Vodafone’s Lester Thomas on killing the RFP and developing a ‘culture of experimentation’
Dr. Lester Thomas, Head of New Technologies and Innovation at Vodafone Group, discusses how procurement models are changing and the impact on culture and skills of the transition to techco.
Dawn Bushaus
Vodafone’s Lester Thomas on killing the RFP and developing a ‘culture of experimentation’
This is the second article in a two-part series looking at Vodafone Group’s transformation into a platform-based techco using the TM Forum Open APIs and the Open Digital Architecture (ODA) as a foundation. In the first article, Dr. Lester Thomas, Head of New Technologies and Innovation at Vodafone Group, talked about recent deals with Accenture and Microsoft to scale Vodafone’s platforms. Here, he further discusses how procurement models are changing and the impact of the transition to techco on culture and skills.
Ten years ago, Vodafone Group outsourced all its operational and business support systems (OSS/BSS). The company employed procurement and project management specialists whose responsibility it was to implement the systems it acquired, but like most communications service providers (CSPs) Vodafone did no software development in-house.
Then, Vodafone and other large telcos began taking steps to insource their digital engagement systems. “The things that actually touch a customer are now all built in-house – the Vodafone app, the Vodafone website and the chatbot,” says Thomas. “And our strategy today is to make a conscious decision for everything we do as to: is this something where we think we can differentiate and drive innovation, or is it something that it’s better to partner on?”
One of the biggest challenges in transitioning into a platform-based techco capable of operating in a digital ecosystem is the cultural change that’s required – both internally and externally. “The cultural change we need is this culture of experimentation,” says Thomas. “We’ve done work on this in TM Forum – we call it ‘kill the RFP’.”
A decade ago when everything was outsourced, very few people within Vodafone had the software skills needed to address problems or develop new capabilities. “The solution was: Let’s put out an RFP or an RFI, and then nine months later, you’d have some paper with some responses, which were always in the interest of the partner,” says Thomas. “It’s changed a lot, but we still need more cultural change to have the skills to experiment internally and then the platforms on which you can experiment easily with partners.”
He adds: “We are living in an ecosystem. We are not trying to replace all our partners by doing everything ourselves, but we are saying we should have a different way of interacting.”
It goes without saying that it’s much easier to integrate commercial software from multiple vendors if all the partners use standard APIs and an open component-based architecture. Toward that end, Vodafone requires that its partners support the Open APIs and ODA. In an open, multivendor environment, “within three weeks I’ve got a working prototype that I can validate to say, ‘Yeah, that meets my business needs. Let’s go to market with it’,” says Thomas. “It’s not just theoretical solutions on paper.”
Hiring software skills into the network
Internally, becoming a techco requires hiring software engineers and adopting a DevOps model in both IT and network teams that extends to partners. Vodafone is in the process of hiring 7,000 new software engineers, and the company offers reskilling and upskilling through a program called Vodafone University, which was established in 2011. “The Vodafone University team does a lot of work with the TM Forum on training,” Thomas says. “So, we do lots of upskilling of existing staff, but most of our software engineers are recruited because those are skills we didn’t have at all.”
Much of that software talent is being recruited into Vodafone’s network teams as network functions become virtualized and cloud native. The use of plug-and-play software and APIs in the network is relatively new for these teams, which are used to managing hardware that has been built for purpose and does not change often.
This leads to the need for roles that blend IT and network skills. People working in networks need the Agile and DevOps skills of a software engineer, plus an understanding of what it takes to operate a network 24/7 at five-nine’s reliability.
Thomas recalls the first time he presented to a group responsible for Vodafone Group’s network strategy the idea of using a software development model to transform and expand the network. “When I said we’re going to do lots more software development, they were like, ‘Oh, yeah, in IT’,” he says. “And when I explained that I meant in networks, their first interaction was sitting back in the chair and thinking, ‘Well, how does that work’?”
Embracing DevOps and SRE
Agile methodologies help to establish communication between IT teams and other stakeholders in the company, but DevOps goes further by introducing an end-to-end software lifecycle that establishes a continuous flow of development, integration, testing, delivery and deployment. Google’s approach to DevOps, which is called Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), has been widely adopted in telecoms. It provides the foundation for the ODA Canvas, and it’s how Vodafone Group is implementing DevOps.
Adopting SRE means that previously separate roles are integrated because everything from capturing requirements to installation and management are part of the same process. “Basically, SRE says, ‘You build it, you run it’,” Thomas explains.
“In a waterfall model, someone captures the requirements, someone else does the design, someone else does the development, and someone else does the testing, so you had the full, functional monolith being handed over to lots of teams,” he adds. “Today if you go into the teams responsible for our digital experience, for a customer journey, there are no separate stakeholders because you have a fully cross-functional team, all the way from delivery to operations… And we are building things which run better when there is less human interaction.”
Upskilling in AI
While software-development requires new hires, much of the reskilling and upskilling that Vodafone is doing focuses on building up data and AI skills, according to Thomas.
“If you look at GenAI as an example, it didn't exist and was invented not that long ago. We’ve got about 1,400 people now in our GenAI development community, and none of them were recruited. They were all existing employees with good digital skills,” he says, adding that Vodafone is relying on its partnerships with Microsoft and Google in addition to Vodafone University to upskill people in AI.
And GenAI is likely to make it easier to reskill and upskill employees going forward because it is so easy to use. “If you’ve got large code bases and you’ve got new people coming into software development, you can ask GenAI to explain code, and it does a very good job of explaining how it works and outline how to make the changes,” says Thomas.
Read these ebooks to learn more about DevOps in telecoms and the ODA Canvas:
