Key Themes for 2020

For decades, the year 2020 stood as a far-­off mile marker for technological progress that promised fascinating, even existential, changes. But here we are, and 2020 is like any other year: Technology companies continue to drive incrementally toward practical, profitable improvements wherever they can be found. That doesn't mean transformation is unnecessary, however. The communications industry may not be the creator of existential change, but it is one of the most important enablers of it as well as the social and productivity improvements that result from innovation. This report looks at what communications service providers (CSPs) and their suppliers are doing to keep advancing toward an unknown future with a more agile network that can support whatever comes. Here are some examples of changes we’ll discuss in depth throughout the report: Access the related webinar for some lively insights and discussions around what can be done to change the working culture of telecoms operators.

• Vendors increasingly are being asked to predict and model all potential outcomes for network-related services in order to automate the processes that enable them and create an autonomous, self­-healing, self-­optimizing network.
• As CSPs turn their focus to the enterprise market, they are looking to vendors to take on more of a partner role than simply a supplier.
• CSPs now have the leverage to insist on truly open architectures from their vendors, something suppliers have worked toward but with limits
• As the cloud model takes over, CSPs and vendors must come to terms with what cloud-­native really means and what should and shouldn’t migrate to the cloud.
• To adopt a platform business model, CSPs need help from their suppliers to extend assets to third parties in order to better monetize connectivity, billing, charging, hosting, etc.