: last mile/urban connectivity, intercity connectivity, and undersea cable connectivity.Ourcurrent first goal is to enhance last mile/urban connectivity. We have extensive deployments of our wireless fibre optics product, CENTAURI, across Asia-Pacific in industries as diverse as defence, education, airports, maritime ports, manufacturing oil and gas, as well as our core markets telecoms and ISPs.
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Our goal in the next 24-36 months is to go deeper into the APAC market and bring these capabilities to both the Americas and EMEA markets. By continuously innovating our product, we intend to radically reduce the cost per bit (of downloaded content) to those in the global population that currently only have sub-par internet access and extend access to the remaining 1-5% of people who are currently unconnected. We are therefore working under stealth to launch very powerful orbital capabilities, which will allow us to drop lasers as large fibre backbones into cities and towns directly, thereby powering ultra highspeed broadband and dependable 5G to all homes and offices.
mobile-magazine.com
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28 September 2022
mobile-magazine.com 29 VodafoneZiggo A DRIVINGFORCEOF THE DIGITISATIONDUTCH PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK
Theconnection.’Dutchtelco’s master connector is their Director of Fixed Network, Leo-Geert van den Berg. A harmonising team builder, with a long history of realising strategy and leading change and transformation, van den Berg has 20 years' experience in various technical managerial roles, but predominantly in telecom organisations. A team builder, committed people manager and communicatively strong according to the opinions of employers and colleagues, van den Berg has spent his career in various technical managerial roles, but predominantly in telecom organisations. For the last 21 years, he has been working at Liberty Global (LGI), of which the last seven years at PreviouslyVodafoneZiggo.CTOatZiggo in 2016, after the merger between Vodafone and Ziggo in 2017, he has since been responsible for the Fixed networks in VodafoneZiggo, including HFC, Access, IP/Core Networks, Backbone, 30
Leo-Geert van den Berg reveals how innovation, partnership and customer service has made the Dutch telco the most reliable fixed network in the country F or such a technologically advanced telco, the mission of VodafoneZiggo reads rather poignantly and humanely in its message: ‘In the end, life is all about feeling connected. With each other, with loved ones, friends and family. With the things that matter to them. So they can fully enjoy everything the world has to offer. And people, companies and society can progress. Enjoyment and progress with every
September 2022 V odafone Z iggo
Ciena addressed the need for security The coronavirus pandemic was an opportunity for VodafoneZiggo and Ciena to develop solutions to meet the security requirements of remote workers. Ciena brought its optical technologies to the table to ensure VodafoneZiggo operates with high-speed connectivity to provide its customers with a reliable, scalable, and secure network.
Connectivity has become a basic human need, particularly when, in the current employment landscape, businesses are offering more work-from-home opportunities. Connectivity will also soon be embedded into more facts of life, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and infrastructure. As the coronavirus pandemic became the main influence in the work-from-home mentality and demand for higher network speeds for all of our digital services, it exacerbated the need for a strong and reliable network to manage multiple compute-intensive tasks throughout homes. Maturing networks to meet demand As expectations run higher, networks are having to keep up – which means they must adapt to address surging demands.
“As a key enabler of innovations that drive network connectivity, Ciena was relentlessly focused on ensuring that VodafoneZiggo could continue to deliver critical next-generation connectivity to its expansive customer base which include hospitals, government agencies and enterprises,” says Hatheier.
As highlighted by Jürgen Hatheier, CTO for EMEA and APAC at Ciena, COVID-19 was a catalyst for the need for scalable and programmable networks. But, this was only a catalyst for change. Way before the pandemic, telecommunications was growing in applications.
“When VodafoneZiggo talks about reliability, quality and speed of the network, it’s underpinned by our design principles of reliability, scalability, and security,” Hatheier says. “Ciena’s WaveLogic technology allows operators to increase their fibre capacity while also decreasing their energy use. Each successive WaveLogic generation uses approximately 50% less energy on a power per bit basis, while doubling data throughput over a single wavelength.” Find out more
Ciena drives reliable, scalable networks with VodafoneZiggo Jürgen Hatheier, CTO for EMEA and APAC at Ciena, talks about its work with VodafoneZiggo and the reliability and scalability of network connectivity
“It was a constant evaluation and expansion of our network capacity, making sure we're ready for the next level. We continued to monitor the network’s quality and because we had the processes in place, we could continue during COVID as well,” said van den Berg.
Video Services, Voice Services, Internet Services and Data Centres. Earlier this year, the organisation won the umlaut ‘Best fixed network score’ from the Accenture-backed benchmarking awards.
“WE HAVE A LOT RUNEVERYTHINGISTHEONHAPPYOFFERENTERTAINMENTOFONANDMANYCUSTOMERSBOARD.BUTENGINEROOMNEEDEDFORTOPERFECTLY”
A driving force of the Dutch digitisation
LEO-GEERT VAN DEN BERG DIRECTOR FIXED NETWORK,
VodafoneZiggo 34 September 2022 V odafone Z iggo
Umlaut is an independent German group that carries out mobile benchmarks, and this year was the debut for the category of ‘fixed networks’.DuringCOVID’s peak, the organisation saw capacity grow approximately 33% per year. The telco needed to make sure that they are one step ahead of what the customers need, proactively building out the capacity so that customers could access services, at the fastest speeds, at all times.
LEO-GEERT VAN DEN BERG TITLE: DIRECTOR FIXED NETWORK INDUSTRY: TELCO LOCATION: THE NETHERLANDS €RevenueFinancial(2021)4,1billion 2% Increase compared to 2020 EBITDA (2021) € 1,91 billion 2% Increase compared to 2020 +2%+2% mobile-magazine.com 35
in Language & Speech Technology
Leo-Geert has over twenty years experience in various technical managerial roles, predominantly within telecom. He joined Liberty Global in 2001 where he held several technical management positions, the last few years as Vice-President in the Technology team. Leo-Geert moved to Ziggo in 2014 and became CTO in 2016. After the merger of Vodafone and Ziggo LeoGeert has been responsible for the Fixed networks in VodafoneZiggo. Prior to telecom, Leo-Geert worked for Philips, TNO and IBM and during the six years at IBM took several management positions at Ahold and PriceWaterhouseCoopers.Leo-Geerthasadegree from the University of Utrecht and a Master’s degree from Sheffield University.
With Tata Elxsi, you accelerate your network transformation journey. Your valued subscribers deserve superior customer experience. Tata Elxsi’s digital transformation services enables operators to transform their legacy networks into cloud-native, multi-domain, orchestrated networks. LEARN MORE
TATA ELXSI: Digital transformation
in telecommunications
LEARN
RajaGopalan Rajappa, CTO, TATA ELXSI on the company’s partnership with VodafoneZiggo to drive digitalisation in the telco industry to meet evolving demands In recent years, consumer behaviours have evolved. “We are used to an enhanced ecommercebased experience in the way we consume services,” says RajaGopalan Rajappa, CTO – Communication Technologies & Platform at TATA ELXSI. This evolution has driven the telecommunications industry to keep up with these expectations. “TELCOs have to become agile, open and cloudcentric to design offerings and fulfil their services digitally. If you look at the nature of services, consumption patterns and proliferation of media, there is a compelling need to build scalable networks that are cost efficient as well. In my view, these are the key drivers and forces towards transformation and digitalisation,” adds Rajappa. Helping VodafoneZiggo digitally transform its operations “I consider VodafoneZiggo to be pioneers in understanding and adapting to the needs of their customers,” explains Rajappa. The company is focused on understanding B2B, B2C and wholesale market segments to offer custom-built design services and service delivery platforms. As VodafoneZiggo’s primary (end-to-end) technology partners, TATA ELXSI helped with multiple programmes as part of its transformation journey. “We were privileged to be part of the initial design, development and deployment plans. Today, we are glad to see the end result in terms of a successful rollout of a truly digital network and ecosystem,” says Rajappa. As part of the transformation, TATA ELXSI has played a key role as a System Integration (SI) partner in the implementation of: 1. SD-WAN automation and orchestration for B2B/enterprise services 2. Fixed network core automation and orchestration 3. SD-security perimeter for products and services “These programmes involved infrastructure, network, CPE, services and security orchestration,” explains Rajappa. “The orchestrator and automation function collects vast data and KPI towards automatic network scaling and proactive service remediation. We continue to work closely with VodafoneZiggo’s team to launch these products in the market and manage them. We will also continue to work with VodafoneZiggo to complete their transformation and digitalisation roadmap.” MORE
New -1,900Internet+49,300Mobilecustomerspostpaid(Q22022)(Q22022) 38 September 2022
Transforming the organisation to a more digital business, such as customers being able to do services online, has been a critical part of the telco’s journey.Choosing new products or services with a click of a button “instead of having to fill in 20 forms and waiting for a week.”
Away from the high street VodafoneZiggo shop fronts, the lights of the Ziggo Dome music venue in Amsterdam and the Smart WiFi-powered devices in the homes and hands of customers, above all else is the reliability of the networks themselves.
Quality and stability Van den Berg has a major role within the Fixed Networks team in keeping the systems up and running at all times, no matter what.
mobile-magazine.com 39 V odafone Z iggo
LEO-GEERT VAN DEN BERG DIRECTOR FIXED NETWORK, VodafoneZiggo
The likes of Tata Elxsi has been one of the partners that VodafoneZiggo works with to transform into a digital business by creating and integrating software defined networks: “SDN and network automation is one of the big priorities for us,” he explained.
Another key partner in this field is TCS, which has provided key solutions to enable this“TCStransition.isone of our strategic partners in the area of fibre build digitisation and automation,” van den Berg added.
“WE'VE
Van den Berg uses the analogy of a cruise ship: “We have a lot of entertainment on offer and many happy customers on board. But the engine room is needed for BEEN INVESTING A LOT OF EFFORT AND RESOURCES ON MAKING OUR NETWORKS, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES BETTER FOR OUR CUSTOMERS”
With the explosion of devices, data demands, and security risks, today’s smart homes need Adapt™. Part of our HomePass™ suite of Smart Home Services, Adapt is a cloud-coordinated system that offers the first and only self-optimizing, whole-home WiFi technology. Today’s smart homes struggle with yesterday’s WiFi Learn more © reserved.rightsAllInc.Design,Plume2022
The recent launch, and high value, of adaptive WiFi Together with Plume, VodafoneZiggo launched its SmartWiFi service last year.
“We saw the importance for our customers. We saw what adaptive WiFi does for the customers and how it helps to get in-home connectivity to the level it needs to be and at the quality that they expect from us… And that’s what the customers value the most.” Using sophisticated AI technology, Plume’s award-winning platform develops a comprehensive understanding of the unique needs of each and every home network, adapting and optimising daily to ensure that WiFi services are delivered to their full potential. “For us to make it work in the background for the customer, and to have it seamlessly working and running with the right network automation, with the right artificial intelligence, with the right data – that’s what adaptive WiFi does for us. And that’s what Plume brings for us. It gets services to work and makes the infrastructure invisible for theLearncustomer.”more
Working with Plume enables VodafoneZiggo to offer an adaptive solution—powered by a highly scalable SaaS Experience Platform that leverages cloud, AI and opensource technologies—that enhances and personalises users’ home WiFi experiences.
Plume: powering smart homes with VodafoneZiggo
“It shows that, for our customers, inhome connectivity is key: always-on with the right speeds, everywhere in your house – that’s what the customers value the most,” comments Leo-Geert Van Den Berg, the Director of Fixed Technology at ThisVodafoneZiggo.priorityhas fuelled the recent partnership between VodafoneZiggo and Plume, a specialist smart home experience management company.
Plume’s SaaS Experience Platform that powers VodafoneZiggo’s SmartWifi service has been instrumental in meeting (and exceeding) customer expectations, says Director of Fixed Technology Leo-Geert Van Den Berg As the rise of 5G makes waves across the industry, home technologies are more advanced than ever before. So, it’s hardly surprising that in-home connectivity is one of VodafoneZiggo’s key focus areas. In fact, around half of its call centre enquiries concern some aspect of in-home connectivity.
LEO-GEERT VAN DEN BERG DIRECTOR FIXED NETWORK, VodafoneZiggo
“WE ARE ON A JOURNEY FROM REACTIVE AUTONOMOUS”PREVENTIVEANDPROACTIVE,TOFROMTO
Households (Q2 2022) 1.5 (whoConverged2.5SIM'smillion(Q22022)millioncustomershavebothZiggoandVodafoneproducts) 42 September 2022
everything to run perfectly. The passengers never visit the engine room and don’t even notice there is one until their services are not working. So from a fixed-technology department point of view, the more invisible we are, the better our services are working and the happier our customers are. That's what keeps us motivated and keeps us going.” “What we do really matters” And for millions of customers around the country, it’s hard to understate the importance of connectivity. During the height of the COVID crisis, people were working and studying from home and using a lot more internet, which meant a dependence on internet connectivity.
“COVID was an important test for the networks. The majority of people were suddenly not in the office, but working or studying from home. When Monday morning came around at 10 o'clock, we would see a massive peak in the network traffic when usually, that is a very quiet time of the day. I am proud that we were able to provide consistently good performance with zero congestion, even in those peak moments.”
mobile-magazine.com 43 V odafone Z iggo
From implementing a Digital Marketing Solution to building Fixed Network Fibre, TCS has played a pivotal role in VodafoneZiggo’s digital transformation. Discover more VodafoneZiggo has partnered with TCS to accelerate their ‘Go Digital’ strategy
Get in touch
Sairam Mannar, Client Director for the telecom business unit at TCS, explains the success of its partnership with VodafoneZiggo TCS: Providing technologies to solve customer problems
Looking to the future, TCS would like to continue to bring the right amount of innovation and the right technologies into solving customer problems to help Vodafone Ziggo grow their business. “But the focus will be on growing in the network services area where TCS has built a lot of capabilities and experience with many Tier-1 Telcos in Europe. This means services in the area of 1. Cognitive network operations, 2. Network Testing 3. NFV cloudification, 4. SDWAN industrial deployment, 5. 4G/5G services and 6. open RAN.” concluded Mannar.”
A renowned global company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is – as its name suggests – a consulting and business solutions organisation, which also provides information technology. On a mission to help customers achieve their business objectives, the company’s initial relationship with Vodafone began in 2007 and was then extended in 2018 with VodafoneZiggo.
Working together, TCS takes success stories from the different markets of Vodafone to see if that solves a particular business problem with VodafoneZiggo. It brings together the experiences it has built up with tier one telcos globally into any specific problem areas of “TheVodafoneZiggo.firstengagement we have done with them is in the area of digital marketing. It has been an immensely successful programme – so much so, that it is now also being deployed in other markets of Vodafone,” said Sairam Mannar, Client Director for the telecom business unit at TCS and also a Client Partner for VodafoneZiggo from MannarTCS.explained how the companies worked together in the area of fixed fibre build, launching the programme in 2020. Digitising the whole process, including key functions such as budget management and KPIs, it is completely based on a scaled agile concept.
“KPI management is very important for you to know the overall health of the programme. One area where it made a big difference to Ziggo is in the area of construction partner management, where we have reduced the overall construction partner spend by 1%. In fibre programmes, the spend for construction partners is immense; it runs into millions of euros. We have deployed a TCS framework called TwinX which is a tool that does proactive journey management using the digital twin concept to reduce order fallouts, reduce bottlenecks and thereby improve cycle time, first time right and cost.
VodafoneZiggo’s networks were tested from a capacity, stability and quality point of view. These are three major elements that are key to the network: “We made the right choices in the years’ previous to focus on these areas, and we need to continue on this route for the years to come.”
Especially during that first COVID period, the responsibility of all the Dutch telcos to keep our society connected became very visible. It was then that VodafoneZiggo had to prove that the networks were up and running constantly, at the right quality
KNOW...YOUDID
Hakan Ekmen, CEO Telecommunication at umlaut: "Congratulations to VodafoneZiggo for winning the 2022 umlaut connect Fixed-Line Broadband Benchmark in the Netherlands! Our assessment shows great efforts in enhancing the fixed-line network expansion to offer customers reliability, high data rates and low latencies. Dutch customers can be quite pleased with the user experience of their fixed-line connections."
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UMLAUT With a score of 947 out of 1000 points and an overall rating of "very good", Ziggo was the overall winner in the umlaut benchmark for 2022.
47
Smart WiFi and in-home connectivity
To be awarded this year with the best fixed network award was a great recognition for the team. We were proud of it and we are very happy to see that all the hard work is paying off.”
level, with minimal outages and sufficient capacity for internet, both on the upstream and the “Thosedownstream.arethekeyKPIs that we closely monitor daily and that we report on internally to all the teams. In doing that, we can make sure that we build at the right spots in the Netherlands, with the right amount of capacity to provide the services that customers need,” said van den ReflectingBerg.onthe umlaut award, he said: “We've been investing a lot of effort and money and we worked hard on making our networks, products and services better for our customers.
In-home connectivity is one of the business's key focus areas. Almost half of the calls received by the call centres have to do with some aspect of in-home connectivity, following similar patterns with other telcos in the Netherlands and in the rest of Europe. mobile-magazine.com
next-generationPowering
The world is entering a new wave of digitization—one driven by ubiquitous connectivity to further enrich people’s lives everywhere. In the Netherlands, VodafoneZiggo has been at the core of this connectivity transformation from its inception and is forging the next technology revolution for communication service providers.
Fuel innovation and growth with a strategic partnertransformationdigital
With Cognizant’s industry expertise, you can enable intelligence, stability and speed that empowers people to be online—always and everywhere. To learn how we can help, contact manju@cognizant.com, jeroen.bolte@cognizant.com, or visit https://www.cognizant. com/nl/en/communications
Cognizant believes in making connectivity ubiquitous to accelerate societal and economic value. As one of VodafoneZiggo’s trusted partners, we help the company meet current and future customer needs with innovative technology and digital transformation. Our Cloud+ capabilities will also enable VodafoneZiggo’s digital-forward vision and accelerate monetiz ation of preexisting investments.
Agile ways of working
VodafoneZiggo is recognized as the number one Dutch fixed network provider—and one of the best mobile networks in Europe. The company offers a network of the future, providing speeds of up to one gigabit per second. By investing in breakthrough technology, VodafoneZiggo is preparing for future applications—like holographics, virtual reality and AI—that create greater demands in terms of speed and customer experience.
Transformative initiatives for CSPs worldwide
Helping VodafoneZiggo realize its digital forward vision and deliver:
© Copyright 2022, Cognizant. All rights reserved. AI acrossmachineandlearningallbusinessunits,includingnetworkoperations
customer-centricandDigital-firstengagingoutcomesderivedfromdata
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LEO-GEERT VAN DEN BERG DIRECTOR FIXED NETWORK, VodafoneZiggo
“The Smart WiFi solution of Plume gives us access to a lot of monitoring meta data on usage and performance. In case of troubleshooting, this allows us to resolve the issues with customers a lot faster.” Securing customers from ever-present threats
mobile-magazine.com 51
“COVID WAS AN
A common trend within telcos around the world is ‘security by design’. Security is merely a hygiene factor for customers as the minimum they would expect, much like having sufficient capacity. To VodafoneZiggo, it’s about making sure that for any new application, product, or network architecture they develop the right security pieces.
“It shows that for our customers, in-home connectivity is key. Always-on with the right speeds, everywhere in your house. That’s what the customer values the most.”
NETWORKS”TESTIMPORTANTFORTHE
COVID re-emphasised the importance of getting Smart WiFi launched, leading to an accelerated ambition of VodafoneZiggo to get it live in as many customer homes as possible.
“That's a challenge because we have millions of homes and we have to get these devices out there, in a speedy fashion. We've been busy with that for the last two years now”. Partnerships such as the one recently secured with Plume allow VodafoneZiggo to offer a Smart WiFi solution.
Van den Berg: “We will make sure that we have the right level and skills in place to do what we need to do. Data security and privacy is an integral aspect of our technical story.” Gigabit readiness The competition between Dutch telcos has paid off for the customer: both the fixed and mobile networks rank as some of the best in the world. One of the most important projects for VodafoneZiggo is upgrading all of the Netherlands by year end 2022 to gigabit speeds, of which the company is on track to achieve. The VodafoneZiggo headquarters is based in Utrecht, a charming and vibrantly Umlout (Q2 2022) 'Best Fixed Network' 86% (Q2 2022) 1 Gbps footprint 1.4 million (Q2 2022) smartwifi pods 1 Gbps -7% 54 September 2022 V odafone Z iggo
‘backbones’ VodafoneZiggo relies on is the transport IP- and optical network. This optical technology was provided mobile-magazine.com
modern city with picturesque canals and extraordinary wharf cellars. It was also one of the first places in the country to receive a gigabit network and products.
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“The good thing about us being able to give gigabit speeds is that we don’t have to do any digging to upgrade the network. By doing software updates, changes in our data centres and upgrades of the equipment in our street cabinets, we can enable gigabit speeds on our existing network without having to dig open theOnestreets.ofthe
Infinera & Vodafone Z iggo
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A GREAT RECOGNITION FOR THE TEAM”
LEO-GEERT VAN DEN BERG DIRECTOR FIXED NETWORK, VodafoneZiggo
VodafoneZiggo’s size and offering of crucial infrastructure makes them an important actor in the digitalisation of the Netherlands. Digital skills and knowledge are evolving rapidly. However, the company recognizes that not everyone in society is able to keep up with these new trends, and as a consequence, is able to benefit from a digital society. Therefore it is VodafoneZiggo’s ambition to help Dutch citizens become more digitally savvy. VodafoneZiggo started multiple initiatives to live up to that ambition. As management, they are able to contribute to that directly. An example WAS
mobile-magazine.com 57
“For customers, it matters to be part of this innovation. It shows that they have the extra capacity available to them to use all the services that they want,” said van den Berg.
Countless municipalities and cities across the country now have an upgraded network. Almost 90% of the Netherlands is gigabit ready. By the end of the year, it will be at 100%. That means that the more than seven million homes that are connected to the Ziggo cable will be able to subscribe to a gigabit product.
A bigger impact on society
by Ciena, a major partner alongside many others helping to digitalise the entire network.
“TO BE AWARDED THIS YEAR WITH THE BEST FIXED NETWORK AWARD
LEO-GEERT VAN DEN BERG DIRECTOR FIXED NETWORK, VodafoneZiggo
van den Berg cites is the Online Masters, a project where VodafoneZiggo employees can contribute: “We visit primary school classes for 6-12 year olds and we give them two hours of training on cyber security, internet development or innovation. It’s great to stand in front of the class and talk to the children about these topics and have a bit of interaction with them.”
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Another example of digital upskilling in the community is the CoderDojo, held at the Ziggo Dome music venue, where thousands of children were trained on developing “THE MORE INVISIBLE WE ARE, THE BETTER OUR SERVICES ARE WORKING AND THE HAPPIER OUR CUSTOMERS ARE. THAT'S WHAT KEEPS US MOTIVATED AND KEEPS US GOING.”
People Planet Progress “ALWAYS-ON WITH THE RIGHT SPEEDS, EVERYWHERE IN YOUR HOUSE. THAT’S WHAT THE CUSTOMERS VALUE THE MOST” LEO-GEERT VAN DEN BERG DIRECTOR FIXED VodafoneZiggoNETWORK, 60 September 2022
mobile-magazine.com 61 V odafone Z iggo
• Cloud Native Architectures • Agile Development Teams • IT & Business Consultancy • End-to-end System Integration • Quality & Testing • Managed Services Lead &BroadcastinMedia. Don’t follow You need experts who can improve, enhance & broaden the possibilities, speed and stability of your cloud based services. You need Merapar, an alfa1 company Contact us Lead. Don’t follow www.merapar.com
V odafone Z iggo
“There is a gap currently in society where people aren’t digitally skilled enough. We see what’s happening with talent shortages and we want to play a role in alleviating these skill gaps. Similar to programs for the younger generation, we also have programmes running for elderly people where we train them and teach them how new technology works.” An autonomous future “We are on a journey to bring our networks from reactive to proactive, and from preventive to autonomous,” said van den Berg. Network automation is one of the key areas that the technology team spends a lot of time and effort on.
venue and the business, these opportunities are to be expanded further in the future.
“WE WILL MAKE SURE THAT WE HAVE THE RIGHT LEVEL AND SKILLS IN PLACE TO DO WHAT WE NEED TO DO. DATA SECURITY AND PRIVACY IS AN INTEGRAL ASPECT OF OUR TECHNICAL STORY”
LEO-GEERT VAN DEN BERG DIRECTOR FIXED NETWORK, VodafoneZiggo
www.circet.comWe build and infrastructurevitaltomorrow’smanage
“WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT THOSE TYPES OF PROCESSES BECOME MORE AND MORE AUTOMATED AND MORE SELFHEALING” VAN DEN BERG DIRECTOR FIXED NETWORK, VodafoneZiggo
is now in the stage where from a preventive point of view, they can detect cable damages. Underground monitoring tools can tell if the signal level on the cable is getting slowly weaker. Even before customers are noticing anything from
LEO-GEERT
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“Telco networks used to be reactive. This means that if there was an outage, a technician was sent out to fix it. Then our networks evolved to become more proactive, meaning we could see what was happening in the network before events even occurred. Currently, we are in the transition to create preventive networks, where the network itself sees and detects if there is an issue ongoing and, without any manual intervention, issues get resolved,” heVodafoneZiggoadded.
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To end up with a network that is completely autonomous, van den Berg suggests they will “need to take it two or three or four steps further. For this network transition, we need different technologies in the architecture, different vendors, different companies that help us to create that.”
the weaker growing signal, technicians can already see something going on and fix it so the issue doesn't occur in the future.
With the Netherlands being a small country and not able to invent new technologies “on a daily basis,” van den Berg says the key is to be a “smart integrator,” with “data as an essential building block for us in that whole ecosystem to integrate smart technologies together with us, and making sure we build our autonomous networks for the future”.
mobile-magazine.com 67 V odafone Z iggo
“We want to make sure that those types of processes become more and more automated and more self-healing. This way, our preventive network should also become self-healing. To give an example of that: As we have a redundant network, we will have future possibilities where in case of damaged cables, we can switch over automatically from one cable to another so that the other cable will pick up the traffic. When we have maintenance planned in the area of the damaged cable, we can carry out the reparations. This means we do not have to send out a technical team every time a cable is damaged, but we can plan that during moments our team would already be in place for the scheduled maintenance works. This way, we see possibilities to work more efficiently after we have automated this part of our network,” said van den Berg.
MANAGINGANEWTHREAT SECURITYDATAAND 68 September 2022 TMT
WHEN THE BASICS OF 5G ARE ONLY JUST BEING UNDERSTOOD, HOW CAN BUSINESSES BRING THEIR SECURITY SOLUTIONS UP TO SCRATCH, AT THE SPEED REQUIRED?
WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK
THREATNEW SECURITYDATAAND
mid the current surge of technological innovation, businesses need to strike a careful balancing act. It’s a case of adopting pioneering new technologies to keep pace with the rest of the industry, while still implementing the required security strategies to match. But, how can businesses prepare themselves for threats that they are completely unfamiliar with? Are we prioritisingsufficientlycybersecurity?
WHEN THE BASICS OF 5G ARE ONLY JUST BEING UNDERSTOOD, HOW CAN BUSINESSES BRING THEIR SECURITY SOLUTIONS UP TO SCRATCH, AT THE SPEED REQUIRED?
According to the Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey – which interviewed 2,900 global IT decision-makers –47% of global tech companies said they plan to use the cloud to facilitate their global expansion plans. The survey clearly demonstrated that 5G, XaaS models and cloud storage remain at the forefront of expansion strategies. 72% of respondents said that their organisation is planning to expand in the next year, with 38% saying that their companies plan to expand into a new region entirely. Almost half (47%) of global respondents said they plan to facilitate global expansion plans by deploying the cloud.
mobile-magazine.com 69
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“LIKE ALL BREACHWHEN,ATHISOFCONSTANTARETELECOMINDUSTRIES,OTHERPROVIDERSUNDERABARRAGECYBERATTACKS.MEANSIT’SQUESTIONOFNOTIF,AOCCURS”
In light of the fact that manufacturing overtook financial services as the most attacked sector last year, this slow response is both surprising and concerning. mobile-magazine.com
71 TMT
If we take a look at this on an industry-byindustry basis, however, the progress towards the required level of cybersecurity is slower thanForexpected.instance, a report from Capgemini revealed that 51% of industrial organisations predict that there will be an increase in smart factory cyberattacks within the next year. Despite this, almost half (47%) of organisations have yet to classify cybersecurity in smart factories as a C-level concern.
To achieve this planned expansion, digital transformation plays a pivotal role. Within this survey, 59% stated their intent to increase their investment in interconnection services, and 71% of respondents plan to move more business functions to the cloud. And, of those respondents, 50% plan to move more of their business-critical applications to the cloud. Among the answers provided by respondents, significant concerns were raised about cybersecurity. In fact, 85% named improving cybersecurity as a key component of their digital-first strategies, while 83% expressed a need to future-proof their business. The most-feared cybersecurity threats named were cyberattacks, security breaches and data leaks (all of which were expressed by 70% of respondents).
MATHIEU UK DIRECTOR FOR DATA PROTECTION AND CYBER RESILIENC, DELL TECHNOLOGIES “LIKE ALL BREACHWHEN,ATHISOFCONSTANTARETELECOMINDUSTRIES,OTHERPROVIDERSUNDERABARRAGECYBERATTACKS.MEANSIT’SQUESTIONOFNOTIF,AOCCURS”
SONYA
DON’TTHATPRODUCTSTHEYACTUALLYHAVETODAY”
“About 55% of the CEOs that we talk with say that, by 2026, well over 50% of their business will be new products that they don’t actually have today,” commented Inderpal Bhandari, the Global Chief Data Officer of “Pre-pandemic,IBM. when we talked with CEOs, there was just a small percentage that thought of digital transformation as important. Then the pandemic hit and, over the course of about a year, we saw (in our customers at IBM) that the awareness at the CEO-level went through the roof. And we’ve probably had as much digitisation in the last year, year and a half, as we’ve had in the previous 10 Whileyears.”this will open up a wealth of opportunities for the sector – and enable businesses to expand across the globe more seamlessly than ever before – there are a number of obstacles in the way. And, if these are not overcome first, there is the risk that businesses will be vulnerable to serious cybersecurity risks.
“ABOUT 55% OF THE CEOS THAT WE TALK WITH SAY THAT, BY 2026, WELL OVER 50% OF THEIR BUSINESS WILL BE NEW
“ABOUT 55% OF THE CEOS THAT WE TALK WITH SAY THAT, BY 2026, WELL OVER 50% OF THEIR BUSINESS WILL BE NEW
INDERPALDATAGLOBALBHANDARICHIEFOFFICER,IBM
The Capgemini report identified that internal disconnect and poor collaboration are key blockades to stronger cybersecurity measures. In fact, 53% of respondents mentioned a disconnect between the C-suite and smart factory leaders, saying that the lack of collaboration between smart-factory leaders and CSOs is hindering the organisations’ ability to detect cyberattacksAnotherearly.is the cybersecurity skills’ gap –a growing concern that is being felt across a number of areas in the industry. There is a limited amount of upskilling within cybersecurity teams, who will need to quickly develop their knowledge to manage these new types of threats.
Firstly, if a business is implementing a 5G mobile network, then the architecture and infrastructure will need to be designed with cybersecurity in mind. It’s a case of adopting a security mindset, right from the outset. “Securing a 5G network starts with securing the servers. Security needs to be built-in, not bolted on after the fact. This includes at the hardware and firmware level by leveraging an immutable Root-of-Trust that can be used to verify subsequent operations within the server. Building-in security in this way goes a long way to helping keep the broader 5G network secure when one location is breached,” advises Sonya Mathieu, the UK 72 September 2022
Mitigating the unknown – how can securitynextthemselvessuccessfullycompaniesprepareforthewaveofdatarisks?
TMT
DON’TTHATPRODUCTSTHEYACTUALLYHAVETODAY”
The discrepancy between technology’s adoption, and the industry’s current data-security skills New technology – enabled by 5G –is being adopted at a rapid pace.
51% of
Resilience at Dell Technologies. “Like all other industries, Telecom providers are under a constant barrage of cyberattacks. This means it’s a question of when, not if, a breach occurs.”
James Blake, the CISO at Rubrik, stresses how important it is that businesses also give recovery strategies equal attention.
The knowledge that these attacks could very well (and do) happen is a widespread theme.
“Isolating and securing an organisation’s data to protect against these threats is essential to any network strategy. To do this, providers should take advantage of the security provided by an air-gapped data vault that duplicates data behind a secured interface. Data with an air-gapped data vault is literally and wholly isolated from the rest when needed. This solution allows operators to protect themselves when the worst happens and restore operations quickly,” Mathieu adds.
smarthavewillpredictorganisationsindustrialthattherebeanincreaseinsmartfactorycyberattackswithinthenextyear.Despitethis,almosthalf(47%)oforganisationsyettoclassifycybersecurityinfactoriesasaC-levelconcernCapgemini mobile-magazine.com 73
“Ransomware has driven collaboration between IT and security, in more of a resiliency-focused mindset.”
JAMES BLAKE CISO, RUBRIK “WE NEED TO FOCUS ON IMPACT, BECAUSE WE ARE LOSING THE PREVENTIONAND-DETECTION BATTLE. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE NEED TO LOSE THE OVERALL BATTLE” “WE NEED TO FOCUS ON IMPACT, BECAUSE WE ARE LOSING THE PREVENTION AND-DETECTION BATTLE. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE NEED TO LOSE THE OVERALL BATTLE” 74 September 2022 TMT
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“So, the way I look at it is, it’s like a cardboard tank: we're spending all this money on likelihood reduction, and all we're doing is making the tank slightly faster, slightly harder to hit. But when you hit it, it’s completely destroyed and causes unbelievable amounts of damage. “We need to focus on impact, because we are losing the preventionand-detection battle. But that doesn't mean we need to lose the overall battle,” Blake recommends.
mobile-magazine.com
“We can only learn what they're doing after they've done it. Right? So, if they think of a new way of doing things, there's always a lag. There's always a period where our defensive and protective controls won't work properly. And, as soon as we build those walls higher and the moats wider, they build better boats or Trojan horses.”
To overcome this cyberattack cycle, Blake recommends that businesses divert their budgets appropriately and intuitively, so that they are prepared for the worst-case scenario and equip their business with the foundations to recover from it.
“We need to focus not just on recovery, because recovery is rebuilding from rubble. Resilience is the ability to withstand that attack at a degraded level yet still be able to continue serving business.”
According to Blake, there is an intrinsic flaw with the way that businesses currently perceive, and mitigate, the risk of cyberattacks.“Thisisthe security model we're all used to – walls and moats. And we build the walls higher and we build the moat wider, but the adversary has the first-mover advantage.”
“We spend on average 85 - 95% of our budgets on likelihood reduction, but we spend about 5 - 10% of our budgets on impact reduction.”
Creating a place for Vodafone in the world of FinTech 76 September 2022 PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY
mobile-magazine.com 77 VODAFONE
78 September 2022
Vodafone’s ambition is to be at the forefront of this change P
79 VODAFONE
The way we pay for financial services products is changing with emerging technology, and
“Most people know Vodafone to be a leading global technology and telecommunications company. We have a huge footprint in Europe and also in Africa. Our purpose is to use technology to improve our customers' lives and enable a truly inclusive, sustainable digital society,” says“PeopleKrishnan.may know that we are a large mobile and fixed-line operator across our European and African footprint. We serve over 300 million mobile customers and over 28 million fixed customers. One of the things that surprises people is when I tell them we are one of Europe's largest TV platforms –that's always news to customers and people that I speak to.” As a technology leader, Vodafone has been looking into new and disruptive technologies to ensure the company is best mobile-magazine.com
roviding new and exciting ways to pay for goods, the FinTech industry is booming and the world of financial services is going through some fundamental –yet essential – changes. With a long history of working with different businesses in sectors of the financial industry, Vodafone has a focus on ensuring that its customers succeed in the future. Known for its telecommunications and consumer services, Vodafone is accelerating its journey within the FinTech sector to support those who need it most. Driving forward this journey is Varun Krishnan, Vodafone’s Managing Director for FinTech.
“We
Varun Krishnan is a seasoned technology leader with c. 20 years of experience in Telco, FMCG and Management Consulting across B2C and B2B businesses. He is currently the Managing director for Fintech at Vodafone Group Services and is based in Vodafone’s global headquarters in London, UK. Prior to being appointed into his current role, Varun was the global marketing director where he was responsible to deliver the commercial strategy and scale core mobile and fixed line propositions across Vodafone’s global footprint. Varun joined Vodafone in 2011 from Booz & Company (Strategy&) where he worked with TMT clients across Middle East, Africa and Asia. placed to offer its customers the best tech that address real customer needs. Now, the company is one of the global leaders in the Internet of Things, as Krishnan outlines: “We've got over 150 million connected devices, and we are live with the platform in multiple continents. All of these things that we're doing are working towards enabling an inclusive and sustainable digital society.”
FINTECH
UNITED
VARUN MANAGINGKRISHNANDIRECTOR - FINTECH, VODAFONE 80 September 2022 VODAFONE
“Culture is everything when you're trying to build new products and new lines of business. The spirit of Vodafone is all about being customer-centric, having the courage to take calculated risks, not being afraid to fail, and having the ambition to think about and create the future. I'm really happy that everyone in my team embodies that spirit. Additionally, most of my team are hybrid
TITLE: MANAGING DIRECTOR, LOCATION: KINGDOM BIOrely partnershipson to deliver great value to our customers, as well as a great experience that's enabled by cuttingedge technology”
Varun Krishnan
EXECUTIVE
Although the company is categorically focused on technology, people are at the heart of everything it does – both the employees and the customers. Reflecting on his own team in the FinTech department, Krishnan explains how they strive to build the FinTech element of Vodafone: “I'm really lucky to have a fantastic team of leaders and experts; their energy and ambition gives me confidence that we can achieve great things.”
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The technology platform powering businesses that offer insurance Learn more Increase program profits through process automation Digitise, simplify and enhance the end-to-end insurance customer experience Quick market launch through API integration and no code architecture A FinTech Global InsurTech100 company
Personalised products for customers One of the priorities for EIP is to associatedpricedpersonalisedcreateproducts,accordingtotherisk,rather than actually just the device that a customer has. They’re already working with Vodafone to bring that into play. On “I’veHemburrowVodafone,added:workedinthis industry for a while and it’s quite refreshing when a company like Vodafone has such a customer focus. They want great onboarding and a streamlined claim experience as well. So that’s why our partnership works well”.
EIP: Insurance is an industry ripe for Learnchangemore
EIP Vodafoneenablesto give their customers an end-to-end online experience. COO Ed Hemburrow explains why digitalisation is vital to insurance. A partner with Vodafone for over a decade, EIP is at the forefront of digitising and automating the servicing of insurer’s products. EIP’s proven software delivers both increases in customer NPS (net promoter score) and program profitability. The relationship with Vodafone has evolved from one of an advisory service, helping them set up insurance products, towards an array of services designed around the customer’s needs. As Hemburrow puts it: “We’re more than just a tech provider.” “We saw a gap, having worked in this industry for a while. We know that the vast majority of people are good, honest customers just trying to get a phone or device back in their hands as soon as possible, because they run their lives through them,” said Hemburrow. EIP helped Vodafone to automate the insurance process and bring it online. Customers can now go through an endto-end claim process, including getting an automated decision, in less than a minute and a half. “It’s super slick and easy. We’re taking the pain out of it. By designing a journey for the vast majority of Vodafone customers that have genuine claims, we know at that ‘key moment of truth’, they will get a great experience. We re-engineered and automated the process to be digital-first and allowed customers to self-serve,” he said.
Commenting on this, Krishnan says: “We've had our carrier billing platform since the early to mid-2000s. This was originally set up for customers to charge for things like ring-back tones to the Vodafone bill. We've since evolved this to allow customers to purchase digital content. This is enabled across our mobile, fixed and TV customer base. So all of our customers have access to this platform in order to consume digital apps and OTT content.”
workers who sit globally across markets, but we work together as one across commercial and technology team to deliver. Having that strong sense of vision and strong sense of purpose helps teams across markets work towards a common goal,” he adds. Addressing customer needs in the FinTech space Still in its early stages, the FinTech part of Vodafone’s business comprises the company’s carrier billing and digital payments platform, its insurance business, its device financing and Device Lifecycle Services (DLS) business. The carrier billing platform addresses customer needs around convenience and security, allowing them to pay for their digital content on their bill as well as underpinning the company’s ability to bundle mobile content such as Spotify and Netflix with its tariffs.
For the insurance part of its business, Vodafone is focused on adding to its existing smartphone services by offering smartphone insurance to its customers. While in the past this has largely been a retail only product, it has now evolved to an omni-channel OTT digital insurance product that offers customers ultimate cover and flexibility. These two lines of business are crucial to the FinTech team.
84 September 2022 VODAFONE
300mn+Mobilecustomers28mn+Fixedbroadbandcustomers22mn+TVcustomers150mn+IoTdevicesconnected1982Yearfounded€45.6bnRevenue2022
Varun Krishnan, Managing Director FinTech at Vodafone Group
“Culture is everything when you're trying to build new products and new lines of business”
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MANAGING DIRECTOR - FINTECH, VODAFONE
“The third line of business is one that we’ve just set up,” explains Krishnan. “This is our whole end-to-end Device Lifecycle Services business. “At Vodafone, we are really focused on sustainability and our impact on the planet. Offering compelling trade-in and financing solutions helps support our objectives: financing helps customers spread the cost of their devices over long periods; trade-in helps customers get good value for their old devices. Refurbishing and reusing these traded-in devices allows us to extend the lifecycle of these devices and enable the circular economy. All of this is enabled by a very simple end-to-end digital experience that makes the process of buying a new or refurbished device with Vodafone really easy andIntransparent.”additiontothese three lines of business, Krishnan shares that he is fortunate enough to have a “fantastic innovation mobile-magazine.com
VARUN KRISHNAN
Welcome Your personal MyOperator LaunchPad Let's get started Making lifecyclessmartphoneassmartasthedevices One tech company is changing the way mobile carriers manage their customers’ devices. What does that mean for smartphone customers? MCE. Mobilizing Customer Experience
Linker points to trade-ins as the untapped opportunity. “There is too much friction and uncertainty about price in the current tradein process and that’s depressing volumes and leading to churn,” he explains. With more than $200 billion worth of mobile phones just sitting in drawers across Western Europe and North America, operators and customers are missing out on a huge opportunity.
Vodafone UK more than doubled its volume of trade-ins in the first year
For more information on how MCE is Mobilizing Customer Experience for the worlds largest mobile operator brands get in touch with Eitan at eitan@mce-sys.com
Eitan Linker is Chief Commercial Officer at MCE systems, a device lifecycle management pioneer which transforms key device lifecycle moments – from set up, to service and care, to upgrade and trade-in.
Digital Mix MyOperator accessible trade-in led to a large increase in the digital mix
MCE digitizes, automates, and connects these journeys so they’re fast, accurate, and yield a clear, actionable view of each device. It surfaces the smartest options at every moment, from repair alternatives to upgrade offers - empowering customers to get more value from devices, while spending less time managing them, and enabling reps to have more rewarding customer interactions.
Trade-in Uplift
MCE helped Vodafone UK seize the opportunity, with a fully digital omnichannel trade-in solution, including a guaranteed price, enabling it to become the country’s trade-in leader. The price guarantee, an elusive goal due to discrepancies in grading, was enabled by MCE’s innovative, highly accurate AI-powered remote grading technology. The app put users (and their reps) in control while ensuring Vodafone achieved better margins. “When the customer engages with diagnostics to grade their device; the valuation is fully transparent. There’s a lot more trust in the final price.” Consequently, Vodafone UK more than doubled its volume of trade-ins in the first year, lowered discrepancies, improved NPS, and reduced trade-in times, becoming the UK’s top carrier for trade-ins. It also increased upsells to premium plans and increased the digital mix. Vodafone led the market leading to a reduced mix of Never Traders of 89% in 2020 to 47% in 2022.
Grade Variance Trade-in discrepancies were reduced to low single digits “Carriers today are fighting over price,” says Eitan Linker, “instead of giving customers a truly differentiated experience.” He adds, “once the customer is happy, everything else falls into place.”
team that are looking at topics that are a bit more into the future, such as our role in the Metaverse and what do future financing models look like.
SUSTAINABILITYANDVODAFONE 88 September 2022
Equally, this framework feeds back into Vodafone’s customer centricity as it gives customers a straightforward and easy-toBy July 2021, Vodafone was purchasing 100% of its electricity from renewable sources in Europe. The company plans to roll this out to the rest of the world by 2025.
“There's a lot of people working together on bringing our payments and insurance products and services to customers. SAFe allows us to have one budget and one end-to-end backlog of activities that we are working together on delivering collectively,” Krishan notes.
The Managing Director goes on to add that Vodafone’s global products and services organisation has been moved to work in a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). As a result, Vodafone now operates as one end to end delivery organisation in squads across its commercial teams, product teams, technology teams, global platform teams and local market execution teams.
VARUN MANAGINGKRISHNANDIRECTOR - FINTECH, VODAFONE navigate customer journey, which Krishnan outlines: “We spend a lot of time thinking through customer journeys. The key thing is addressing customer pain points around transparency and flexibility when it comes to FinTch products and in the process building a trusted brand. If you can really make things simple and transparent for customers – no fine print, everything is as it says on the tin –we can create that trust. That's the thinking we use to build out our customer journeys.”
“We are really keen to work with bestin-class partners to bring some of these propositions to life. We rely on partnerships to deliver great value to our customers, as well as a great experience that's enabled by cutting edge technology,” he adds.
Looking to partners to secure Vodafone’s future in FinTech
One key business partner to Vodafone is Assurant, a global provider of risk management products and services. Assurant has been Vodafone’s insurance partner for years on device insurance, according to Krishnan.
“I'm delighted to say that we'll continue this journey with them as we expand into mobile-magazine.com
“We spend a lot of time journeys”throughthinkingcustomer
As Vodafone is relatively new to the FinTech space, the company knew there would be opportunities to learn and grow by embarking on strategic partnerships with others.
“While we have the ambition to grow, we also have the humility to recognise that there are partners out there that have a depth of knowledge and access to technology that would take us years to build. Partnerships are really crucial. They can help us accelerate our learning curve and also give us quick access to technology that will be expensive and time-consuming for us to build ourselves,” explains Krishnan
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Helping people thrive in a connected world
In partnership with our clients, Assurant supports more than 300 million customers across the globe. We develop innovative products and services that support, protect and connect major consumer purchases. And we do this for some of the world’s most recognised brands, enabling us to anticipate the evolving needs of consumers, and continually deliver an enhanced customer experience.
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Assurant: protecting and connecting consumer tech
“We focus on everything that sits around the device,” Assurant UK Managing Director Chris Woolnough explains. One of Assurant’s brands is Pocket Geek, cancel at any time. Protect Your Bubble provides valuable real-time insights for the company based around consumer behaviour, which it can use to hone its B2B propositions.
Today’s consumer has over 20 different wifi-enabled gadgets in their home, underlining the size of the gadget protection opportunity. Assurant – a leading global business services company that supports, protects and connects major consumer purchases, serving more than 300mn customers – is focusing on insurance products and services that empower consumers to protect those gadgets.
Culture vitally important to the way Assurant does business Woolnough says that culture is particularly important to Assurant. “Our culture is pretty special and we call it the Assurant Way,” he says. “Within that, we have a set of values. Those values are common sense, common decency, uncommon thinking and uncommon results. Everything we do hooks back into those.” This platform of trust has allowed it to enjoy a
Assurant is providing a range of protection products and services to help people thrive in a connected world, partnering with Vodafone to bring protection to life.
VODAFONE PARTNER QUOTES 92 September 2022 VODAFONE
Assurant A partnership with Vodafone built on trust and great service
“Shared platform of corporate trust and commitment to customer service, is the foundation of the long working relationship Assurant enjoys with Vodafone. Assurant partners with Vodafone to provide a range of protection products and services to let consumers customise coverage for their devices. Assurant provides Device Insurance to Vodafone as a benefit for business customers and offers Vodafone Rapid, a replacement service that can deliver a new device in under four hours. Next, the two companies are preparing to make multi-gadget insurance available, starting in one market, and then rolling out with technical support.” EIP “EIP and Vodafone both prioritise the use of smart technology to deliver great customer experiences that are simple, reliable, and transparent, which is why the partnership has flourished for well over a decade now. “EIP is a customer centric organisation, focused on developing technology that removes unnecessary frictions from the insurance customer journey” says Ed Hemburrow, COO of EIP. “In our relationship with Vodafone, we work in a cross organisational team that has a laser focus on providing customers with market leading products, great value and fantastic experiences using smart technology and innovation. We’re delighted to be working with Vodafone as part of their FinTech journey, and excited to reimagine the customer experience as we move into new insurance categories.” MCE Systems Working with MCE Systems and incorporating their platform has enabled us to deliver best-in-class products and services with a very high standard of security and user experience as part of our objective to bring pioneering digital technologies and solutions to the market. Together we continue to turn the challenges of digital transformation and evolving customer expectations into competitive advantages”, said Varun Krishnan, Vodafone’s Managing Director for FinTech. “Today, the MCE Systems ecosystem is used to enhance the trade-in and upgrade journeys for millions of Vodafone customers, across the United Kingdom, Germany, Romania, and Greece, enabling them to get a guaranteed price for their old devices. We are looking forward to continuing this collaboration with MCE to fuel our digital-first, Device Lifecycle Services initiatives.
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“Clearly, the journey that we are on is very exciting”
Vodafone is the FinTech and mobile payments leader in Africa. The M-PESA FinTech platform in Africa enables 52 million people to benefit from access to mobile.
Vodafone has partnered with EIP, with whom it has worked for “a long time”, according to Krishnan. “EIP supports us with our end-to-end claims management and our claims handling platform, and they also support us in responsibly marketing and talking to customers about their choice of insurance“Anothercover.partner that's crucial when it comes to this cutting-edge technology that we are utilising is MCE. MCE is our software partner that has a fantastic digital diagnostic platform. We use that in our insurance claims and we are also using that now in the new device trade-in product that we've just launched in our markets,” he continues. With all of these partners supporting Vodafone as it continues on its journey in the FinTech space, Krishnan explains that it is a great time for the company –particularly for those in his department: “The journey that we are on is very exciting.
The next 18 to 24 months, in terms of our FinTech ambitions specifically, are centred around the transformation from being a pure device insurance player to a multicategory insurance player and to really scale our DLS platform.” He concludes: “We are working on optimising the features, the journeys and the go-to-market approach to build scale quickly. We want to get more markets on board on our global platforms and really get this whole space around device lifecycle services that support our planet ambitions across all our markets.” our first new category, which is multigadget home tech insurance. We also rely on Assurant to bring us the best in regulatory expertise, as well as helping us to think across our footprint and working with our sales channels to talk to customers about their choices when it comes to insurance in the right Additionally,way.”
VARUN MANAGINGKRISHNANDIRECTOR - FINTECH, VODAFONE
VODAFONE AFRICA mobile-magazine.com
A CHARACTERISTICALLY WRITTEN BY: WALBANKJOSEPHINE 94CENTURY21STINDUSTRIALREVOLUTION September 2022 5G
Already, the world’s giants are preparing for this digital transformation shift. As a prime example, Hyundai recently partnered with Singtel to deploy Singtel’s 5G infrastructure network solutions within the Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Centre in Singapore (HMGICS).
“For manufacturers facing increasing competition and growing pressure on margins, 5G offers remarkable benefits. With its increased speed, higher bandwidth and lower latency, 5G has the potential to be a key enabler and accelerator of the next generation of smart manufacturing,” says Arash Ghazanfari, the UK Chief Technology Officer at Dell Technologies.
This is just one example of 5G in action. The future potential for 5G solutions to overcome our current performance limitations is seemingly never-ending.
Singtel’s technology will unlock huge possibilities for Hyundai, including enhancing its high-precision quality control, deploying edge computing management and services orchestration, accessing real-time feedback across the factory’s manufacturing process, and implementing new UX features (such as allowing customers to live stream the manufacture of their cars).
Exploring the near-future of 5G and AI in manufacturing, and the roadblocks that need overcoming before the next industrial revolution ncreasingly, we’re seeing more and more companies display a futuristic vision of their digital transformation plans. 5G, AI and the IoT are set to hold a vital place in the manufacturing industry. This technology will transform the way that we approach almost every step of the manufacturing workflow, spanning everything from concept to creation. We are on the cusp of what has largely been coined as the ‘Third Industrial Revolution’. But what will this actually look like in practice? And, what steps will we take before we can achieve this vision? Areas of opportunity – what can we expect to see from Industry 4.0?
“5G networks’ high speed and low latency will accelerate communication between companies and their equipment using AI and IoT deployments. Data gathered by companies can help detect inefficiencies such as machine delays on the manufacturing floor and provide new benefits, including but not limited to,
In its centre – which is the first of its kind in the world – Hyundai uses 5G to advance its manufacturing techniques and ensure higher quality control standards across its production of electric vehicles. mobile-magazine.com 95
Remarkable outcomes start with a remarkable network. Powering remarkable telecom Learn more now
The technology that we can expect to see within our lifetimes include pioneering robotics, automating mundane and repetitive tasks, minimising human error, enhancing precision engineering, creating digital twins and triplets, and deploying the metaverse to expand our capabilities. However, while AI is successfully being used across a wide variety of augmentation tools – with this side of the technology taking off immensely – automation AI is still being relegated to the sidelines. In the case of automation AI, “not many are using it yet”. mobile-magazine.com
supporting accelerated communications between energy companies and their drilling“Developmentssites.” such as these will enable companies to achieve more streamlined operations, while also highlighting new opportunities to drive down existing costs,” Ghazanfari adds.
PATRICK BANGERT THE VP OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, SAMSUNG SDS AMERICA
“PEOPLE HAVE TO TAKE A RISK. BUT, THE ATINDUSTRYMANUFACTURINGISNOTVERYGOODTAKINGRISKS”
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Smart factories, and the discrepancy between future visions and current deployment
“AUTOMATION
JEFF INDUSTRYWINTEREXECUTIVE OF MANUFACTURING, MICROSOFT
“Automation AI is in its infancy, and it will take years before it's perfected enough and trusted enough to start taking over high-risk decisions in our lives and in our businesses.” By and large, the manufacturing industry is just in its 5G infancy. And, according to many industry experts, development is not happening at the pace that we would expect. So why is this the case?
AI IS IN ITS INFANCY, AND IT WILL TAKE YEARS BEFORE IT'S PERFECTED ENOUGH AND TRUSTED ENOUGH TO START TAKING OVER HIGH RISK DECISIONS IN OUR LIVES AND IN OUR BUSINESSES”
“It's a very interesting conundrum that most people in manufacturing talk about AI a great deal… but what is actually being used on the shop floor is very little”, adds Patrick Bangert, the VP of Artificial Intelligence at Samsung SDS America.
One of the most common reasons for that is that some machines simply fail. Limited data availability is a huge contributor here, as limited data samples mean that the data will necessarily overrepresent the normal case, but it may not represent the very rare case at all – precisely because it's so rare.
“For example, in a predictive maintenance case, most machines in the manufacturing industry only tend to fail once every few years. And that's rare enough for you simply not to have data on it, or for you to have maybe one or two data points on it... A human being may be able to draw some abstract lessons from a single example, but the computer doesn't have that capability,” explains Bangert. So, alongside this, there’s also the cost of data preparation. The data set needs to be representative of the situation and, by necessity, under-represent the normal case, 98 September 2022 5G
“This is where you give up control and let the AI make decisions for you. And this is something that's inherently difficult for people to fully trust, because it's difficult to fully comprehend”, says Jeff Winter, Industry Executive of Manufacturing at Microsoft.
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while overrepresenting the rare cases that we actually need this technology to deal with.
Cybersecurity in smart factories – the risk least understood
As is largely to be expected, the threat of cybersecurity breaches remains one of the biggest risks to the success of the so-called next industrial revolution. Unsurprisingly, the rise of Industry 4.0 has made smart factories a prime mobile-magazine.com
taking risks. And, in addition to the finance, there is the risk of your AI system just not working, or not working in the cases that we really needed to. So another big obstacle is the fear of the unknown,” Bangert adds.
This then neutralises the perceived cost-benefit ratio. For 5G manufacturing technologies, the cost is well known, but, as it is not widely deployed, the benefits are uncertain. This then creates a Catch-22 scenario, where there are a limited number of reference use cases amongst competing companies and manufacturing facilities, because they also haven't adopted the technology.“Sopeople have to take a risk. But, the manufacturing industry is not very good at
47% of asmartcybersecuritystillorganisationsdon’tclassifyinfactoriesasC-levelconcern 100 September 2022
“WE NEED TO KNOW WHAT WE ARE UP AGAINST. TO REALLY UNDERSTAND THE TACTICS, TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES OF ATTACKERS AND DESIGN OUR ARCHITECTURE TO ADDRESS THE THREATS AT DIFFERENT LEVELS OF THE ARCHITECTURE” target for cybercriminals. In fact, in 2021, manufacturing overtook financial services as the most frequently cyberattackedNevertheless,sector. some reports indicate that the risk is not being taken as seriously as we mightAccordingexpect.to a recent report from Capgemini, 51% of industrial organisations predict that there will be an increase in smart factory cyberattacks within the nextHowever,year.
“We need to know what we are up against. To really understand the tactics, techniques and procedures of attackers and design our architecture to address the threats at different levels of the architecture”, says Steven Sim, President of the ISACA Singapore Chapter.
Largely, enhancing the understanding of those at a decision-making level – about how smart manufacturing technology works, and what its capabilities are – will be key to pushing that growth cycle forward.
STEVEN SIM PRESIDENT OF THE ISACA SINGAPORE CHAPTER
“There is no perfect security – risk reduction or mitigation is a bottomless pit, if we do not know when to stop. And this is where optimisation comes into the picture, because it tells us how much risk to strive for. To run a business, we need to take risks, and the only way to perfect cybersecurity is to avoid risks altogether, and that’s simply not running a business at all. Therefore, understanding the enterprise risk of attack –and how IT, OT and IoT risks can be aligned to operational risk and business risk – is a key step. The goal posts must be set in place first.”
mobile-magazine.com
currently, 47% of organisations still don’t classify cybersecurity in smart factories as a C-level concern. In fact, only 51% of respondent organisations said that they build cybersecurity practices in their smart factories by default. What’s more, 53% of smart factory respondents stated that they experience a problematic disconnect between the C-suite and smart-factory leaders. This lack of collaboration, a limited budget, and human factors (primarily, a cyber security skills gap) are the three main obstacles to implementing stronger cybersecurity measures. So, what action should organisations be taking? How can we prevent cybersecurity threats from compromising the wave of Industry 4.0?
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AT GOOGLE, SUPRIYA I YER IS QTHEASKINGRIGHTUESTIONS 102 September 2022
mobile-magazine.com 103 PRODUCED BY: SADRMIKE WRITTEN BY: ADAMSHELEN GOOGLE
In 2016, Iyer moved to the Bay Area with her family and started working at Google Cloud in the global partner programmes team and subsequently in the professional services organisation.
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“My work at General Electric was especially pertinent to my growth as a professional,” she explains. “It was there that I truly learnt about managing change and driving transformation.”
Supriya Iyer is the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations at Google. Here, she explains what it takes to lead and who inspires her Research from SEO Tribunal suggests that there are over three million Google searches every minute. But behind the familiar question tab is Supriya Iyer – the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations at Google.
Born in India, Iyer went on to complete her schooling there, all the way through to postgraduate study. After completing a double Master’s in Mathematics and Information Systems from B.I.T.S Pilani India, Iyer then moved to Melbourne, Australia, where she became a formidable player working in global supply chain and operations roles across a variety of industry sectors, such as automotive and high tech.
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“Compassionate and competent leaders have always inspired me to challenge the status quo and invite diverse perspectives” SUPRIYA DIRECTORIYEROFSUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE 106 September 2022 GOOGLE
The challenges in this role range from supporting Google Cloud’s enterprise customers to ensuring effective procurement and delivery to complex countries.
“In October 2019, I took on my current role in the Google networking team as the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations. The Google networking supply chain & commercial operations team is structured to effectively manage procurement and supply of networking equipment to sites, overseeing significant investment in assets and services across the business.”
Iyer and her team are working hard to overcome these challenges. “We have developed frameworks, processes and metrics to help better understand and quantify these challenges. For example, working with business stakeholders on an emerging market roadmap, developing a materials supply playbook for these markets and investing in planning ahead to support timely deployment in these markets have helped. mobile-magazine.com
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“As a leader, supporting team members to take care of their health and overall wellbeing during the pandemic has been critical, but not always easy to do. The last two years have been a marathon and it isn’t over by any stretch of imagination!”
Hiring supply chain and project management talent globally in a labour constrained environment has been more of a challenge recently.
“The shift over the past 40+ years to just-intime inventory and global manufacturing has helped to optimise costs,” says Iyer. “However, the pandemic added a new set of unforeseen challenges. On the supply side, border closings combined with lockdowns constrained the manufacturing and shipping of key components and goods, significantly increasing lead times. Juggling supply to meet growing demand has therefore posed new challenges.”
“What’s super important is our ability to scale-up with a customer. We have to physically produce all of the hardware that makes that possible.” This requires an ecosystem of partners, says Haynes: “There are the customers, and the operation of their data centres, and then there are our manufacturing partners, and their suppliers.” It’s a difficult job at the best of times, but over the past two, pandemic-hit, years, it has been inordinately challenging - which is when Juniper’s strong relationship with their customers came into its own.
Juniper Networks - keeping cloud providers operational Juniper Networks on how it provides infrastructure to cloud providers, including the largest hyperscale networks Juniper Networks might just be one of the biggest companies you’ve never heard of. A US multinational corporation, Juniper offers networking products including routers, switches, network management software and security products and solutions. Its customers consist of service providers, enterprises, and cloud providers, including the largest hyperscale cloud providers, as part of its Cloud segment.
“Our customers are building clouds that serve businesses and the public globally,” says Jason Fritch, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, Juniper Networks Cloud Segment. He adds that the company also provides “high-end, high-performance, high-scale networking solutions” that not only connect clients’ data centres to one another, but also connect them directly to their end-users. “Tens of thousands of products and hardware components are required from us to do this at planet scale, like we do for some of our global cloud clients.” Such vast quantities of components and products demand a great deal of both Juniper’s supply chain and the man who oversees it – Mitch Haynes, Supply Chain Planning & Fulfillment VP at Juniper.
“We work with customers so that together we can make the best operational decision we can at any given point in time,” says Haynes. “That might be whether to place a new order for a product earlier than we typically would, or looking at a design or use-case and making early-stage decisions on future engineering.” Learn more
Supriya leads Supply Chain and Commercial Operations, with a focus on predictable materials supply and operations to operate Google’s network at scale. With 20+ years experience transforming value chains and growing small teams into mature organisations to deliver high quality products and services, Supriya enjoys fast-paced and dynamic environments while fostering people-first culture and stakeholder engagement. Previously, she has held global leadership positions at VMWare, GE and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI).
SUPRIYA IYER
TITLE: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS LOCATION:
Supriya holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and a Master’s degree in Mathematics. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking,
At Google, Supriya Iyer is asking the right questions mobile-magazine.com 111
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The best piece of advice Iyer has ever been given is to “get out of the office and connect with customers, vendors, peers and team members” – pretty difficult to do in the pandemic, but not impossible.
“I’m inspired by seekers – anyone who is committed to learning, growth and giving back: Malala Yousafzai, Mahatma Gandhi, Greta Thunberg and Maya Angelou, they are some examples of people who inspire me by what they stand for and how they lead. They demonstrate vulnerability, authenticity and standing up for the community.
This advice is in part inspired by an eclectic range of Iyers personal heroes.
“I’m inspired by seekers –anyone who is committed to learning, growth and giving back”
SUPRIYA DIRECTORIYEROFSUPPLY AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE
CHAIN
Vulnerability and authenticity in leadership
“Strong partnerships with strategic suppliers has been pivotal to ensure smooth supply and early notification of supply constraints. Jointly, we have been able to develop solutions that have supported Google networking’s rapid growth.”
“Similarly, developing a two-year capability roadmap has helped not only supply chain but also our partner teams to work on the right tools, data structures, reporting and processes to enable scale and velocity.
“Only then can you hope to understand them and build relationships of trust and open communication,” she says.
SUPRIYA DIRECTORIYEROFSUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE 114 September 2022 GOOGLE
Making the Google supply chain resilient Google is a planet-scale network, but there are some figures that can provide a more easily digestible view of the organisation:
• The company has 147 points of presence and has announced 20 subsea cable investments around the globe
• Google’s global network consists of a system of high-capacity fibre optic cables that encircle the globe, under both land and sea, connecting data centres to each other and to users
• Google also has thousands of edge locations around the world in over 200 countries and territories, offering users and customers very low latency services such as Google Assistant and rich content such as YouTube and Google Photos
• Globally, Google operates data centres in 23 locations, 34 cloud regions and 103 zones
“At work, I am inspired by the Google leaders, my peers and of course my team who have shown customer centricity, perseverance and teamwork despite the tough challenges of the last 2 years. Compassionate and competent leaders – my first mentor (John Gafferena) and my father (Alak Sundararaman) – have always inspired me to challenge the status quo, invite diverse perspectives and focus on the customer.”
“Strong partnerships with strategic suppliers have been pivotal to ensure smooth supply and early notification of supply constraints”
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complex, multi-layered role, which elements of growing this worldwide network demand most from Iyer?
Similarly, working with the engineering, deployment and network operations teams within Google, to ensure alignment, is a key part of Iyer’s work. Over time, the Google network hopes to be able to deliver greater predictably with innovative solutions to meet industry needs, while mobile-magazine.com
Innovating material supply in ways that enables responsiveness at short notice will be key in the coming years – most likely for all industries. Part standardisation, rationalisation and in-region customisation are some approaches that Google is taking to reduce long lead-times. Iyer’s team invests considerable time in building on the strong partnership with their strategic vendors and jointly innovating with them.
“Anticipation is key and asking the right questions to pre-empt the needs of a rapidly growing and evolving network is a challenge,” she says. “The only guarantee is the next 12 months won’t be like the previous 12 months, for sure!”
Global ManagedVendorInventory Optimize IT Supply Chains Inventory Holding | Direct Shipping to Deployment Site | Live Inventory Management Portal and E-commerce Site | Deployment Services | Streamlined Shipping Costs | Reduced Lead Times | DDP Shipping Terms: 100% Insured | 24/7/365 Multi-Lingual Support Team Rahi delivers high-performing VMI, allowing your organization flexible supply chain management and our ability to deliver direct to site, minimizing logistics headaches, and providing peace-of-mind procurement and logistics. NAMER | LATAM | EMEA | INDIA | APAC | SEA | ANZ 1,000+ OEM Partners Find out rahisystems.com/contact-usmore: Servicing 150 Countries | 6 Continents Worldwide Trusted by 7 of the TOP10 Global Tech Giants
“In addition to thinking about reliability as ‘How do we minimise failures?’, at Google we think as well about ‘How we can make our services resilient to failures when they happen?’. In our organisation, we spend as much time on systems and processes to respond to failures as we do in preventing them in the first place. Google Cloud has grown significantly, and we are continuously increasing the number of enterprise customers we support.”
“Revisiting processes and systems in light of both the demand and supply variability is essential to predictably deliver at scale,” she says. “The frequency and volume of change will increase and we are developing processes and tools where we can react within a lead time that our customers need to sustainably succeed.”
Iyer plans to leverage AI and ML capabilities to further automate supply chain processes and simplify decision making. An example of this could be scaled invoice validation to support timely processing and payment.
“We are actively working to deliver an agreed capability roadmap. We are well progressed on all fronts and, in light of the recent supply constraints and demand growth, we have further refined our capability roadmap to predictably meet customer demand in the coming years.” mobile-magazine.com
DIRECTORIYEROFSUPPLY
CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE operating an autonomous network. Similar to a self-driving car, Google’s intent-driven automated network needs to evolve into an autonomous network.
“Integration with vendor systems and tools for timely information flow across the materials supply chain,” she explains. “For example, integration with third-party warehouse providers is key to ensure the right information is available to make the right decisions in a timely manner.
“Revisiting processes and systems in light of both the demand and supply variability is essential to predictably deliver at scale”
Supply chain and digital transformation at Google Iyer has a roadmap for Google’s networking supply chain. She and her team have devoted considerable effort to optimise their supply chain tools and systems to reengineer across the end to end value chain and enable FLOW and agility.
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This transformation will help Google to offer customers capabilities that it hasn’t been able to offer before, with the investment in enhancing tools, systems, processes and data frameworks helping Google to support cloud customers with new networking products and capabilities at scale. It will support customers’ growing businesses and help them to achieve their purpose and strategy.
SUPRIYA DIRECTORIYEROFSUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE
“Responsive and responsible supply of networking materials and services is our mission; that is what motivates us”
thetermGoogle’sHowever,long-strategyforGooglenetworking supply chain links right back to Google’s vision: ‘To organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’. “My team’s vision aligns with this as we aim to provide access to networking materials and all material related information to our customers easily and simply,” says Iyer. “Responsive and responsible supply of mobile-magazine.com
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“Our relationship with our vendors has deepened in the last two years; we’ve been learning from each other. We have also supported each other in developing innovative solutions and ensuring timely execution of critical nextdeploymentinfluenceprofessionalswillclosercomponents;largerwithsuppliers;strongerIncreasedprojects.”digitisation;partnershipswithworkingcloselygovernments;holdinginventorybuffersforcriticalbringingsupplychainstohome;andincreasingoptionalitybekeytoprotectfromfutureshocks.Thepandemichasgivensupplychainaplatformtoappropriatelydesign,engineeringand–andIyerisreadyforthestage.
networking materials and services is our mission; that is what motivates us.” Such a mission would not be possible without a reliable partner ecosystem. At Google, vendors are valued partners and the company actively collaborates with them at all levels to develop innovative solutions and products. Google networking engineering, product, supply chain and other teams regularly connect, discuss and work closely with vendors. “They are vital to delivering our vision and strategy and, likewise, Google as a customer is critical for them and their organisations,” says Iyer. “There is mutual respect, trust and confidence in our ability to shape Google’s network in the coming years.
RISKS VS REWARDS: 120CLASSROOMINMETAVERSETHETHE September 2022 IOT
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WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK Mobile Magazine speaks to Nina Patel about mitigating the risks of the metaverse, to create a safe educational tool that enhances nextgen learning mobile-magazine.com
“WE ANONYMITYPRIORITISEOVERACCOUNTABILITYANDSAFETY,ANDWEHAVETOLEARNFROMOURMISTAKES”
CO-FOUNDER & VP OF METAVERSE RESEARCH, KABUNI Deploying this research, Patel is the Co-Founder and Director of Metaverse Research for Kabuni, a company that is creating a safe, responsible and toKabunitheofaboutWechildrenmetaverseeducationalforaged8-16.spoketoPatelthenearfuturethemetaverse,technologythatisdevelopingenhanceour global education systems, and how we can bring about this futuristic vision in a safe, responsible way. verywhere we turn, the future of the internet is in discussion. And with good reason. This is one of the biggest phases of digital change that we’re experiencing since the invention of the internet itself. But, before we revel in the power of the thing that we are about to create, we need to address the areas in which we failed previously.Oneinthree adults - who were children growing up on the internet - were asked to do something sexually explicit online that they were uncomfortable with, before they reached the age of 18. If things don’t change, our children will grow up using digital spheres where their safety and psychological well-being are not prioritised. And these dangers, both for adults and children, will take place when users are fully embodied, fully present and fully immersed in those andpsychotherapistlargeronthembeforethatthemadetheenvironments.digitalWeneedtosolvemistakesthatweandintroduceprotocolswemissed,weallowtoreoccuraninfinitelyscale.NinaPatelisaadoctoralresearcher, investigating the psychological and physiological impact of social virtual environments.
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NINA JANE PATEL
E
Towards an understanding of the Metaverse | Nina Jane Patel, Co-Founder of Kabuni mobile-magazine.com 123
As Patel puts it, we are essentially back in 1995. No one could anticipate the way that the internet could change our lives, and the way it would permanently shift almost every element of our lives. So, as we are on the cusp of a parallel wave, how can we prepare for the dawn of the metaverse? For Patel, it’s our opportunity to learn from the past and improve upon the mistakes we made 30 years ago.
The rise of the third wave and the metaverse’s emerging place in our daily lives
Back in October 2021, Meta rebranded and announced a multi-trillion dollar investment into the metaverse.
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Approximately £120bn has been invested into the metaverse in the last five months alone. And, by 2030, the value of the metaverse is estimated to reach US$5tn. There’s no doubt about it – the metaverse is coming.
“ IT'S NOT THE TECHNOLOGY'S FAULT THAT WE ARE IN THIS SITUATION, IT’S THE SYSTEM IN WHICH WE CREATED THE TECHNOLOGY” NINA JANE METAVERSECO-FOUNDERPATEL&VPOFRESEARCH, KABUNI 126 September 2022 IOT
Kabuni has been designed to harness the power of the technology and deploy it within the curriculum – a capability that's available to every other industry, but not to the people who are educating the next generation.
“In these situations, the educator is left with 50 minutes to deliver a class, they have no extra resources, no capacity to troubleshoot this latest technology platform, never mind integrate it into the rest of their lesson planning while they're managing behaviour, dealing with challenging students, and so on.”
“If we look at the academic research in terms of children and their specific learning needs, it isn't there and it
The next generation of history lessons
“So, our approach is to design it with the educators, ask them what they need and try to solve it at the ground-level, as we iteratively design a metaverse that's specifically designed for education.” This way, “instead of the trickle down effect where, in the past, educators and students have been the last to be able to really benefit from the use of technology, we're trying to create and innovate specifically for the educator and the needs of the students around specific academic outcomes, around retention, engagement, speed, and health”.
“We don’t want to be another type of technology that's made by the tech people in their white tower, then planting it on real people, only to realise that it doesn't work in its real context.”
As a psychotherapist, a researcher, and a mother of four, Patel has a highly invested interest in the future of the metaverse and how it impacts our children. Kabuni is using technological innovation to enhance education and implement creative innovation in pedagogy, while mobile-magazine.com 127
unlocking the imaginations of children in theToclassroom.achievethis, they use an evidencebased methodology across their creation process. To date, Kabuni has worked with 5,000 students and 250 educators, and has partnered with Harvard, Sanford and Oxford universities.
“We've allowed harassment and misogyny to exist in our online and digital spaces since 1995. We prioritise anonymity over accountability and safety, and we have to learn from our mistakes as we build out the future of the metaverse and other web 3.0 tools. It's essential that we prioritise the safety of our children, as the future of the metaverse integrates into their lives more and more.”
Patel herself was sexually assaulted in the metaverse, when her avatar was groped by three male avatars. She has spoken about this publicly, in order to raise awareness about the topic, particularly amongst parents, educators or any other caregivers who will be managing children’s interactions with the metaverse.
“Our belief is that it's really undervalued from an investment perspective, from an innovative perspective and from a technology perspective – as an opportunity, the potential is there, it just hasn't been prioritised.”
hasn't been applied, let alone from a mass mainstream perspective.”
“And the information certainly isn’t there to help us understand specifically how we can empower the teacher to understand that child's specific learning needs as well.”
Cybersecurity in the metaverse – the same threats, taking on new dimensions Patel explained that one of the primary reasons behind Kabuni’s grassroots-level approach is the fact that the iterative design process of the technology will make it easier to create a safe application.
Data usage is, for instance, a prime debate – particularly when we consider the sensitive nature of the data being gathered by VR technology. Alongside this, there are also the threats (which, again, are already a pressing concern) of trolling, cyber abuse, cyber attacks and assault.
But it is the safety concerns that sit at the forefront of this technology’s controversy.
“My question through all of this is what are the implications for this next generation of children, who will be growing up in the metaverse? Regulators and governments are still struggling to update laws to protect children for their online safety in the 2D world.” 128 September 2022
Collaboration is deployed in everything from the design of the content experiences, infrastructure and hardware, to the implementation of identity authentication, governance, and safety policies.
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METAVERSE RESEARCH, KABUNI
“I do believe that regulators and governments will come on board quicker than they did with the internet in considerations of policies, especially in the space of online digital harm for children, now that we are just starting to comprehend the long-term impact of social media and other platforms.” “So, let's take our time. Let's specifically innovate and invest in areas for children and the next generation so that their lives are integrated in safe, responsible, and elevating ways. And I think those doors are open to conversation.“Ofcourse, the question is always, where's the money, where's the capacity, where's the mobile-magazine.com
For Patel, her goal is to advocate a call to action that sees the industry learn from the mistakes of the advent of the internet and its evolution. “A successful vision of the metaverse is one that sees the metaverse and its components of technology coming together, integrated intentionally, intelligently, responsibly, and safely, and in trusted ways.”
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“ OUR APPROACH IS TO ITERATIVELY DESIGN A METAVERSE THAT'S SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR EDUCATION” NINA JANE CO-FOUNDERPATEL&VPOF
So, what is the solution? How can we successfully mitigate these threats, as much as possible?
andofPredicted$5tnvaluethemetaverse,by20305K+NumberofstudentsKabunihasworkedwith250Todate,Kabunihasworkedwith250educators,haspartneredwithHarvard,SanfordandOxforduniversities 130 September 2022 IOT
CHILDREN HAVE AN AMAZING CAPACITY TO LEARN AND GROW ON THEIR OWN. AND IF WE LIMIT THEM WHEN IT COMES TO TECHNOLOGY, THEN WE'RE REALLY LIMITING commercialisation? And that speaks to the ecosystem in which technology is being designed, around commercial revenue models that are constantly selling us things. And this time, we need to flip it around. Otherwise, we're going to do much more damage.”
“Children have an amazing capacity to learn and grow on their own. If we limit them when it comes to technology, then we're really limiting their progress. It's going to be a disadvantage, and that digital gap will widen if we stop some children from accessing technologies, while others are allowed to engage with it and embrace it and run with it.”
In essence, this topic boils down to one big question – should we ever open up the metaverse to children?
“There are the fundamental rights of a child, and one of them is participation. So, in terms of designing safe spaces – whether they’re technology-based or not – we have to let our children participate, to understand what is safe and what isn't for them. And beyond that, so that they can grow, that they can make mistakes, they can push boundaries.”
For Patel and many other metaverse pioneers like her, closing the metaverse off to children is a flawed, short-sighted solution. Instead, we need to design a metaverse that side-steps the usual profiteering routes and makes the technology accessible, but secure, safe and engineered to cater to these specific educational needs.
“It's not the technology's fault that we are in this situation, it’s the system in which we created the technology. It's the commercialisation of it. It's the model in which we've allowed the manipulation of human psychology. That's the destructive aspect of it. Technology really had nothing to do with it.” mobile-magazine.com
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THE EXPERIENCE:MOLA ARTAS AN TECHNOLOGY 132 September 2022 PRODUCED BY: IRVINGSTUART WRITTEN BY: TUCKALEX
TECHNOLOGYFORM mobile-magazine.com 133 MOLA TV
With a steep rise in the adoption of OTT video service platforms in Asia Pacific, with predictions that digital viewers could rise to 2 billion in 2022, household penetration of Subscription Video on Demand has skyrocketed. With Mola also promising a steady flow of localised media content through their own producers, and a mix of world class content through their core pillars of Sport, Entertainment and Music, the company is set for even bigger things over the coming months as their technology stack increases to deliver an unrivalled customer experience.
An agile and innovative business, they have been praised for their content ideas (song requests at live concerts anyone?) and sheer scale of content offering for their audience. These include premium series and movies by top filmmakers such as Yellowstone, Catch 22 and For Life, and live sports events like UFC, Bellator MMA, Belgian Pro League, French Cup and Serie B.
“Over the past year, the team has worked tremendously hard to make sure that we are able to deliver a better and faster service to our users,” added CP Lee, CTO of Mola.
A huge success in OTT within Asia Pacific, Mola’s CTO, CP Lee, has evolved their tech stack through specialist partners to upgrade the experience It’s been a busy few months for Mola since we last profiled them for Technology Magazine. One of South-East Asia’s leading Over-the-Top (OTT) multimedia companies, Mola reached Singapore and Malaysia in November 2021 offering expanded entertainment choices while focusing on interactivity and engagement initiatives.
134 September 2022 MOLA TV
mobile-magazine.com 135 MOLA TV
TAKE ANYWHERESTORYYOUR Delivering your content from anywhere to any device. SES VIDEO SOLUTIONS LEARN MORE
Concluding, Huddle shares his hopes for the partnership in the future: “We want to continue to provide quality services to Mola while they are pivoting their business away from being just sports-based to include everything else. We look forward to working with CP Lee and the team as they expand their offering outside of Indonesia.”
There is a huge demand in countries like Indonesia for top-tier sports and entertainment content, and so “The ability to aggregate a wide variety of live and non-live content is massively important,” says Huddle.
“One of the things we do for Mola is providing an end-to-end service, which essentially focuses on SES aggregate, process, and deliver their content so Mola can focus on what they do best, which is creating content and delivering the best possible user experience,” explains John Huddle, Director of Market Development, APAC at SES.
“Aggregation is a huge thing for live and non-live content from all over the world. Now, Mola can preview these assets in a really user-friendly way and scale it to whatever they need,” says Huddle.
SES’s Director of Market Development, APAC, John Huddle, discusses how the company supports Mola TV as it continues to expand its streaming services. As one of the world’s largest satellite communications operators, SES has invested millions of dollars in building the world's leading broadcast infrastructure and hybrid delivery network. Benefitting from these capabilities is Indonesia’s Mola, a subscription-based video-on-demand and over-the-top streaming service.
SES: UPLIFTING CONTENT WORKFLOW TO SUPPORT MOLA TV’S EXPANSION
“One of the coolest things is a tool we have, the SES 360, that allows Mola to perform high-resolution clipping and delivery of highlights, allowing them to enthuse and excite their audience,” he adds.
CP LEE MOLA TV
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The agreement, struck with the PGA Tour's international rights and distribution partner, Discovery, sees Mola become the exclusive Tour broadcaster in the city-state, to add to their exclusive rights in Indonesia.
Sport as a key driver for success
The Mola experience: Technology as an art form
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Wise acts as a mentor for the team while Walker lends his coaching skills. It’s a novel idea that mirrors such formats as Red Bull’s The Streets Don’t Lie
One of 2022’s big additions for Mola was partnering with video technology outfit Ateme, to enable 4K UHD live streaming with Dolby Audio and bring English Premier League (EPL) football matches, with high-quality video and audio, to viewers in Indonesia.Leeadded: “We are thrilled to be the first OTT player to bring 4K UHD live streaming of EPL matches with Dolby Audio technology to our Indonesian viewers. 4K EPL viewing is now available across a range of devices, including both Android and Samsung TV (Tizen) platforms. Soccer fans can now enjoy an enhanced sports viewing experience wherever and whenever they want.” Sports are the backbone of the Mola success story. In March this year, they announced PGA Tour rights for Singapore and also the 48-player LIV tournament, to be broadcast by Mola and Viaplay.
Chelsea FC and Sheffield Wednesday fans from the 90s will recognise the familiar faces of legendary England footballers, Des Walker and Dennis Wise, who front Mola’s reality show to find the next superstar of Indonesian grassroots football, aiming to bring through some of the country’s best youngsters as part of one of its reality shows: ‘Dream Chasers: Garuda Select.’
“We have actually expanded our portfolio to include almost all the major soccer leagues from Europe. Our content offering today has tremendously improved, as we now have MMA UFC events rights for
We are a passionate design driven business backed up by strong technology designs. We have everything you need to launch and
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Studio approved DRMs, 4K & HDR playback, Google DFP integration, TVoD, SVoD support. Tons of features support make your content business successful. The company continues to invest and improve themselves to be better. 2022, Aspirapps accomplished the first milestone by successfully building up the entire content distribution network of education serving all elementary schools in Taiwan. 2023, their goal is to expand country by country and make the world see Aspriapps.
LEARN MORE
Aspirapps, a trustworthy name in Content Distribution Network (CDN) and Over-the-Top (OTT) business
Anything not on the list? Name it, the company can customize it for you. Time to the market is always important. Aspirapps is proud of their online OTT solutions, which is not only offering the ability to stream your content, but also providing the valuable experiences of operating an OTT service that makes your valued content profitable. The company offers the click to go solution that you can start your OTT solution in a short time.
The company is a fast-growing company that plans and builds CDN solutions for global clients in the telecommunications, media and content industries. They provide world class quality and cost affordable solutions that are used by hundreds of millions people every day. They help clients deliver the content to the audiences worldwide as well as monetize the bandwidth to save cost.
Not only fulfilling mass distribution needs, Aspirapps is also the answer for those who have contents. Real world OTT solutions provide you a one-stop shopping platform that meets all your needs.
Jonathan Liu, CEO of Aspirapps in his own words has an inspiration to“Bring the App experience to the next level”. Innovation and Technology are the core values of the company. With a strong background of operating a content business, the company is keen to provide the best user experiences as well as various platforms to meet clients’ needs, from the basic Web, iOS, Android to Samsung Tizen, LG Web OS, Raku, Amazon FireTV. There are over eleven different platforms available in todays market and that number is continuously expanding.
MOLA Mola’s Chill
Partners key to blossoming services and capabilities Mola’s high technical standards, driven by Lee, meant a whole rebuild of their technology stack, so they could give back a better deal to their subscribers through a high-performance platform. For the business, this is about sustainability and giving their users an experience they can enjoy anytime, anywhere.
“Onwards Media helped us look at our CMS and our delivery, so we’re able to transcend the experience for the users
CHILL 2303 Watch
Lee said: “We decided to work with partners with experience and field knowledge within media, helping us to power our new backend systems and our frontend applications.”
Singapore and Malaysia, and that actually brings a new experience for these countries.
Previously,themselves”.Leeexplained, when you develop in-house, there’s “struggles with timelines”, but with a partnership, “you're always looking at what is available and maximising the strength of each partner”.
“We focus on the audience's needs and serve them with fresh content delivered in outstanding quality,” said Lee.
One of these partners, Onwards Media Group, was a vital part of this rebuild.
Club members as they step into the future dystopian London at Mola Chill 2303,the world's first NFT ticketed event from Mola Chill Club. Immersive sci-fi VR stations and a futuristic-themed bar were the main features along with the unmissable "call to arms" 142 September 2022 MOLA TV
With customer’s Quality of Experience (QoE) considered the benchmark of the OTT world, Mola are expanding their existing partnerships with the likes of Broadpeak, who they brought on board last year for their advanced content delivery network (CDN), which reduces Mola’s Video delivery costs and ensures a superior QoE across all Today,devices.Mola is rebuilding the entire platform backend, as well as the frontend.
The recently revamped Mola platform includes “Mola Chill Fridays,” where fans can interact with international musicians such as Kehlani, Seal, and Charlie Puth, and request songs from them.
Homegrown content Of Mola’s core pillars, much of their original content comes from the music and general entertainment categories, with sport mainly dominated by live rights.
A glittering cast including Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Douglas, Gary Vaynerchuck, Mike Tyson, Susan Sarandon, Sharon Stone and John Travolta are also fair game for audience questions on the “The Mola Living Live” interactive talkAndshow.that’s not all, as Mola also has its own recording label, signing up new talent to fuel its social media engagements.
To continue to provide an enhanced experience for customers, Aspirapps came on board to bring the app experience to the next level. Lee stated that in-house teams can take “a bit longer to introduce new technologies”, so “working with a partner like Aspirapps allows us to introduce those new features and functions faster than before”.
“We want to become a part of the community, which is why we are so focused on creating programmes and activities that do more than just entertain our viewers,” said Mola CEO (and prominent filmmaker) Mirwan Suwarso. mobile-magazine.com
143 MOLA TV
In terms of live feeds, a core offering for Mola, the likes of SES ensure that the countless sporting match-ups they provide and various live feeds for concerts are taken care of, as well as the playout functionality. Lee added that “SES is a very valuable partner for us, ensuring we can offer a broad range of live content”.
ONWARDS MEDIA GROUP Build OTT platforms customised to your needs Bespoke OTT Solutions Onwards Media Group specialises in video processing and real-time communications. Our products have served live broadcasters and millions of active viewers globally. Enhance your audience experience and engagement with our customisable platforms capable of utilising big data analytics and artificial intelligence. Learn More
CP MOLACTO,LEETV “We have leaguesalltoexpandedactuallyourportfolioincludealmostthemajorsoccerfromEurope”
AI, machine learning and the data that these technologies provide powers the new platforms at Mola. With a focus on user’s needs at every point, the streaming giant can use these deep insights to give back a better experience to the user.
mobile-magazine.com 145
“We started to actually run offline events for users to come together to listen, enjoy and bask in the music environment. But we also continue to stream those on our platform at the same time,” said Lee.
Data and the future Mola prides itself on learning each day from the data and user feedback they are seeing in the market, which helps them to navigate the trends and set new availability and new trends, where possible.
Lee explained that this new approach taps into areas other platforms are not, making it a significant differentiator, “because the content is actually owned by us”.
For example, recommendations have always been tough for a ‘home brew’ system to really tap into, so this has led Mola to bring on partners to try and get that done correctly.
Maximising every avenue of social media exposure, Mola taps into key events in the build up, during the performances and celebrating the experience after the show.
An ocean of opportunities for Mola
Commenting on the remarkable speed of digital transformation since their interview with us in Autumn last year, Lee added : “We switched over from the beta world, or the preview world, into the subscription business world since April. And we are actually seeing a very healthy pick up in terms of subscriptions from end users, as it grows steadily on a day-by-day basis. And it also gives us that sensibility that we need to do better for our users, who have given us that initial trust.”
146 September 2022 MOLA TV
“The offering of content that we have is so huge, we really need to figure a way to help users to dive in, to really help them get the best experience in the limited time that they have on the screen.
“This is where data plays a very important part in our learnings, as well as artificial intelligence to help decipher what the best way to deliver to them is. And this is not just on content, it's also on the delivery itself: how we can deliver the end stream to particular users with the best path, with the best video codec that we can get to their screen, so that whatever platform you're using, whichever applications you are on, you'll always get the best experience,” saidTheLee.‘appointment to view’ approach of traditional TV (also known as ‘lean back’ experience), is shifting towards a ‘lean forward’ approach where the user browses similar to using the Internet. In the digital age, people navigate content by swipes on mobile touch screens or clicks on portable laptops and desktops. In other words: they lean“Weforward.aretrying to marry the two. So it is definitely in the works of combining the lean forward experience such that it becomes synonymous to users.
“There's lots of times when you go to the platform and get overwhelmed as well. This is something where I think that linking up the two experiences can be utilised in a slightly different way to assist the user.
“So, if they want to just sit down and watch something, we can present that accordingly to the users, based on where they are. And from that they can switch into the lean forward whenever, if they want to. And this is something that we are trying to build at this moment; to have that kind of seamless experience,” said Lee.
“Over the past year, the team has toandtothathardtremendouslyworkedtomakesureweareabledeliverabetterfasterserviceouruser”
The users put their faith in us in terms of technology, and that comes under my group. That’s why we emphasise delivery to the end-user. We want to make sure that our users get the best end-to-end experience so we are looking into key technologies like Dolby Vision etc. We are always talking to different partners,” said Lee. Seeing good technology vendors as contributors to the canvas of technology, Lee describes the technical ecosystem as like a piece of artwork. “When you really want to reach that peak, there is actually a very artistic direction that you need to drive. It is not just ones and zeros. Yes, those are the fundamentals, but to reach that key goal, you must get the right components and blend them together”
In Europe, both in the UK and Italy, Mola is still operating on the free preview environment, but Lee explained that this is simply because they want to take things more cautiously. “By the time that we start to go to market in new regions, we must be ready for the users who give us their trust.
Number one for us is that we want to really only get into areas that we can support properly. We do not want to get into a country with no appropriate content or minimum content, and not do it justice.
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CP MOLACTO,LEETV
HYBRID CLOUD AND THE MANAGINCHALLENGMULTI
148 September 2022
TECH & AI
WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK
As the storage location for 60% of the world’s corporate data, the cloud’s present challenges and future evolution are topics that we’re all invested in W hen it comes to global cloud migration, rapid is a bit of an understatement.
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Now, more than 3.6 billion people across the world use the cloud, with 60% of all corporate data being stored there. And this growth rate? It’s only set to So,continue.inorder to meet the world’s burgeoning data demands, the cloud continues to evolve – it has to. In light of multi-cloud promising to be the next big phase for business cloud migration, we explore the risks, rewards and competitive edge that this data solution represents.
CLOUD EVOLUTI O N, CHALLEN G ES OF MULTI - CLOUD
In 2020, fuelled by the pandemic and the rapid shift to remote working, 61% of businesses moved their workloads onto the cloud. Today, the number of enterprises using cloud services has reached 94%.
Reäl end-to-end.
“Multi-cloud architectures are like puzzles, and data leaders need to devise and manage a solid underlying strategy to solve them”
MARK BALKENENDE VICE PRESIDENT OF PRODUCT MARKETING, MATILLION
“Forward-thinking teams will continue to recognise that, with the right management, they can reap the extensive flexibility, affordability, scalability, and security benefits of a bespoke hybrid cloud solution that suits their business needs, while eliminating the shortcomings of only leveraging public cloud environments.”
Security, in particular, is one of the prime benefits of the hybrid cloud. After all, for businesses, online security encompasses everything from data compliance to website uptime, brand reputation to minimising financial loss. “It’s incredible, the complications that security can make to a company right now. And, as companies become more and more digital, the impact is greater,” adds Leonardo Coca, the B2B Business Director at Telecom Argentina.
The hybrid cloud is expanding and evolving exponentially, fuelled by this rapidly increasing global demand. And, by combining the benefits of public and private networks, the hybrid cloud gives you the best of both worlds. The technology offers a flexible, dependable and quick solution to a whole host of business concerns, including reducing the cost of infrastructure management, improving data security and successfully managing demand surges.
The next phase of hybrid cloud evolution
The global cloud computing market has a predicted 16.3% CAGR through to 2026, where the market is set to reach $947.3bn by 2026. And, in just five years, the market size has risen by more than half a billion USD.
“As cloud migration continues, becoming more essential to business strategy and agility, we only expect to see more companies making the switch,” comments Jon Lucas, the Director of Hyve Managed Hosting.
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JONDIRECTOR,LUCAS
“Recent years have seen an exponential rise in the adoption of a multi-cloud approach to cloud storage, as companies worldwide are noting the benefits. It has become evident that, in many cases, relying on a single organisationsdatacloudcase.ButoftentwoandManagerEnterpriseMassimoenterprises,”aworkloadsforinfrastructurecloudproviderallapplicationsandisnolongerviableoptionforadvisesBandinelli,theMarketingatAruba.“WhenitcomestoBIAdvancedAnalytics,ormorecloudsarestrongerthanone.thatwasn’talwaystheInitially,theriseof–andtheresultingexplosion–forcedtostoredata across an array of disparate platforms and warehouses, spreading workloads and increasing costs,” corroborated Mark Balkenende, the Vice President of Product Marketing at Matillion.
Security is one of the other most commonly quoted multi-cloud benefits. It’s important to note, however, that high security isn’t always a given. In fact, although access to the cloud is the basic security measure that the cloud providers give you, “it’s not the most important”.
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HYVE MANAGED HOSTING
“That reality prompted the emergence of multi-cloud, which promised greater flexibility, security and business resiliency to enterprises. Now, we’re at the stage where organisations grappling with the volume and variety of data need that custom cloud architecture, so they can execute against data in a more agile way.”
The two main reasons why companies would want to use a multi-cloud is to either replicate the same workload across multiple clouds, or to split the workload across multiple clouds.
“As cloud andbusinessbecomescontinuesmigrationandmoreessentialtostrategyagility,weonlyexpecttoseemorecompaniesmakingtheswitch”
For many businesses, multi-cloud strategies allow greater flexibility, increased efficiency and agility, and improves their scalability.
The growth of multi-cloud environments – the next step in cloud evolution? The multi-cloud represents the natural next step in the future of our data storage. In fact, the public cloud service market achieved an 18.4% year-on-year growth in 2021.
If your users are located across the world, then replicating your workload across multiple, strategically-chosen cloud providers means you can optimise your geographical outreach. Plus, there’s also the issue again of depending too much on one single provider. Many companies are reluctant to do this, in case the cloud company goes bust, crashes, or experiences some other major issue, causing their systems to be lost completely. If you have multiple cloud platforms, this risk is mitigated.
Multi-cloud – the pros, the cons, and the challengesmanagement Without a doubt, the benefits of multi-cloud environments are many and counting.
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September 2022 TECH & AI
If you’re a company that is not specialised in this field, it’s very challenging to keep pace with the technology. So, employee training and talent retention are made even more critical by multi-cloud environments.
Another key challenge to managing a multi-cloud set-up is the sheer extent of the technological organisation involved.
adss that, “at the moment, enterprise companies tend to rely on an average of five cloud providers to offer their services and reduce their dependence on a single provider”. “As with all technology, hybrid cloud is not without its challenges,” Lucas adds. However, Lucas also reassuringly follows that up by noting that the challenges are by no means insurmountable, with such issues “easily overcome by those with hybrid cloud expertise”. But, one of the key challenges is precisely that: there simply aren’t enough people in the industry with hybrid cloud experience.
“Organising data, platforms, and applications across various locations, including on-premise data centres and “People think that, once you have the two-factor authentication and everything secure to access to the cloud and the configuration, that’s done. And that’s a huge mistake. In fact, 85% of security breaches came from problems with the configuration of the application,” states Coca. So, “to ensure maximum data protection and privacy across your multicloud environment, it’s important to always have data backed up off-site”, Bandinelli advises.
‘knowledge race’ means that “it’s very, very difficult for companies to be up to date on this”. He adds: “It’s difficult to get the talent, and it’s difficult to keep the talent in your company.”
“One of the most long-standing practices for on-premises data protection is the 3-2-1 model. With this method, keeping three copies of data is recommended: two on devices and one offsite. The advantage of having a 'live backup' is that it updates automatically and can be restored in minutes when disaster strikes. It's equally as important to have a ‘cold backup’ – an offline backup that is separated from your live systems, and is therefore tamper-proof.”Infact,Bandinalle
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When you’re dealing with this many technologies, service providers and digital processes, one of the main challenges of a multi-cloud can actually be its multiserviceAccordingnature.to Balkenende, the solution lies in planning a clear strategy for blending the cloud solutions, in order to keep implementation as smooth as possible.
Balkenende furthers.
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“While each one is unique to its business, a unifying data-management layer should be the one constant across all, ensuring the ultimate silver lining sought, whether from one cloud or many.”
“Multi-cloud architectures are like puzzles, and data leaders need to devise and manage a solid underlying strategy to solve them.”
CULTIVATING LIVESUNDERPRIVILEGEDANDCONNECTIONSENHANCING PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING WRITTEN BY: JESS GIBSON 156 September 2022
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158 September 2022 VODAFONE FIJI
W ith its many islands hemmed by crystalline waters that wash onto white sand and greencarpeted mountains, Fiji is a vista of immense natural beauty. The archipelago, made up of over 300 islands and 500 islets, was formed as a result of volcanic activity over 150 million years ago. The two main islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu – which contain almost 90% of Fiji’s total population between them –are the beating heart of the economy, with tourism accompanying minerals, sugar cane and fishing as one of its largest drivers, aiding Fiji in being one of the most developed economies in the Pacific. Despite this, though, the reality of daily life on Fiji’s islands belies the image most of us possess; it is a developing nation, after all – one that’s still battling with the brutal blows inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism and the economy. Pockets of rural Fijian communities still function day-to-day with just 2G or, if they’re lucky, 3G connectivity, lacking the infrastructure needed to enhance this further for the time being.
Becoming the largest telco network in Fiji Parent company Vodafone is itself a global telecommunications company that dips its toes successfully in a wide array of industry sub-sectors, though it does so with a customercentric ethos that builds “strong customer affiliation and brand loyalty”. It is this approach to which Prasad attributes Vodafone Fiji’s success. “Vodafone Fiji is a dynamic and fast-paced business, operating in an essential industry,” Prasad states, highlighting the differentiating factors of the company. “Our vision is to be the most admired At Vodafone Fiji, Vikash Prasad dedicates himself to the pursuit of technological advancement to provide digital equality and equity to those most in need mobile-magazine.com
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But this is where Vodafone Fiji steps in. The company, which is “the main telecommunications player in Fiji” (with 85% market share), is committed to “enriching people’s lives” and overcoming the obstacles currently plaguing the archipelago.
“IT'S ALWAYS VITAL TO HAVE A GOOD PLAN IN PLACE. IF YOU HAVE A GOOD PLAN IN PLACE, YOU HAVE THE FIRST PART DONE”
“When it comes to connectivity, we no longer treat it as a want, but as a basic need for customers now,” establishes Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Vikash Prasad, “especially in a developing country like Fiji, where there's lots of people who still live in these rural or maritime areas.”
VIKASH PRASAD CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, VODAFONE FIJI
“WHEN IT COMES TO CONNECTIVITY, WE NO LONGER TREAT IT AS A WANT, BUT AS A BASIC NEED FOR CUSTOMERS NOW – ESPECIALLY IN A DEVELOPING COUNTRY LIKE FIJI, WHERE THERE ARE LOTS OF PEOPLE WHO STILL LIVE IN THESE RURAL OR MARITIME AREAS” Hear about the ways Vodafone Fiji is enriching Fijian lives
company in Fiji, and our mission is to enrich people’sPrasadlives.”alsocredits the telco’s “exceptional frontline, customer care teams and business account managers” with helping it to stay on top of the competition and reach 95% of the Fijian population. “Apart from the traditional voice, data and SMS offerings, we offer the best ICT solutions in the region, such as Cloud, SDWAN, and many other innovative solutions that are tailor-made for many of our ICT customers.” In addition to customer-centricity being a defining element of Vodafone Fiji’s success, its recent foray into the FinTech world is opening up new doors. “We are also an emerging FinTech company, providing digital services in terms of financial and e-business at a national level,” says Prasad. “Being an incumbent, we have to be agile in all our operations, so it's all about creating value in our products and services.”
VIKASH PRASAD CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, VODAFONE FIJI 160 September 2022 VODAFONE FIJI
Now, this doesn’t mean that Prasad’s team has no room to make mistakes; it means
Vikash Prasad is responsible for providing leadership direction and innovation ownership to drive overall technology strategy, operational excellence, and innovation for Vodafone Fiji. He is recognised for building strong technology platforms and delivering several network transformation initiatives for Vodafone.
VODAFONE FIJI
“A life lesson that I live by is that we have to do things right the first time, and that what is right to do is not always easy. We need to put in the hard yards now so that we can reap the benefits of it in the future.”
“One of the things we are also doing as part of our transformation revolves around our workforce – we’re focusing on increasing the capabilities of our people and investing in our talent pool. That means putting our staff through specialised training, and providing for and equipping them so that they strive for greatness in the new digital world,” Prasad states, going on to explain how his personal ethos is woven throughout this process to promote excellence.
Vikash leads a dynamic team responsible for continued network growth and adopting technology evolution, ensuring Vodafone delivers next generation network initiatives to create the most innovative and reliable networks in Fiji and across the Pacific. In his 19 years with Vodafone, Vikash has successfully driven a number of multi-million dollar mobile network projects. Vikash previously held the roles of Manager Access Networks, Engineer Network Services and Systems Support Analyst.
He holds a Masters in Business Administration (Technology) from the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of New
BIOEXECUTIVE VIKASH PRASAD TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
This approach has enabled steady yearon-year growth for Vodafone Fiji, which the company hopes will continue as it sets out on its 5G journey, becomes more established in FinTech and finds innovative ways to ensure its customers receive the connectivity needed to boost its tourism-heavy economy. Moulding attitudes for the future of telco innovation Innovation is essential to the longevity of a business – as Prasad well knows. In the postCOVID age of rapid digital transformation and detailed data analysis, impacted by geopolitical and climate-related events, this is particularly true. But having a skilled team that thinks out of the box requires a change in management and strategy, which is often the product of company-wide cultural overhauls. So, Vodafone Fiji has invested in its staff – via training, enabling work-from-home capabilities and providing leadership coaching – and employees have, in turn, ‘invested’ in the business, allowing innovation to flourish. “Our staff believe in our vision,” he says.
Vikash Prasad, Chief Technology Officer for Vodafone Fiji, describes this platform as “efficient and user-friendly, a powerful tool that allows us to have access to almost real-time information out in the field, all of which is web-based,” explains Prasad. “In addition to monitoring daily network operations, when optimising networks, the platform allows us to efficiently provide automated solutions’ reporting. This information can then be shared with Vodafone Directors and easily related to network KPIs, reducing the need for multiple platforms and screens.”
Vikash Prasad is vocal when praising the Metric team for their “timely and responsive communication, the quality of their support, and their ability to solve a variety of issues, no matter the “Multivisioncomplexity.”promotes innovation and simplicity, and Metric is a powerful tool for us,” he adds.
Metric: a powerful platform for network optimisation Multivision and Vodafone Fiji work together via Metric, an efficient and powerful platform, which enhances the critical role that partnerships play in achieving growth. Multivision has been a key partner of Vodafone Fiji for almost four years now, with the two companies joining forces in 2019 when Vodafone Fiji subscribed to Metric, a SaaS offering owned, delivered, and remotely managed by Multivision. A company that also provides professional and strategic advice alongside bespoke IT solutions and co-sourcing of IT talents, Multivision has worked with a host of bigname businesses such as Siemens, Unitel, and SinceIce.net.itsinception in 2007, Multivision has based its work around one core philosophy: ‘Grow to make you grow’, which is threaded through each aspect of the company´s daily work. With Metric and this fruitful partnership, Vodafone has been able to conduct in-the-field quality audits of network performance. This has allowed Vodafone Fiji to continue its two-year 5G infrastructure build while ensuring that existing connections are stable and secure for even the most rurally isolated Fijians.
that, by investing time in the planning, research, design or training aspects of a task or process, the final result itself will be right the first time. And this thread continues throughout everything Prasad oversees, particularly Vodafone Fiji’s digital transformation. “It's always vital to have a good plan in place. If you have a good plan in place, you have the first part done.” A popular theme to many a business discussion over the last two years has been the unexpected boost that COVID-19 gave to digital transformation. In some cases, the pandemic merely spurred on a pre-existing idea or sped up the pace; in others, it created an urgent business need in order to survive. “During COVID, there was a surge in demand for data, and this would've been the same story for a lot of telcos around the world. That put a lot of stress on the network, and during that time, the boundaries of our mobile network services were being tested.” Not only were Vodafone Fiji’s networks being tested in the short-term, but there were also long-term economic effects that created a need for digitisation. “For Fiji, tourism has always been one of the biggest economic drivers. So, when the borders closed down, the economy suffered.”
“DEVICE STRATEGY WILL PLAY A KEY ROLE, WITH ONE OF THE MAIN DRIVERS WHEN IT COMES TO DEVICES BEING AFFORDABILITY”
VIKASH PRASAD CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, VODAFONE FIJI
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MultiVision has been a partner of Vodafone Fiji’s for four years now. From this fruitful partnership, Vodafone has been able to undergo an in-the-field, quality audit of its network performance, subsequently acquiring the Metric platform for network optimisation. Prasad describes this platform as “efficient and userfriendly”, “a powerful tool” that collates “KPI data with other data” to allow for a correlation of issues.
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WITHPARTNERINGMULTIVISION
Vodafone Fiji engineers have so far only worked with those at MultiVision via virtual means, often on other sides of the world – though this will no longer be the case soon. These meetings have allowed the fine-tuning and customisation of the platform, despite the time difference, with Prasad describing the MultiVision team of engineers as “timely and responsive” and providing “excellentmobile-magazine.comsupport”.
“A LIFE LESSON THAT I LIVE BY IS THAT WE HAVE TO DO THINGS RIGHT THE FIRST TIME, AND THAT WHAT IS RIGHT TO DO IS NOT ALWAYS EASY. WE NEED TO PUT IN THE HARD YARDS NOW SO THAT WE CAN REAP THE BENEFITS OF IT IN THE FUTURE”
This directly impacted the telco’s ability to put the necessary infrastructure in place to support citizens and tourists alike in the immediate wake of the pandemic. “But everything is changing now,” Prasad smiles. “Our customers want connectivity everywhere, so businesses are shifting priorities. One of the buzzwords right now is the cloud and having cloud platforms or migrating to cloud platforms, but with that comes a lot of risks, as well. Cyber threats are one of the biggest challenges that we face right now.”
As such, Vodafone Fiji is investing not just in its team, but in expanding technological infrastructure across the whole of Fiji to develop the cloud, 5G connectivity and its FinTech arm.
VIKASH PRASAD CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, VODAFONE FIJI
The road to 5G is paved with good intentions Being a developing country situated on an archipelago means progress can be slow.
Across Fiji, which is predominantly made up of rural or coastal locations, developing connectivity to wireless mobile networks is difficult – and that’s without considering regulatory requirements, different frequency spectrums, and affordability for all customers, which is why Prasad refers to 5G in that respect as “a double-edged sword”. mobile-magazine.com
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Vodafone Fiji may be an estimated two years away from full 5G connectivity, but with Prasad at the helm developing and solidifying plans, as well as encouraging his team to think differently, the rollout is likely to be free of any kinks or issues.
Prasad hopes that, by delivering connectivity to the entirety of Fiji, he can uplift the digitally ‘poor’ – those with basic or limited connectivity, hindering personal progress – ensuring digital equality and, most importantly, equity.
“VODAFONE FIJI IS A DYNAMIC AND FAST-PACED BUSINESS, OPERATING IN AN ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY”
“A lot of focus for us is also about covering these assetsthemakingareas,useofexistingthat we have, and trying to sweat them as much as possible so that we deliver the connectivity that people are after.”
VIKASH PRASAD CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, VODAFONE FIJI
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But another obstacle to overcome is the Fijian terrain itself, which prevents the telco from “using the traditional mobile towers or cell towers” across every area.
“We needed to think outside the box. And one of the very cost-effective solutions that we have deployed here is broadband satellite: it’s quick to deploy, easy to install, easy to operate, and can be done within days,” Prasad explains.
Arguably the biggest move for Vodafone Fiji in recent years is the development of its Mobile Money platform, which marks the company’s move into the FinTech space to complement the different industries within the local Fijian market and, therefore, the economy.“Mobile Money is one of the greatest examples and pride of Vodafone Fiji,” Prasad enthuses. “M-PAiSA is an in-housedeveloped digital wallet platform that Ultimately, the company’s approach is not to rush ahead, but instead to “wait, watch and then act”. This will help the team to build an “understanding of the 5G ecosystem and how it will bridge the current digital gaps”, as well as informing them of “any investments needed to fully grasp this”.
Shifting priorities and expanding verticals
“We are always on the lookout for new partnerships. It’s no secret that to succeed, having trusted partners is a must –it’s no longer about operating in a silo.
In the face of globally-shifting priorities, it’s become necessary for businesses to expand their verticals, breaching into multi-cloud terrain as part of their digital transformation. For example, Vodafone Fiji has merged its private cloud with that of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, which, in Prasad’s words, is “bringing the best of private and public clouds together with our expertise so that we offer our customers a unified cloud platform for all their needs”.
“So having the right device strategy, where we have a pool of low-end 5G devices that are prepaid, will really help.”
TO MAKE A THING GO RIGHT
Apart from partners such as ZTE, Cisco, Aviat Networks, we also work very closely with partners such as MultiVision, Ciena, umlaut, InfoBip and many others to deliver the best value not only for Vodafone, but for our customers as well.” mobile-magazine.com
As established, affordability for all customers is key to both Vodafone Fiji and Prasad. You see, 5G infrastructure is all well and good, but the vast majority of the devices designed for such capabilities are high-end and, as such, have high-end prices attached.
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“Device strategy will play a key role, with one of the main drivers when it comes to devices being affordability,” Prasad affirms.
IT TAKES TWO (OR MORE)
For a telco & ICT provider like Vodafone Fiji, acquiring accreditation and certifications from world-class vertical companies such as Cisco, Oracle and Microsoft is key for us as we strategise to further enhance our position in the ICT sector Simply put, collaboration with vertical industries is now the mainstay when it comes to delivering best-in-class valueadded services to our customers, resulting in new revenue streams.
“Fiji is a developing country, so the average user may not spend up to a thousand dollars to get a 5G phone; a normal, basic phone would meet their requirements. And Fiji is also predominantly a prepaid market.
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“Launched in 2010, M-PAiSA now processes over $200mn in monthly M-PAiSA transactions, making it a significant player in Fiji’s digital and cashless payment space.”
“FOR FIJI, TOURISM HAS ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF THE BIGGEST ECONOMIC DRIVERS. SO, WHEN THE BORDERS CLOSED DOWN, THE ECONOMY SUFFERED”
This bespoke digital wallet platform, M-PAiSA, has established itself as a market leader in the mobile and digital payment space, with “high brand equity” and “trust as a reliable and robust digital payment platform”.
Prasad details the effect this success has had in the years since M-PAiSA’s launch: “One of Fiji’s fastest growing economic drivers is inward International Remittance. Within a space of 12 months, M-PAiSA has gained a 25% market share of all inward remits into Fiji. “We have taken an advantageous position by being the first to market with our innovative payment services using QR pay. Month-on-month, we see new merchants come onboard with us. Next on the horizon for Vodafone Fiji is to become a scheme
VIKASH PRASAD CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, VODAFONE FIJI provides a number of basic financial and digital payment services.
Providing digital equality and equity to those who are underprivileged is a noble endeavour, particularly when the aim is to do so carefully and steadily to make sure it lasts for the foreseeable future. payment provider. This is a whole new ball game for Fiji as a nation.
The future outlook for Vodafone Fiji will feature “digitalisation, data and virtualisation” on a large scale, which, of course, includes the continuation of its mobile networks' rollout with focus on 5G and beyond, as well as the development of its FinTech arm. This means “evolving legacy platforms into world class systems that can be supported through cloud” and obtaining “deeper insights through collaboration in terms of analytics and forging partnerships” to allow for “detailed, real-time insights of customers’ pain points”.
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and coastal regions sits data and analytics –and in the modern world, data is king.
“All-in-all, Vodafone is not only a CSP but offers services that can be offered by a FinTech organisation.” Exciting, indeed.
Digitalisation, data and virtualisation
“When it comes to analytics, it’s a move to fresher, more dynamic ways of understanding our customers using crowdsourced data,” Prasad explains. “It’s no longer just about using data from your OSS & BSS platforms. Detailed insights from near realtime systems gives another level of clarity on what the pain points are exactly.” This means that, no matter where in Fiji someone resides – whether on the most remote islet or the centre of the capital, Suva – they aren’t held back by being digitally poor.
At the very core of realising this aim of enabling connectivity in underprivileged rural mobile-magazine.com
172 September 2022 AD WRITTENFEATUREBY: GEORGIA WILSON PRODUCED BY: WHITEGLEN
mobile-magazine.comMTN173
Dirk andGroupKarl,ExecutiveCPOatMTN. 174 September 2022 MTN
Leading MTN Group’s procurement transformation, Dirk Karl , Group Executive and CPO, discusses benefits, smart data-driven decision making, and ESG D riven by its strong belief that everyone deserves the benefit of a connected modern life – particularly on the African continent – MTN Group is committed to bridging the digital divide, bringing connectivity and financial inclusion to its operating markets.
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Procurement transformation: leading the charge Being a successful and perceptive procurement leader with an international career spanning 25 years, Karl has been CPO at MTN since 2017. As part of his role, Karl leads the group’s procurement transformation strategy. “Our strategy is built on three key pillars,” he explains. “The first is ESG, which is not only key to our procurement transformation, but central to our core strategy as a business. Next, we have the ‘digital DNA’ to push data driven decision making, advanced analytics and agility into procurement, and finally, we are focused on driving supply chain resilience.”
“We are building the largest and most valuable business platform, with a clear focus on bringing Africa and its enterprises forward,” says Dirk Karl, Group Executive and CPO at MTN.
As an early adopter of (ROI).onwithalready“Thissuchtheisoperations,integralsourcingchainintegratingtransformation,procurementitssupplyandstrategicintoonepartofitsMTNalreadyreapingbenefitsofastrategy.approachhasprovidedusavitalreturninvestmentAsanearlieradopter, we were able to navigate the perfect storm of semiconductor shortages alongside the friction caused throughout the supply chain over the last couple of years,” explains Karl. A core part of the isfunction,function.thesourcingagile,introducinginvolvedtransformationgroupMTNnew,anditerativemodelsinprocurement“Acrosstheeveryonescrummaster certified; we have cross functional teams operating in agile squads and pods in order to drive agility. Everything that we have “We have developed our own tools that support our sourcing function to decisiondata-drivenadoptmaking”
DIRK KARL GROUP AND
CPO, MTN 176 September 2022 MTN
EXECUTIVE
LOCATION: DUBAI, UAE learned from IT software development, we are translating into the procurement organisation,” says Karl. Adopting this approach drastically changed MTN’s operating model. “This also transforms our throughput times in terms of how long it takes us to meet supply chain demands and complete sourcing transactions. This is why ‘digital DNA’ is a critical part of our transformation.”Itwasimportant for MTN to onboard and restructure the people within its organisation due to the new skill set required. “It was a real transformational undertaking, bringing data science expertise into the organisation as well as catering for such change, and developing the systems and tools to transform sourcing and supply chain,” adds Karl.
Dirk Karl is the Group Executive and CPO of Global Sourcing and Supply Chain at MTN Group and has overall responsibility for Sourcing and Supply Chain across the MTN Group. Since joining MTN in 2017, Karl has been instrumental in delivering significant impacts on MTN Group’s sourcing and supply chain management business. Building on his experiences, he has transformed the organization through multiple levers, which have increased the EBITDA results of the sourcing business by more than 30%.
DIRK KARL
Karl has taken MTN’s sourcing and supply chain to the forefront of the industry through an ambitious digitalisation and transformation programme. Focusing on the development and exploitation of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, a well established centre of excellence comprising data scientists and sourcing
TITLE: GROUP EXECUTIVE AND CPO INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS
MTN
MTN is using data analytics and automation to enhance its throughput time, cut down on manual, time consuming activities and drive greater efficiency.
managementtotransformation,ouritwillbeimportantfocusonchangewithinthegroup”
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One thing for certain in modern procurement and supply chains is uncertainty and disruption. “We have had no choice but to become smarter,” says Karl, “Uncertainty is a part of daily life. We still have to make decisions in the face of uncertainty, we can’t take it away, but we can better harness huge volumes of information to make data-driven decisions, which has become an integral part of our procurement and sourcing operation.”
Karl explains: “We have developed our own in-house tools that support our sourcing function to adopt data-driven decisionmaking platforms and supply chain risk management frameworks using advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. Our expert sourcing teams are guided by price curves within each category, and our scenario analysis tool is used to analyse millions of possible “With the introduction and completion of
DIRK KARL GROUPANDEXECUTIVECPO,MTN
Making smart procurement decisions in the face of uncertainty
“As an earlier adopter, we were able to navigate the perfect storm of semiconductor shortages alongside the friction caused throughout the supply chain over the last couple of years” KARL GROUP EXECUTIVE AND CPO, MTN
DIRK
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Incorporating ESG into procurement transformation
sourcing award scenarios and select the optimum scenario for negotiation. We even have our own artificial intelligenceenabled virtual assistant, GeSSiCa, who scans our entire procurement ecosystem searching for bundling opportunities.
“We also work with academic institutions to support data science and machine-learning capabilities for procurement to enhance this kind of expertise across Africa. As part of our ecosystem, we often work collaboratively, forming joint alliances with others both to further the procurement and supply chain functions and to sell our services.”
With ESG core to its business strategy, MTN is not only supporting ESG initiatives in the form of its net-zero roadmap for 2040 and its innovations to reduce emissions across Scope 1 to Scope 3, but the group is also introducing elements of a circular economy into its operations.
“This not only includes our external suppliers, but our innovation partners, startup partners, local SMEs, and crossborder suppliers,” explains Karl.
“We have further developed our artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to assist in eAuctions, providing data-driven vendor evaluations that allow our category managers to optimise the potential tender outcome.”
Along its transformation journey, MTN has MTN Group has an extensive range of partners across its ecosystem.
“With this approach, we are much more mobile-magazine.com
MTN AND ITS PARTNERS had agility in mind. “We have organised ourselves in the transformation journey to be agile, moving away from the typical category structure that is mimicked in the procurement function. Instead, our procurement operations are very much aligned with the MTN Group Ambition 2025 business strategy. We are catering for the same change across the company in order to be future fit.”
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PROCUREMENT
FUTURE TRENDS
182 September 2022 MTN
When it comes to future trends in procurement, Karl emphasises the importance of seeing procurement as an integral part of the business as opposed to an appendix. “Procurement is not only a vital function for cost savings, it has strategic value to unlock opportunities for businesses,” says Karl. To achieve such value, a key trend going forward will be the effective use of data to navigate the complexities of the procurement and sourcing function. “Data will help organisations to tackle inflation and further disruptions to the supply chain. It will be particularly beneficial in our operating markets to navigate the complexities of procurement and supply in developing countries when it comes to hyperinflation, currency fluctuations, crossborder trade, and sanctions,” says Karl. “It’s no longer enough to talk about procurement data visualisation, we have long passed data warehousing, data lakes and data visualisation, it is time to realise the value that can be created to implement behavioural models and predict outcomes. It’s more about empowering operations with predictive insights and forecasting to drive the future of procurement excellence.” IN
“With the university, we will be continuing to work on advanced digital procurement solutions and supply chain tools. We want to advance our control tower and nerve centre here at MTN, which combines sourcing transactions, inventories, and supply chain disruptions. We also want to ensure that our markets are getting the supplies they need on time, with early alert systems in place to further improve our intervention and prevention if disruptions occur,” explains Karl.
Expanding on MTN’s sustainability strategy, Karl explains the group’s shared value of developing a responsible environment through social and governance practices that are supported by procurement and supply chains. “Only healthy societies can prosper; we have an obligation to support societies to stay healthy or become healthy.”
DIRK KARL GROUPANDEXECUTIVECPO,MTN
What does the future hold for MTN Group?
One way that MTN achieves this is through its localisation policy. ”Through technology innovation and onboarding of local suppliers, we can help societies to prosper and suppliers develop. We do this with sustainability governance oversight by our social and ethics committee to ensure that we are meeting our pledges and supplier code of conduct.”
“We are building the largest and most valuable business platform, with a clear focus on bringing Africa and its enterprises forward”
focused on the end-to-end sustainability of our business,” says Karl. “We are also focused on reusing and extending the lifetime of our assets and supplies with refurbishment and repairs, instead of producing and buying new. This sub-pillar of our ESG strategy coincides with our drive for agility.”
In addition to its internal ambitions for the next 12 to 18 months, MTN will also be working on its collaboration with startups and universities – specifically, with the University of Johannesburg.
“Finally, we want to focus on our people, investing in their skills and training over the next 12 to 18 months. We are providing agile coaching, agile training, and scrum certifications, along with upskilling our teams in areas such as intelligent automation to be future ready, which we hope to translate into valuable business outcomes,” concludes Karl.
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Over the next 12 to 18 months, MTN Group will continue to drive its procurement transformation, focusing on agility and its new operating model. “The next 18 months are going to be a very bumpy journey,” says“WithKarl.the introduction and completion of our transformation, it will be important to focus on change management within the group to ensure that our human workforce doesn’t fall back onto old methods. The next 18 months will be very much about adapting. We will be looking at the metrics of adapting, the usage of tools, adapting machine learning and adapting data.”
TECHOPENWITHMARKETWIRELESSTHEOVERTAKINGUS’-RAN PRODUCED BY: BERRYJAMES WRITTEN BY: ÖZSEVIMİLKHAN 184 September 2022
mobile-magazine.com 185 DISH NETWORK
186 September 2022 DISH NETWORK
DISH Network has its eyes on taking over the Wireless Market in the USA with Radio Access Network Technology. Can its competitors keep up? A ccording to Statista, in 2021, the number of mobile devices operating worldwide stood close to 15 billion. With the global population at almost 8 billion, that’s nearly two mobile phones for every person on the planet. It’s therefore no hyperbole to say that, in telecommunications terms, we are truly interconnected – and that’s just through mobile phones alone. Throughout day-to-day life, we make use of a myriad of devices to communicate without even considering the nature of their connectivity and functionality; as such, the vast majority of people are similarly unaware of the seismic technological shifts occurring beneath the surface of every industry. Industry 4.0 and the 5G revolution have begun to coalesce, set to transform the very socio-technological fabric of our world –and the magnitude of change is creating an interesting playing field for those businesses at the Theforefront.aptly-named DISH Network (Digital Sky Highway Network) is one of the major players in this competitive field. Foreseeing the value and opportunities in dominating the wireless network – or the Digital Sky Highway – DISH firmly ensconced itself within the possibility-laden world of 5G before it was fashionable, envisioning solutions that sat outside of the box.
Open
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In order to successfully change the wireless business model and create something new, Ergen put together a team of highly-skilled, multi-talented professionals, who could adapt to the technology’s expansive, everchanging needs: Stephen Bye, Dave Mayo and Marc Rouanne. As Stephen Bye’s, EVP and Chief Commercial Officer, role encompasses the sales, marketing and commercial strategy aspects of DISH Wireless. Mayo also leads a number of teams, including the US network development team that covers four regions and 36 markets, a systems integration team, a radio engineering 188 September 2022
The right mix of ingenuity
Over a decade ago, Charlie Ergen, the Chairman and Co-Founder of DISH Network, had the foresight to realise that the satellite TV business was (at some point) going to be a business in decline. So, he started acquiring spectrum. “If I go back eight years ago, nobody – admittedly, including myself – ever believed that Charlie would actually build a wireless network,” added Dave Mayo, EVP of Network Development at DISH Wireless. “That was until he really inserted himself in the middle of the T-Mobile-Sprint transaction and, frankly, created a pretty magnificent opportunity for the business to create a 5G network.”
DAVE MAYO TITLE: EVP OF NETWORK DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS
BIOEXECUTIVE
One such pivotal piece of technology is the DISH 5G network, which is cloudnative and operates on an Open-RAN-based
“My job concerns thinking about what technology we should consume and how we should put it together.”
LOCATION: COLORADO, US and design team, and a network engineering and operations team. And in his role, Mayo integrates and develops the network according to provided specifications.
As Executive Vice President, Network Development, Dave Mayo is responsible for DISH’s wireless buildout strategy and execution of the company’s aggressive deployment of the nation’s first standalone 5G network.
Dave innovated and led the aggressive transformation of T-Mobile’s transport network to fibre which was foundational to T-Mobile’s multi-year “Fastest Network” claim, T-Mobile’s first-ever nationwide, network-based marketing claim.
Prior to joining DISH, Dave served as Senior Vice President at T-Mobile USA, Inc., where he most recently led T-Mobile’s IoT business and founded the company’s fixed wireless business. He also led the strategic, development and financial areas for T-Mobile’s network organisation during more than two decades of explosive growth.
DISH NETWORK
“I'm a technology guy,” agrees Marc Rouanne, EVP and Chief Network Officer.
“Marc comes up with ideas concerning the tech, and my job is to implement them,” adds Mayo, summing up the crux of his job description.
Building NetworksNetworkaofVMwarehelpsDISHNetworksTapintoMulti-VendorRANInnovationLEARNMORE
DISH’s 5G network is built to meet diverse application requirements for latency, performance, resiliency, and other characteristics. It’s designed from the ground up to be: Open, to integrate multiple vendors and clouds Agile, to quickly assemble network resources based on service LeveragingcoreinstantiateProgrammable,requirementstoautomaticallyslicesendtoend—fromtoedge,cloudtocustomerVMwareCloud
Improve Efficiencies: With the ability to access unified data and components, the ecosystem and DISH itself can build applications that will help enable progressively smarter network beginning.capabilities—andTheseoperations.aregroundbreakingit’sonlytheTherealstorystarts now, as DISH uses them to help customers transform their businesses.
DISH Networks isn’t waiting for tomorrow. They’re building “Network of Networks” today.
LEARN
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DISH’s 5G network will deliver a multitude of services tailored to different customer requirements over a unified infrastructure. It will run as an open, cloud-based system that can continuously onboard new technology from multiple vendors. And VMware innovations are playing a key role in making it happen.
™ on AWS, DISH has started a multi-cloud journey to maintain flexibility into the future. It doesn’t stop there, however. Their network characteristics further extend from the core to the RAN. In the end, DISH’s horizontal architecture will span from their core to the RAN and edge without network siloes. A thing dreams are made of for most CSPs, DISH has created this network by leveraging cloud-native approaches. The increased flexibility and agility that comes from cloud-native environments do bring complexities. Fortunately, the VMware telco cloud portfolio has helped to simplify those complexities through dynamic automation and unified service assurance. DISH can use this automated, open, agile and programmable network to: Monetize: With vendor-neutral foundations, DISH can create new partnerships and services far faster than traditional CSPs.
Deliver Services Quickly: With a network that dynamically composes services based on customer needs, DISH can create customizable services which meet SLAs, in a fraction of the time from current Continuallystandards.
Communication service providers (CSPs) have big plans for tomorrow’s 5G networks. They envision versatile, programmable infrastructures that can be customized to meet the needs of diverse enterprise applications.
Wireless
horizontal”Takingover the
“Open-ran is like turning a vertical network on its side and making it US’ Market with Open-RAN Tech BYE
Changing the status quo As the technological landscape evolves, a number of little-known developments are permeating the technosphere, one of these being Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN).Stephen Bye – who, in his role of CCO, is used to translating techno-speak – explains the concept further: “To understand O-RAN, you need to understand that the most critical word in that acronym is ‘open’. This ‘openness’ allows us to virtually ‘open up’ the ecosystem and separate the software from the hardware.”
infrastructure. This is almost diametrically opposed to those of traditional operators –helping to establish DISH and its network as a one-of-a-kind solution.
STEPHEN
EVP AND CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, DISH WIRELESS 192 September 2022 DISH NETWORK
In a recent conversation, Marc Rouanne outlined how DISH is currently focusing on consuming the access in a software-driven manner, which includes the mixing of traffic, having private networks and new forms of mobility services, and establishing new forms of device consumption capabilities. “From a technology perspective, we are going to be what we call 'a network of networks'. A large part of that is going to be giving consumers - with very different, very competitive capabilities - a competitive offer, with the agility to have new and extremely fast services,” said Rouanne. Alongside this, technological developments are driving a much faster mobile-magazine.com
Pointing out what's exciting about O-RAN network architecture, Bye explains that it allows DISH to utilise the innovation of other parties on the platform. This essentially gives DISH the opportunity to bring in innovative software and solutions at a faster pace than legacy“Wenetworks.cancontrol how that innovation works, as well as how the software is deployed in a traditional model. It’s like turning a vertical network on its side and making it horizontal,” says Bye.
The DISH team has taken the open approach to its network architecture. With O-RAN, the DISH 5G network runs on fully-virtualised - and typically containerised - software, deployed via the cloud across its network platform.
“This means that we're not encumbered or constrained by a traditional, verticallyintegrated system where the software is anchored to the hardware; we no longer have those limitations,” Bye adds.
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DISH has a number of huge names in its partner ecosystem. These include AWS, VMware, Samsung, Dell, Mavenir, Cisco, NOKIA, IBM, Dell, Intel and Oracle, just to name a few.
“The reason why our partners are massively investing is that they're convinced of what we are doing and that it's a game changer.”
“From a technology perspective, this is the biggest achievement [in networking] we have had in the last two to three years – the creation of an ecosystem that is investing in the same vision that we have.”
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MARC ROUANNE EVP AND CHIEF NETWORK OFFICER, DISH WIRELESS
“In terms of capabilities, I know somethingthatbig is coming our way”
lifecycle of hardbutbeginning.sayspurelycycleseedeployment.developmentsoftwareand“Wearestartingtoamuchfasterlife-whereverwearecloud-native”,Rouanne.“AndthisisjusttheIt'sajourney,thebeautyisthatit'sforourcompetitors to even get there, which gives us a playground for quite a few years that we are really going to enjoy.” Such an ambitious project could not, of course, be achieved without the right partners. Just as everything is becoming more connected in the macro technological world, the way that businesses are operating is also reflecting this trend on the micro-scale.
DISH interacts with these partners in the cloud, making data sharing, connection, synthesis and collaboration as easy as possible.ForRouanne, this network of partnerships is one of DISH’s greatest successes.
Marc has more than 20 years of international management experience in the telecommunications industry, having held executive positions in R&D, customer operations and product management in the U.S., France and Finland.
Consistently affirming its reputation for quality and innovation, DISH has introduced a number of pioneering connectivity solutions to the American market. These include its Project Genesis, for which DISH launched the United States’ first cloud-native Smart 5G network, and Boost Mobile, which provides best-in-class value and connectivity to American wireless consumers, through DISH Wireless’ largest retail wireless brand.
As Executive Vice President and Chief Network Officer for DISH’s wireless business, Marc is responsible for network architecture, RF network and strategy, core network architecture and strategy, cloud and edge strategy, security, transport, 5G lab management and interoperability testing.
In addition to supporting those customers, DISH will also be launching other services under different brands on its network.
DISH has already launched a mobile service in Las Vegas that uses VoNR (Voice Over New Radio). Remarkably, DISH is the first operator in North America to actually deploy commercial services with VoNR, which it launched back in May of 2022.
MARC ROUANNE
LOCATION: COLORADO, US Mobility and Milestones
In addition to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) build requirements, DISH has also established roaming agreements with two network service“Theseproviders.reallygive us the opportunity to have an immediate, nationwide footprint,” comments Mayo.
INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS
DISH NETWORK
A major milestone for the company was reached in June 2022, when DISH announced that its newly built 5G network was deployed and commercially available to more than 20% of the US population, through its Project Genesis brand. This was achieved in a build of just 14 months - a feat that has never been achieved before.
TITLE: EVP & CHIEF NETWORK OFFICER
The physical buildout of the DISH 5G network, led by Dave Mayo, has come to life in an unprecedented amount of time.
The service is now commercially available across more than 120 markets and customers can purchase the DISH service and phones throughout the US.
Remarkable outcomes start with a remarkable network. Powering remarkable telecom Learn more now
Entering the enterprise market - the next phase for DISH
Once the DISH 5G network covers at least 75% of each economic area within the United States in June 2025, DISH will have reached its final milestone, mandated by the FCC, to move on to the next phase of its expansion. This next milestone step is mandated for June 2025 (by the Federal Communications Commission). “Frankly, beyond that, we'll build things as and when they make financial sense”, Mayo adds.
“There’s a tointoreallybusiness,opportunitytremendousfortheandIthinkit'llgiveustheabilitygrowlotsofrevenueawaythat'sdifferentourcompetitors”
DAVE MAYO EVP OF NETWORK DEVELOPMENT, DISH WIRELESS mobile-magazine.com 197 DISH NETWORK
The combination of roaming agreements, while building out its own network in key markets nationwide, is a clever, efficient way of operating. In an age of digital transformation, many companies are going all-in on their infrastructure at once without the business case to support it – and that can be fatal for businesses. It’s better to build up gradually and create the waves needed to justify further growth, as Mayo establishes. “We think we'll reach what constitutes ‘critical mass’ sometime next year, approximately covering a 230-240 million population area.”
The next step in DISH’s wireless expansion plans is branching into the enterprise market. And, while DISH has only just started
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LOCATION: COLORADO, US DISH NETWORK
STEPHEN BYE
BIOEXECUTIVE
As Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of the DISH wireless network business, Stephen’s responsibilities include wholesale and enterprise services, business development, product management, service integration and partner management. He brings to DISH three decades of experience across wireless, cable and wireline providers in the U.S. and several other countries. A seasoned senior executive, Stephen has experience in technology and network development, network operations and deployment, engineering, IT, sales and marketing, as well as corporate strategy and Previously,M&A.Stephen served as CTO of Sprint during the transition and upgrade from three operationallydisparate networks to an LTE-based network. Additionally, he has held a range of executive positions at Cox Communications, AT&T, BellSouth International, Optus Communications and Telstra.
TITLE: EVP & CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Mavenir is proud to be part of the first Open RAN network deployed in the public cloud. Congratulations to DISH! Connect with Mavenir 200 September 2022
“We at DISH actually look at the market very differently. When I look at the enterprise market today, companies in the United States are spending nearly US$1tn dollars a year on services, and that covers everything from communication to software.”
The market is three to four times bigger than the wireless market alone, and wireless Possibilities of DISH Wireless
As such, the question becomes, how can DISH’s wireless network and connectivity be used to achieve these objectives?
“We see our network and the platform that we're building, as becoming part of the fabric of that business. We think of it as part of its actual nervous system, which will enable that business to grow to achieve its objectives, while we can be a partner and a solution to the problems that they're facing”, explains Bye. to embark on this project - and is still looking to break into the market proper - the future prospects look hugely promising.
Bye explains that DISH sees enterprise as an enormous opportunity, and the numbers in question are not insignificant. “Today when you look at the wireless market, it represents about $US280bn of revenue, but it's dominated by consumer services and consumer rate plans, unlimited plans, SIM cards and smartphones.”
service providers are capturing a very small share of that – which businesses are spending on technology and services. “So, when we look at the enterprise market,” says Bye. “Enterprise customers are looking for how they can take advantage of technology and networks to drive their efficiency, to improve their profitability and to drive productivity into their enterprise.”
mobile-magazine.com 201
Exploring The
202 September 2022 DISH NETWORK
DAVE
mobile-magazine.com 203 DISH NETWORK
“Existing networks are monolithic today. Because DISH is cloud-native, however, we can have a mini-core for each enterprise and they can decide – whether they fly drones, move trucks or are engaged in retail – what they do with this. It gives them full control”, Rouanne explained.
These last two points are important to note, as data and its security are core concerns of companies at the moment. Being able to offer capability alongside individualised security is a key differentiator.
“It'son-prem.counterintuitive for the incumbents to move core network elements offprem, out of their switches and into a manufacturing, refinery or campus-type environment. That's one of the unique things that our network is engineered and architected to do, right out of the gate: to actually provide that capability.”
When asked about DISH’s vision and objectives for the market as a whole, Mayo noted that he has noticed a desire among many companies – whether it be oil and gas refineries, or manufacturers – to keep their data
Despite initial uncertainty regarding how successful the venture into wireless networks would be, DISH has gone from strength to strength under Charlie Ergen’s leadership. “And so, in terms of capabilities,” grins Rouanne, “I know something big is coming our way.”
positioned to be able to achieve that.
Many of DISH’s offerings will focus on enterprise networks. These private networks will sit on top of SMBEs (Small Medium Businesses and Entrepreneurs), which will contain their virtual mutual policy management, allowing them to control their costs, their mobility and their security in a simplifiedRouannemanner.explains how, through the use of private networks, DISH is able to "give the keys to big enterprises", enabling them to keep the data in their own facilities and giving them a greater level of control over their data security, and their ability to offload the traffic onto their own WiFi.
And Mayo confidently says that, within the next five to ten years, DISH will be far better
"I think we'll be able to take advantage of opportunities like that and be the wireless network for CIOs, which is a tremendous opportunity for the business. It'll really give us the ability to grow lots of revenue in a way that's distinct and different to our competitors.”
“Charlie Ergen (Chairman and co-founder) had the foresight over a decade ago to realise that the satellite TV business was at some point going to be a business in decline, and so he started acquiring spectrum” MAYO EVP OF NETWORK DEVELOPMENT, DISH WIRELESS
PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON
INCLUSIONCOMPLEXITIESTHEOF&SUPPLY
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mobile-magazine.com TELEPERFORMANCE205
Teleperformance – which I love – is that ‘each interaction matters’,” says Diana Monterrubio, Procurement Global Strategic Director at truetransformingcomparedhastheirmostscale“TeleperformanceTeleperformance.hasgrownintoaglobalorganisationthatconnectsthebiggest,respectedbrandsontheplanetwithcustomers.Today,thecompanydoubleditsnumberofemployeestowhenIjoinedin2011,itsoperationswhileremainingtoitscoremission.”
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Diana Monterrubio, Procurement Global Strategic Teleperformance,Director,ondiversity and inclusion in technology and the challenges of supply shortages F ounded in 1978, Teleperformance is a global organisationomnichannelheadquartered in France. Serving 170 markets in 88 countries, Teleperformance provides a variety of services, including customer acquisition management, customer care, technical support and social media“Ourservices.mottoat
Diana ProcurementMonterrubio,GlobalStrategicDirector,Teleperformance
DIANA PROCUREMENTMONTERRUBIOGLOBAL STRATEGIC DIRECTOR, TELEPERFORMANCE 208 September 2022 TELEPERFORMANCE
I have been in situations where others assume that the males in my team are “I hope that I will be able to help others figure out their place in the world. To do my part for women to not feel like minorities or that they don’t belong”
Increasing diversity and inclusion in the technology industry Across many industries, women continue to be a disadvantaged minority, and Monterrubio emphasises the truth of this in the technology industry. “It’s very common and very visible. Quite often in meetings, it will be 10 men and me.
TITLE: PROCUREMENT GLOBAL STRATEGIC DIRECTOR INDUSTRY: PROCUREMENT LOCATION: GUADALAJARA,
Diana Monterrubio’s career is deep rooted in Teleperformance. 11 years ago, Monterrubio joined the telecommunication company as an agent in the lead up to her graduation. Since then, she has worked her way up through the organisation from Recruitment Specialist, to Procurement Co-ordinator, and Procurement Category Manager, before taking on the role she holds today - Procurement Global Strategic Director. Monterrubio is dedicated to applying her talents and knowledge on a personal and professional level. To apply the tools she has gained along her student and professional years, in order to keep on striving promotedevelopmentheroutexcellence,forlookingforherownandteammate’stosuccess.
DIANA MONTERRUBIO MEXICO
BIOEXECUTIVE
my boss when, in fact, it’s the other way round,” explains Monterrubio. To combat this, Monterrubio is dedicated to educating herself and representing her gender within the technology industry. “I hope that I will be able to help others figure out their place in the world. I try to do my part to ensure one day, women no longer feel like minorities or that they don’t belong.”
Our patented, sustainable and future-proof designs provide the perfect solution for the growing number of organisations where remote working and environmental impact are essential considerations. 3372 Communicate with Us Designed and Engineered in the UK LEARN MORE Award winning British designer & manufacturer of telecom headsets, webcams and video conferencing solutions
DIANA PROCUREMENTMONTERRUBIOGLOBAL STRATEGIC DIRECTOR, TELEPERFORMANCE mobile-magazine.com TELEPERFORMANCE211
“The hardest challenge for women entering into the technology function is finding a way to achieve equality, acknowledging our differences and embracing what brings us together,” she adds. “For example, I have found that negotiation is an art; if men like to do business golfing and a woman doesn’t golf, is she automatically out of the negotiations because of that? Some people may say yes, some may say no, or some may say she needs to adjust.”
Monterrubio believes that the key to increasing diversity and inclusion in the technology industry is listening. “I think it’s important that we all – not just males –continue to listen and continue to keep on learning. It is important to give everyone the spotlight and a chance to sit at the table. Doing so can change everything for the better, fresh thoughts can only improve the way we operate,” says Monterrubio.
“Thechallengehardestfor women entering into the technology function is finding a way to achieve equality”
“Something that I love about Teleperformance is its awareness of the issues women face not just in 212 September 2022
One piece of advice Monterrubio has been given and would like to pass on: “Do not be afraid to speak up, to express yourself, highlight the challenging work that women are doing in the industry, silence is not a tool that we need.
procurement, but across all industries.
Teleperformance is committed to a fair workplace that respects its people and strives for equality. We have a global initiative called TP Women where we address challenges faced by women in the workplace, so I’m very grateful for that. It makes me feel that the company backs me in what I do.”
TELEPERFORMANCE
Teleperformance: The complexities of inclusion & supply mobile-magazine.com 213
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How can other organisations drive greater inclusion?
There are many strategies for driving greater inclusion, but what does it take for such strategies to be effective?
“Statistics
leadership”ofproportionincreaserolesinwomenpercentagetheofandmenleadershiptohelpthewomenin DIANA PROCUREMENTMONTERRUBIOGLOBAL STRATEGIC DIRECTOR, TELEPERFORMANCE mobile-magazine.com 215
“These strategies should be supported and gain participation at all levels of the business. It is also important to track promotions – statistics will never lie, they can tell us the percentage of women and men in leadership roles to help increase the proportion of women in leadership,” says“WeMonterrubio.alsoneedmore female mentors, this is something that I think is still lacking in the industry, we still don’t have that many senior female role models.” will never lie, they can tell us
For those in the technology industry, component shortages have been a significant challenge. “I can honestly say this has been a hard challenge, something that has kept me up at night. The supply of components is a chain that needs to be restored and one that we need to make work,” explains Monterrubio.
Navigating the complexities of component shortages
For a long time, global purchasing has been evolving. When Monterrubio began working in procurement at Teleperformance she only worked for the sites in Mexico. Back then, the company’s operations were decentralised, operating separately within their borders. Today, Teleperformance operates on a global and centralised governance demanding the need for global executives and directors to take care of negotiations.
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The evolution of global purchasing
“For the last two years, we have been developing a forecasting and negotiations plan: to supply our clients with the technology needed, even with the current shortage. This has certainly been the biggest challenge of my career for the last two years, which is why we have great partners that we work with to help navigate these storms.”
“With our partners, we have been able to plan for the future, as well as develop new ideas and strategies for the coming years” DIANA MONTERRUBIO PROCUREMENT GLOBAL STRATEGIC DIRECTOR, TELEPERFORMANCE mobile-magazine.com 217
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Monterrubio adds: “We have many partnerships with both hardware and software companies. The pandemic required a huge jump in technology and remote mobile-magazine.com 219
“Negotiating 10 laptops is not the same as negotiating a 100,000, this understanding has helped us to organise our operations to negotiate better pricing and standards, as well as volume so that we spend what is needed on hardware and software rather than overspending,” she adds. Why ‘partners’ and not ‘vendors’ Insisting on calling collaborators ‘partners’ instead of ‘vendors’, Monterrubio highlights that this is something she learned during her time at Teleperformance. “This mindset has helped me so much in my career. While a vendor is someone that will be with you in business as they look to develop their own operations, a partner is an organisation that you trust and that will grow with you, they want to understand your needs and the value they can bring.”
“For example, I negotiate with all our global technology partners, which I then pass on to our regional and local teams to continue the negotiations internally in their own countries,” says Monterrubio.
“Growth waits for no one, so we need to start planning and we need to get better at forecasting” DIANA PROCUREMENTMONTERRUBIOGLOBALSTRATEGICDIRECTOR,TELEPERFORMANCE 220 September 2022 TELEPERFORMANCE
Reflecting on Teleperforamance’s development of a centralised procurement team, Monterrubio explains that the key to success is communication. “We didn’t know any of our peers in procurement globally when the new governance took place. We soon realised that, to migrate into a central team successfully, we needed to communicate,” explains Monterrubio. “But we found ourselves developing this centralised procurement team that required communication in the middle of a pandemic. No one could travel, everyone was at home, so our strategy became centred around the laptop requirements, the headsets, the cameras, the software, and the security of communicating remotely.
She adds: “As a result, communication and creating standards became our strategy. We still have a long way to go, but we have great leadership guiding us.”
working, and our partners have helped us to meet that need, to keep up with the industry and to meet customer demands.
“With our partners, we have been able to plan for the future, as well as develop new ideas and strategies for the coming years –our partners are definitely important to us and our success in achieving our goals.”
andLanguages265+servedCountries170worldwideemployeesNumber420K+wasYear1978companyfoundedofdialects mobile-magazine.com 221
Over the next 12 to 18 months, Monterrubio expects to see significant continued growth. “Growth waits for no one, so we need to start planning and we need to get better at forecasting and planning. We also need to keep innovating, creating and developing our strategies for negotiations, procurement, and our partnerships.”
Developing a centralised procurement team
Driving 5G innovationTechMahindra 222 September 2022
Driving forward innovationMahindrawith PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY mobile-magazine.com 223 TECH MAHINDRA
W hen Manish Mangal joined Tech Mahindra three and a half years ago, he was invigorated by the prospect of strapping in to join the digital services company as it propelled its mission to become a catalyst in the transformation of the telecommunications industry. As a technology-driven company, Tech Mahindra wants to lend a helping hand to both telecommunications service providers and enterprises as they transform their network infrastructure to make their businesses run better and improve customerResponsibleservice.forrunning the company, Mangal is the Global Business Head for 5G and Network Services at Tech Mahindra and spends his days looking to create solutions customers would receive the most benefits from.
“Tech Mahindra is an exciting company, and one of the reasons I came here was Tech Mahindra’s family-like culture. While it's a large company with over 158,000 employees, everyone still works like a family. The management team, the colleagues that I have – they all have excellent relationships and work towards the common interest of putting our customers first, then the shareholders and the employees together,” explains Mangal.
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Manish Mangal, Tech Mahindra’s Global Business Head for 5G and Network Services, on envisaging the company’s future network as a driver for 5G telecoms
Driving forward the future of 5G Now, Mangal and the team are sharply focused on the future of 5G, driven by the number of solutions this technology can enable. “5G is one of those very transformative technology changes happening in the industry,” he notes.
“When we talk about Tech Mahindra as a company, our objective effectively is fundamentally driven to become that trusted partner and provider for the telecom and the enterprise customers in bringing growth tactics to life”
Manish Mangal, Global Business Head, Tech Mahindra
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“People often debate whether 5G is another G. We have gone through 2G, 3G and 4G; is this 5G just another generation of technology that gives you something more? More bandwidth, better latency, more capacity? Is it really about that, or is it something that is fundamentally changing? I believe that 5G is that inflexion point in our industry that when we look back ten years
“When we talk about Tech Mahindra as a company, our objective is driven by the desire to become that trusted partner and provider for telecoms and enterprise customers by bringing growth tactics to life.”
MANISH MANGAL GLOBAL HEAD OF BUSINESS, 5G AND NETWORK SERVICES, TECH MAHINDRA
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Mangal is an inventor of 60 patents issued by the US patent office.
He is skilled in analysing industry trends, assessing threats & opportunities and developing factbased actionable plans targeted toward business owners and CEOs to increase enterprise value and fulfil the company's business missions.
“Now, 5G is becoming about the overall experience for consumers; it is an experience platform and isn’t a connectivity platform anymore. 5G enables an entirely new generation of capabilities that can be envisioned by how the customers will use it. Several brand-new experiences can be delivered with 5G, and this mirrors a change in a society that has become much more social,” says Mangal. Another key focus for Tech Mahindra is sustainability, particularly as the telecommunications industry has a significant impact on the environment – it is estimated that the industry alone contributes to 1% of all global power consumption, something that Tech Mahindra wants to help reduce. mobile-magazine.com
Manish Mangal is an accomplished telecom industry veteran with 20 years of professional experience. He has held various leadership roles in Fortune 100 companies leading technology initiatives from incubation to operationalisation that transformed businesses and increased enterprise value. Mangal is an expert in leading large and global teams, developing end-to-end technology solutions, and creating/ managing strategic partnerships that directly improve enterprise value.
BIOEXECUTIVE MANISH MANGAL
INDUSTRY: IT SERVICES LOCATION: TEXAS, USA 1986 Year founded 158,000+ Number employeesof $6bn+ Revenue from now, we'll be able to point out and say that 5G made everything happen,” he5Gcontinues.issetto transform the way people live and work, and Tech Mahindra is determined to be an integral part of the transition, having created key focuses for its agenda to ensure that as it catalyses the shift to 5G, it will continually meet the needs of its customers.
TITLE: GLOBAL HEAD OF BUSINESS, 5G AND NETWORK SERVICES
“The amount of energy consumption industry has with maintaining and operating all these networks is immense. So, for the first time, 5G has brought in a fundamental underpinning to say that the future of the networks we want to design needs to consume less and support the sustainability agenda for the Earth. It needs to enable the better climate behaviour we want to establish. And it needs to focus on that as a centre, rather than everything else. So, I think that's another fascinating part of 5G, driving a sustainable agenda,” Mangal comments.Finally,with the introduction of 5G, Tech Mahindra is keen to eradicate any issues with connectivity to provide an ‘invisible connection’. “The idea of connectivity becoming invisible is the mission that I would love to carry on as part of my responsibility in this industry, such that it just becomes so pervasive, so ubiquitous that nobody has to think anything about making it work.” Tech Mahindra’s network of the future As the largest independent integrator for the telecommunications industry, Tech Mahindra has a laser-sharp focus on outcomes for the customer, as it doesn’t have its agenda in terms of selling a specific technology or solution as it creates a network of the future.
“Customers can trust us to act on their behalf at all times,” says Mangal. “There is a chasm between the legacy and the providertelecommunicationfutureservice–tobridge,growand fix.
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“I believe that 5G is the inflexion point in our industry that, when we look back ten years from now, we'll be able to point and say that 5G was the one that made everything happen” MANISH MANGAL GLOBAL HEAD OF BUSINESS, 5G AND NETWORK SERVICES, TECH MAHINDRA mobile-magazine.com 229 TECH MAHINDRA
Intel® Smart Edge: Edge-native software to unleash services at the edge Run the edge like you run the cloud. Intel Smart Edge is a Kubernetes-based platform for deploying Edge networks and managing container-based workloads, powered by pre-validated blueprints and solutions provided by Intel and a robust partner ecosystem. Learn More
Driving edge tech forward with Intel partners at the helm
Intel’s Renu Navale explains how the company acts as a critical driver for the future of edge adoption and its collaborative partnership with Tech Mahindra In partnership with Tech Mahindra, Intel is driving the future of edge technologies with its Intel Smart Edge Platform: an edge-native distributed computing platform that enables developers and organisations to deploy and approachIoTnetwork,forprovidesautomation.infrastructuretowardsbyofAsNetworkofmanagementandintegrator—fromofMahindrabynetwork“offeringIntelvaluable“TechDivisionManagerVicethisResponsiblesecuritywithcontainer-basedmanageworkloadscloud-likeeaseandattheedge.foroverseeingplatformisRenuNavale,President&GeneralofEdgePlatformsatIntelCorporation.Mahindraisamemberoftheecosystem,”shenotes,arobustprivatesolutionpoweredIntelSmartEdge.Techtrulyplaystheroleanend-to-endsystemdeploymentconfigurationtoandmonitoringtheSmartEdgePrivatesolution.”Intelseesit,thefuturetheedgeisdefinedtherelentlessmarchsoftware-definedandbusinessSmartEdgeanopenframeworkintegratingandmanagingmedia,AIandworkloads.Thisopenabstractshardware
“Tech Mahindra and Intel are working to develop pre-integrated and verified solutions for faster market adoption. Our approach for 5G transformation includes a Rapid Rollout framework, orchestration and TechM’s intelligent customerandSpecificSecuritypoweredandprovidingtransformation:5GMahindraIntelNavaleplatforms,”AssuranceexplainsNavale.alsoshareshowissupportingTechthroughoutitstelecommunications’“We’realsoartificialintelligencemachinelearning-IntelligentNetwork,OpsandVertical-solutions,productisedreadyfororientationintoenvironments.
complexities and helps companies focus on building innovative edge services for enterprise, telcos, and other “Theindustries.buildout of the edge is being driven by societal shifts—like supply chain bottlenecks, increased security needs, the new normal of hybrid work. It’s also being driven by the cost and latency of backhauling data to the cloud, as well as regulations about what can be stored in the cloud,” says Navale. Intel collaborates closely with Tech Mahindra in the edge space as it develops silicon and edge solutions to drive new revenues for the industry.
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“ The idea of connectivity becoming invisible is the mission that I would love to carry on as part of my responsibility in this industry; such that it just becomes so pervasive, so ubiquitous that nobody has to think anything about making it work”
“The second building block of the network of the future is about the functions of the network itself – whether it's a 5G radio network, 5G core network, security platform or a variety of other components. The functions of the network will drastically evolve to become a pure software cloud with native functions so that anybody can innovate around that. A huge transformation is coming to open that space.”
Containing many different technical components, the company’s ‘network of the future’ vision contains three building blocks to ensure that technology, vision, and execution are all aligned. Mangal adds: “Building block number one is the pure infrastructure. We see a tremendous transformation, particularly because now hyperscalers are taking a lot more active interest and investment in that category. So, there's a whole layer of how the infrastructure will evolve.”
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As a transformation player, my focus for us as the network of the future is to help create capability solutions that create those transformation journeys for the customer, bridging that chasm and that gap,” he adds.
MANISH MANGAL GLOBAL HEAD OF BUSINESS, 5G AND NETWORK SERVICES, TECH MAHINDRA
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He continues: “The third building block for the network of the future is around managing and operating the network. The network learns itself; it's closed-loop automation. So, it decides, it learns itself, it post-corrects itself, and it just keeps refining and refining and refining – to the point that the network’s operations are selfmanaged, self-sustained and self-driven.” To ensure the automation element of the network runs well, Tech Mahindra built a platform called AINOF: an AI-enabled platform that brings together different tools to simplify and automate operations. Driving forward Tech Mahindra’s vision with Intel Mangal understands the importance of strategic partnerships in delivering the best-in-class service and solutions to customers. Armed with this understanding, the executive has cultivated and nurtured strong partnerships with companies offering top-quality solutions, enabling Tech Mahindra to become a catalyst in the transformation of the telecommunications industry.Akeypartner in this journey is Intel – a partnership Mangal describes as “a match made in heaven”. 90+ Countries 1262+ Global customers, including Fortune 500mobile-magazine.comcompanies
TECH MAHINDRA
“Both of us operate in different business layers, but, fundamentally, we are similar. Intel is an amazing, phenomenal technology company. They are the bedrock of all computing technology. Our partnership with Intel started very early to figure out how the technologies they are building can be released into the operator's networks so that the customers can use it. Our partnership stems from a technology collaboration to the realisation of the technology, into the transformation journeys for the customer,” he“Wesays.also work closely with them in bringing a software-based cloud-native network to life with the operators. That's the second area of our partnership that we have with Intel. Our approach is: together, we go to the customer and help create these transformation journeys – our partnership has been doing extremely well. I believe we’ll be able to drive significant collective impact in the future,” adds Mangal. The most significant opportunity of this partnership comes from the mutual growth the pair can generate together. Collaborating closely in the edge space, Mangal explains: “Intel is inventing chip sets design solutions that make these edge solutions real to drive a lot of new revenues for the industry.” With Intel, Mangal is confident that Tech Mahindra will be able to speed up the adoption of 5G as it improves its clients’
networks: “Our mission is to be the trusted transformation partner for the industry. For us, that involves continuous evolution as a company and as a network services’ business to build more and more capability in advanced technology areas.”
GLOBAL HEAD OF BUSINESS, 5G AND NETWORK SERVICES, TECH MAHINDRA
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“We are investing heavily in technology capabilities; we are investing heavily in the organisation and the structure and the people that become the trusted transformation partners for our customers.” He concludes: “As I look at the next 12 to 18 months, I'm looking at exciting times for us. One of my mentors said that if you are a young engineer, this probably is the best time to be in the industry – it has suddenly become fashionable and fascinating. For me, the next 12 to 18 months in Tech Mahindra looks like a continuation of the journey that we have already taken on – to become the partner for telecoms and enterprises in the journey of creating the network of the future for themselves.”
MANISH MANGAL
“We are investing heavily in technology capabilities; we are investing heavily in the organisation, the structure and the people that become the trusted transformation partners for our customers”
BACK TO TVSTYLE VIEWING? THE FUTURE OF BROADCASTINGMEDIA 236 September 2022 PRODUCED BY: MALTBYBEN WRITTEN BY: WALBANKJOSEPHINE
Freaky mobile-magazine.comOSN237
Peter OSNCTOformerRiz,of
, the former CTO of OSN, reveals his future predictions for media broadcasting and OSN’s approach to meeting our everchanging entertainment needs he birth and stratospheric rise of streaming services have completely transformed the way that we watch. Over less than a decade, our viewing habits have evolved: from TV channels and Friday-nightDVD-rentals, to an endless array of choices (personalised to your individual tastes) being made available with just a few clicks. Not only has this change revolutionised the way we access and interact with media, but it has also extended to adverts and our viewing habits, enacting a complete cultural shift in the way the world watches. In short, few sectors have experienced such a rapid digital transformation as that of TV and broadcasting. In fact, Blockbuster –a video and DVD rental company that went bust in 2014 – famously had the opportunity to buy Netflix for just US$50mn in 2000 (an absolute steal considering the streaming service’s valuation these days). At the time, Blockbuster essentially laughed the offer down, doubting that the streaming service had anything to offer the market.
Now, movie and video streaming represent one of the largest and fastest growing global sectors, with a number of pioneering providers continuously evolving these services. Such industry figures are connecting viewers across the world with more choices, more autonomy and more flexibility. mobile-magazine.com
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To find out more about this dynamic industry, we spoke to Peter Riz, the former CTO of OSN. We discussed his predictions for the media streaming industry, the launch of OSN’s new streaming service, the company’s future plans, and the digital transformation – and consequent cultural shift – that we can expect to see over the next few years. Digital transformation, and the move to expand from satellite-based services OSN is the leading entertainment company for premium content across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), with the rights to broadcast in 22 countries across the region. The modern-media giant is the exclusive partner to the largest tv studios across the
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PETER OSNFORMERRIZCTO, world – across both its box and streaming services. Its partnerships with studio majors include HBO, NBC Universal, Fox, Paramount, MGM, Disney, and Sony, no less.
PETER RIZ TITLE: FORMER CTO INDUSTRY: MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT LOCATION: DUBAI, UAE mobile-magazine.com 241
Peter Riz has over 20 years of premium Pay Television and OTT experience within the Middle East and Europe, with a focus in Digital Transformation. During his carrier Riz has different positions in content operation, project management, technical operation, product development and engineering roles. In the last 10 years, Riz assumed various technical leadership and strategic responsibilities specifically focusing on the development and operations of over-the-top/ streaming media products. Riz previously held the role of Chief Technology Officer at OSN, where he led both the broadcasting and streaming technology strategy and execution. Riz also spent over 12 years with HBO Europe where he was the Senior Vice President – Technology. Under his leadership at HBO he was responsible for all aspects of Product Design, Development, Delivery and Operation of the HBO Europe OTT platform branded as HBO GO.
“We all need to keep being open-minded, learn new things and, to an extent, forget some of the old practices, because they just are not followed anymore in the digital world”
BIOEXECUTIVE
Peter Riz, a recent OSN addition, boasts over 20 years of experience in the prestigious TV and media industry, having overseen rapid change during his tenure. Originally from Budapest, Riz moved to Dubai and joined OSN just over three years ago. “OSN was originally a traditional, satellite-based pay TV service. The mission was to provide high quality entertainment to the MENA region. At that time, internet connectivity wasn’t that developed, so the best and easiest way to achieve this was to use satellite distribution. That was OSN’s original business, and it was very successful in the Then,region.”overthe last few years, as the tendency and trends turned to digital distribution, OSN followed suit and also shifted focus to the streaming experience, instead.
OSN’s predictions for the future of media broadcasting
When Riz joined the company, OSN’s mission was to build a new digital streaming platform that the company owned, which meant they could be sure it would provide an experience matching that of Netflix and other big companies in the streaming domain.
“Today, OSN runs these two things parallel – they are building the user experience, the commercial and the technical synergies between the satellite world and the streaming world. And that's really what the mission here is: to find all these synergies and provide the user experience in both domains.”
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PETER OSNFORMERRIZCTO,
“One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was to speculating,stop ask more questions and listen to the answers”
“Traditionally, the broadcast industry is about equipment, devices and on-prem data centres – BIG data centres. Five or ten years ago, a CTO would have had an equally good knowledge of all the software, all the hardware and all the necessary infrastructure, including how to build and operate the data centre,” commented Riz.
OSN’s digital infrastructure changes, and a shift towards hybrid approaches According to Riz, a wave of new mobile and data technologies has brought about a change in the way that companies perceive physical infrastructure components.
Riz explains how, in the past, a broadcast company tried to own everything and build (or at least integrate) all the physical components together on their own.
Now, though, “the balance between the components that you buy and that you build has changed”.
TraintheonGirlThe mobile-magazine.com 243
22 OSN is the region’s leading rightsbusiness,entertainmentwiththetobroadcastin22countriesacrossMENA.
Today, most of the trends have moved towards “using and utilising the cloud” and, from a hardware point of view, “most of the added value is somehow connected to the software development”.
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As the market and the available components expand, the goal now becomes understanding “how to build all these cloud based services together, in a way that will really provide the competitive advantage for your company and give you the opportunity to customise the user experience based on your needs.”
OSN still runs some of its infrastructure operation in an on-prem environment, PETER OSNFORMERRIZCTO, Vanquish mobile-magazine.com
“Sometimes, as a CTO, I say that I need to run two newresponsibleandlegacyisorganisationsdifferent–oneresponsibleforthetechnologytheotherisforthetechnology.”
This means that, rather than broadcasters trying to build everything for their end-to-end streaming platforms themselves, a hybrid architecture approach is becoming the norm, instead.
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According to Riz, OSN’s vision is that, in the near future, its viewers will be able to have the complete TV experience – without needing any additional satellite capability.
“How I see it, that's really the trend in the entire industry,” says Riz.
delivering a modular hybrid platform that separates different functions in the platform using the microservice-based architecture and adopting a hybrid approach to component construction.
Currently, this launch is the main area of growth for OSN, spearheading the company’s digital journey and changing the way that they broadcast. But, in such a period of transformation within the industry, a key priority becomes maintaining the old (and still successful) service, while consistently making new additions that the market demands.
“Sometimes, as a CTO, I say that I need to run two different organisations. One is responsible for the legacy technology, and the other is responsible for the new technology.”
“Since broadcasters no longer try to cover end-to-end technical responsibilities on their own, there is much more flexibility, meaning they can build these types of hybrid systems. Now, it is down to companies to maintain well-managed, balanced buy-andbuild strategies.” The launch of OSN+, and bridging the gap between old and new By deploying these technological advancements and infrastructure changes, OSN has been able to develop its offerings to include a brand new streaming service.
“OSN is also working out how to build a bridge between the legacy broadcast world and the new streaming world,” Riz explains.
“OSN has a plan to release a new hybrid set top box to the market very soon, which, SopranosThe mobile-magazine.com 247
When asked what OSN's broadcasting services will look like in five years’ time, Riz from a technical point of view, is connected to the new streaming ecosystem and carry only some base services from the satellite world.”
Looking to the future, partnerships remain one of the most critical factors in OSN’s growth strategy.
What’s next for OSN, and what can we expect for the future of the media streaming market?
“In this industry, we always say that the whole industry is about three things: the exclusivity, because you want to create revenue quickly that you can then reinvest into the next content; the partnerships, because they help us to maximise the content monetisation capability of the industry; and how we manage and utilise the long-tail content.”
mix of contents, as well as guide and help to discover the content in a way that is appealing to the market. I really believe that, based on the recent trends and changes in the industry, its long-term partners rediscover this value.”
In order to provide the best possible user experience, OSN is working hard to build and strengthen its partnerships.
“A brand like OSN can really talk to the local customers and can create the right
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“The role and the added value of the strong local brands is, I think, hugely important,” Riz comments.
“Again, the goal is to utilise the same components and achieve an organic transformation between the current state, this hybrid state and the final state, which is the internet-connected sector box.”
“We always say that the whole industry is about three utiliseexclusivity,things:thepartnerships,andhowwemanageandthelong-tailcontent”
“In the last few months in the industry, we’re rediscovering how television can be television again. For example, Netflix is talking about advertisements and creating a more channel-like experience; Roku has RIZ CTO,OSN Halo mobile-magazine.com
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FORMER
a lot of initiative to turn the television back to “Youtelevision.”seemore and more partnerships, as if the industry has just again realised that the strong local brands like OSN can add really good value and help – even the big brands – to monetise their content.”
PETER
“If you follow the industry and the trends in the industry, all the changes and all the directions being taken are changing very, veryOnequickly.”suchemerging trend that Riz comments on is the return to a more conventional TV-style viewing – even amongst streaming services.
“All these business trends really dictate how OSN uses the technology, how they broadcast and how they do the distribution. So, one of my main roles was to keep everything flexible, secure the basics, and be ready to integrate with the outside world in a different way than before.” laughs and says: “This is one of the questions that keeps us up during the night!”
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