DTW 2022: Jio unveils platforms for B2B verticals - and global service providers

Jio Platforms gave details of its platform architecture, designed to drive growth in vertical enterprise markets at home – and to other service providers globally - during DTW 2022 in Copenhagen.

“We're beyond telecom and beyond India. The real learning for us is that skill that we have developed internally is really helping us not just in our core business, but also to now explore growth opportunities,” said Kiran Thomas, President and CEO, Jio Platforms, speaking during TM Forum's DTTW 2022 conference.

Jio is able to tap into Reliance group’s vertical businesses, which include retail, refineries and energy, for industry-specific knowledge and operational experience. It is also exploring new opportunities in 5G-enabled healthcare and education.

“You can do much more than just connectivity. There's so many things levers that you can pull especially now with 5G coming in. There are so many possibilities across different verticals, different industries," said Thomas.

In six years Jio has grown from scratch to become India’s largest mobile operator in terms of market share with 421 million subscribers. It is also building out fiber broadband networks and fixed wireless access offerings.

And in August Jio announced plans to roll out a national 5G standalone (SA) cloud-native network across India by the end of 2023. With standalone 5G, Jio will be able deliver new services such as low latency connectivity, massive machine-to-machine communication, 5G voice, edge computing and network slicing, and metaverse, according to the chairman, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), Mukesh Ambani. (RIL is Jio’s largest shareholder). Jio Platforms developed an end-to-end 5G stack which is fully cloud native and software defined to support the roll out of new services to verticals at scale.

“We were confident that once we prove those solutions and that we build those capabilities, then we wouldn't stop with just providing connectivity," said Thomas. "We would … extend those capabilities and strengths, building … digital solutions that can address not just the telecom business, but a number of other industry verticals.”

It is also looking to provide its products and expertise to other telcos. Describing its decoupled platforms as products, Jio has created what it calls a playbook to address vertical markets. The layers of the Jio Platform architecture include:

• an engagement layer, based on the Jio Experience platform
• a coordination layer, which encompasses the Jio Digital API platform and Jio Integration services
• a functionality layer, which includes ‘best in class partners’
• an intelligence layer, which covers intelligence as a service and the Jio AI/ML platform
• a data and analytics layer, which incorporates data as a service the Jio Big Data Platform

Jio has made use of TM Forum's Open APIs to build its platforms and recently became the global leader for TM Forum Open API certification with 52 certified TM Forum Open APIs. It is also one of the first CSPs to make use of TM Forum's Open Digital Architecture.