Telco to Techco Fireside Chat with Kloudville CEO Per Borgklint and Telco Republic CEO Martina Kurth
Summary:
In this podcast, listen to Kloudville CEO Per Borgklint sit down with Telco republic CEO Martina Kurth as they discuss the history of telecom industry and the major players in the shift between telco to techco. As well as how companies can take advantage of this shift and what must be done to be successful in this rapidly changing landscape.
Transcript:
M is Martina Kurth
P is Per Borgklint
P: Hello everyone and welcome to the Kloudville podcast. Today we have the fantastic opportunity to talk to Martina Kurth who is the CEO and Founder of Telco Republic. We are going to go through and have a short discussion about the telco to techco evolution, and I think it’s going to be a really exciting opportunity for you guys to get new information about what we think and what we see go on the global market for telecom operators when they transition from telco to techco. So, Martina, very much welcome here, thank you for joining us and I’m really looking forward to having this chat with you and I hope also the ones listening will enjoy and get insights while we talk through this transition.
M: Yes, hello everyone, I would like to focus on the transition from telco to techco which is unfolding globally. Basically, the question is why do we see telcos undergoing this major shift, transforming from a traditional telco to more of a techo, so like, a tech company which provides any type of services: digital, physical, virtual assets to any type of customer. So, we see a couple of major trends in conjunction with this trend. So, first of all the shift from network-based environments towards software driven development environments. We see digital value chains instead of smaller numbers of larger departments. We see operators having to launch and innovate products much quicker, overcoming long development cycles. Another cause of major challenge is to manage all this capacity there is a huge investment in cloud and also the integration of cloud, so, public – private hybrid cloud. And embracing change internally having the right skills. But that’s not all, we also see that OSS/BSS requires modernization, it’s a very critical asset to basically expedite speed, agility, and manage costs. So really, real time cloud native self-manageable reusable multi-talented interoperable and composable standard based OSS/BSS will be critical. There is a major shift and major wave of investment going on and I’m sure Per from Kloudville has a view on this so what does it mean for Kloudville.
P: As you know Kloudville is borne out of a long history of telecom software development, and what we are doing and what makes us different is that we to a very large extent have created one unified solution that delivers out of the box configurable possibilities to combine internal and external assets. And the platform is very easy and quick to implement given that it has predefined connectors as well as it has a very brand new open API framework and is ODA compliant. All of these things are standard, then the logic behind it is really what differentiates us from others. And I think what we’ve seen and what we’ve been able to do is that we’ve been able to help customers rapidly transform by federating or implementing a smaller solution in the complex environment to start moving towards a digital telco setup, then as you mentioned Martina, digitalization is an important part and the reason for this is that we expect an enterprise employee or enterprise worker to be able to act and react as quickly as in our normal life and a lot of the B2B solutions and challenges are very stagnated in the old hierarchical BSS systems, so what we see is that there is an imminent need for transitioning from very verticalized systems to more horizontalized systems that are very cloud native, meaning that they are not predesigned traditional systems but built up from the ground to be deployed and operate in cloud, in any cloud environment, as well as on brand depending on regulative requirements. But it also needs to be user friendly, adaptive to tester needs, and having the ability to create in a rapid fashion, new solutions and products that meets the expectations of the customers. And having said that, that includes of course partnership, it includes internal assets, it includes technical development in the marketplace being a requirement from customers that changes on a daily basis. If you are not able to do this, a lot of these – what I would say business opportunities might shift into other areas of industry or might not meet the telcos P&O. But I think that is some of the main reasons why the telcos need to go techcos, and of course over the last 20 years we’ve seen the transition to a very software driven environment. And I think we are just in the beginning of seeing the real consequences of that, we will see more and more software driven approaches to things, and with AI that is going to accelerate even further. So I would say if I look from Asia, Middle East, Africa, South America or North America and Western Europe it pretty much looks the same, they all have a need they all want to transition. I however think the challenge remains both countrial, as well as organizational as it takes a lot of time and effort to take these issues and actually start moving as its not as simple as it might look from a architectural point of view or from a powerpoint.
M: Yes absolutely Per, if I may add on to what we see as analysts is – its not just the technology and the business area, but its much more fundamental and also about defining the right business models and injecting value to the right digital ecosystems, finding the right partners and that also means of course having the right operational business infrastructure. But also, putting your bet on the right partners. And of course that means also changing the entire organization, internal in alignment with more agile devops driven product development, because the nature of telco services will be changing, much more cognitive more transactional more interaction based more event based. So that is a major shift, it’s a game changer and that’s where the traditional OSS/BSS doesn’t fit in. So it really requires a holistic approach and a holistic investment and again not just the technology but also the business and the culture and the mindset and the entire business strategy actually, as part of a wider digital value chain and partner ecosystem.
P: That’s very much true and I would say that, looking at operators, I think they are having a lot of challenges seeing where to start and how to actually go about to do this transformation and create this change, and I would say that there are probably different ways to approach this but to start with, on a catalog is a very good way because then you can also implement new PLM and lifecycle management approach. And if you align your products and of course your billing systems your CRM systems your order management systems, your service for the management systems, your frontends etc. Becomes served by a more modern starting point, you have federated the product catalogs and created one unified approach. I also think that probably has happened far more on the consumer side and we see that the B2B side is probably there where are most challenges, complex products, bulkloading the operational inefficiencies in the organizational structure where you today are doing both manual as well as non-manual work, and combining it, it might be manual hand over, so it’s not even digital in the sense of the ways we’re working, whereby there are efficiency gains and operational efficiencies that can be achieved by transforming to a digital environment. So I believe that in the B2B space, starting with products federation in one unified product catalog, one unified PLM, opens up great opportunities to simplify, both go to market as well as thorough testing engagements. While having done that, being able to enter and transform into a more modern remainder of the stack across BSS components like billing, like CRM – if CRM even is going to be around in the future, at least in the way we use CRM, as well as service order management etc. All these things ties together and becomes more simple at the central point where it all starts and has been unified. So that would be my thought around it and I also think that’s what we see in a lot of cases: a need for carving out some of the most critical components from the stack or from the single network approach. To be able to start easing up the complexity in the market. What would you think of that Martina?
M: Absolutely, fully agree, so in a nutshell, on the broader perspective: we can give the following recommendations to service providers to embark upon their digital transformation journey. If I look at my checklist here, we would recommend to really start out investing in public cloud PAAS/FAAS, pretty early to take early mover advantages in the digital business, that’s the foundation of so for investments that Per just mentioned in areas like order management, product catalog, lead quote order. So the modernization of the operational monetization capabilities should go hand in hand with the upgrade on the cloud side, private/public cloud. But having said that, that’s not all, it’s also important to have in parallel, a very founded business model transformation and innovation going on to be able to fully explore the underlying technologies of digitalization. And of course that means foremost embracing cultural change management and having the corresponding adaptive organizational model for this technology success. There are some really good examples out there like Swisscom or KPN or also BT or Verizon but also then really selecting the right partner that will operate with you in the same agile continuous devops and software based development paradigm that work in the same fashion as you do, it’s very critical to have the buy in of your partners. And seamlessly cooperate with them. And then of course also those early to participate in new technology innovation like AI invest in autonomous cognitive data driven operations, to really unlock this operational potential. And last but not least really establish a holistic enterprise wide operating model that also comprises your clients and that’s why these components like lead to quote to order, product catalog, order management are really critical components to accelerate a digital transformation and the customer interaction that’s where many operators actually start out their digital transformation. So it comprises really it has to be a holistic technology business strategy across internal users, external customers and also the ecosystem partners because nobody will manage this alone it requires a very strong partnership ecosystem.
P: Very very true, and now we’ve started off with our first podcast from Kloudville and I have the intention then as CEO of Kloudville to continue to have podcasts and me and Martina are going to have also guests coming to us, and these guest specifics, and we’re also going to have your technology podcast going forward where we discuss special protocols for special carve outs of the BSS stack, or discuss general topics or trends that we see in the market. And we hope you will enjoy listening to this podcast, going forward we will become more detailed and more clear on different areas as well and we’d really love to hear your input, so once we post this on Linkedin feel free to comment or send us a message on what you’d like us to discuss, or if you’d like to join us in this discussion. I feel like that would be a good ending of this podcast and Martina maybe you would like to say some last words as well on this.
M: I fully agree so, thanks a lot for listening, please let us know if you have any questions regarding this podcast, we will also leave our contact details so please feel free to reach out to us, we will have a more deep dive on some of the topics and answer your questions, and as Per said we would be happy if you would be joining/listening to our next podcast we have a series of very innovative and disruptive topics coming up. Thanks a lot for listening.
P: Thank you everyone! Was great having you here and looking forward to hearing your feedback and having the next podcast and getting you as a listener. Take care, and see you in the future, bye now.