Hard Talk recap: CSPs should run toward public cloud
Nine months ago, TM Forum’s research showed that most communications service providers (CSPs) were deploying less than 5% of their operations software in the public cloud, but a panel of experts featured this week on TM Forum’s Hard Talk series urged them to move much more aggressively and “run” toward public cloud.The panel featured the following executives, who were joined by TM Forum Chief Analyst Mark Newman and VP of Communications Elizabeth Coyne:
- Jon Fagan, Senior Principal Systems Architect, CSG International
- Navneet Sahani, Global Telco Solutions Lead, Google
- Danielle Royston, Independent Public Cloud Expert and former CEO of Optiva
- Nathan Bell, Chief Digital Officer, M1
- Juan Carlos Garcia, Senior Vice President - Technology and Ecosystems, Telefónica
It’s about being digital
A highlight of the discussion came from M1’s Bell, who is leading a transformation effort at the Singaporean CSP. The company is moving everything but its physical network to the public cloud.
“We are literally building a telco end to end, top to bottom in the public cloud,” he explained. “We’re not talking about doing digital in the sense of having a veneer or having a customer self-serve portal; we’re talking about being digital – so, everything beyond the physical network is all now in the cloud.”
Bell says that moving to the public cloud is the easy part. What isn’t so easy but is critical is understanding why adopting a public cloud strategy makes sense from a business perspective.
“There are so many companies that will help you go and make that shift [to public cloud],” he said. “But if as a business you don’t actually understand why you’re making the shift to begin with, it’ll fail. So, I think I’d actually encourage people that while digital might sound like it’s IT, it’s a business outcome they’re targeting... It’s just got to start from the people that understand the value they’re going to get from it.”
Dawn BushausContributing Editor
Dawn began her career in technology journalism in 1989 at Telephony magazine. In 1996, she joined a team of journalists to start a McGraw-Hill publication called tele.com, and in 2000, she helped a team at Ziff-Davis launch The Net Economy, where she held senior writing and editing positions. Prior to joining TM Forum, she worked as a contributing analyst for Heavy Reading.
Dawn Bushaus
