Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:00:24):
Hello, you are watching our special program on how to implement telecom SaaS as part of the future network strategy. I'm Guy Daniels and in today's discussion we are going to look at the transformative potential of software as a service in the dynamic landscape of 5G technology. We will be discussing how and when to transition to on-demand networks and how to realize the 5G opportunity. We will also investigate future network strategies and look at the commercial potential of on-demand networks. Now in the lead up to this program, we have been asking you for your questions. We have received a great selection and we'll address some of these later in the show. But first, let's meet our guests and I'm delighted to say that joining me on the program are Mark Bunn, who is Senior Vice President, CNS SaaS Business Operations at Nokia. Janne Koistinen, Director, 5G Program for Telia Finland. And Robin Leblon, Chief Technology Officer of Citymesh. Hello everyone. Good to see you all. Well let me start by asking quite simply, what is telecom SaaS? Mark? Can you explain the key differences between telecom SaaS and traditional IT SaaS models?

Mark Bunn, Nokia (00:01:55):
Yeah, thank you guy for the question. Lemme start by saying how excited I am about this event. It provides an opportunity for us to explore what I think is a next natural step in the technology evolution of the communications industry. The drive towards cloud commuting in our industry over the past decade has really set the stage for the introduction of software as a service or SaaS as we'll refer to it to be leveraged for applications in and around the communications network. Now at Nokia we refer to this phenomenon as telecom SaaS and we define telecom SaaS as a service that delivers a business outcome, typically bought as a subscription based on cloud native software delivered with a fully digitalized business experience and a fully automated services lifecycle and designed for carrier grade workload delivery. So let me just briefly unpack the definition guide for our audience members.

(00:02:58):
So in aas applications are services. They're delivered to the consumer who turns the responsibility for management, for operations, for security over to the SaaS provider, the value of the services measured by the benefits that occur from consuming the service. So questions like on which cloud are you hosted are not as relevant as questions such as how available is the service or how does the service help me to achieve my business outcomes? Also important is adhering to cloud native principles. It's essential to deliver a highly reliable and scalable service. And in a mature state, a SaaS service can be ordered, it can be provided managed by automation software, which would eliminate error prone and tedious manual procedures typically used in today's ordering processes. And what distinguishes ultimately telecom SaaS from IT SaaS of which many are very aware is this fundamental design of the SaaS applications to be carrier grade. The communications network is critical infrastructure and it must be robust, it must be reliable, it must be resilient, and it must be secure.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:04:15):
Great, thanks very much Mark. Really clear definition there. Thanks. So what are the main drivers and expected benefits behind the telecom industry shift towards on demand networks and programmable networks? Janne, perhaps we could start by asking you this one. From where you sit in your role, what do you see as the main drivers and benefits?

Janne Koistinen, Telia (00:04:39):
Yeah, thanks for the good question. Well, to frame my answer, I would start with a bit of a background. So we journey to turn the best effort mobile network service into very versatile multiverse network service for wide variety of use cases. Typically when you think about the narrative of 5G, we are talking to use cases beyond those consumed by mobile phones. And now even though sometimes we feel that we are slow in the progress, but the rest of the world is sometimes even slower to come up with the pace how we go forward, this creates a kind of timing gap between the investments we put in and when the new revenue is being recognized. And the SAR model as such gives us a kind of interesting opportunity to start thinking about it. Can we actually move towards pay as you grow type of investment style.

(00:05:57):
Another aspect that I would like to bring up at this point is that the operators like Telia who bring along the burden of legacy all the time and is also quite heavily regulated, having obligations towards the society we are serving, being able to avoid a yet another full stack in-house approach gives us an opportunity to be innovative, although at the same time carrying the burden of legacy, which is a great burden to have, but sometimes it doesn't allow us to be the most flexible and innovative in the ways how we use the networks SaaS model is something that gives us kind of an opportunity to think that way.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:06:57):
Interesting. Thank you, Janne and Robin, what's your perspective? I guess you may take a different angle with your company as to what you see as the main drivers and benefits behind this shift.

Robin Leblon, Citymesh (00:07:08):
Yeah, thank you for that question. Citymesh, being a niche operator and entering the m and o game before we've been a light, MVNO has quite a challenging task ahead. We have a lot of complex technology to deploy. We have ran to deploy, we have significant investments to bear, we have people to get trained and we're not in the business of training people and deploying complex core networking software. We're in the business of delivering the best connectivity solution and over the top services to our customers. So for us to be able to focus primarily on that, on delivering the best possible solutions to our customers, it helps to have to have less to invest in the piping and the plumbing so to say, because in the end the core network is a necessity, but it's not something that directly in itself brings value. So for us, having access to this kind of complex service through a sales model makes a lot of sense. It allows us to keep the investment controllable, keep the investment or the spending growing with our customer base while maintaining a strong focus on delivering actual value to our customers.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:08:32):
Thanks Robin. Well great insights there from both of you. Let me ask a related question then, and Janne, let me start with you. How does SaaS enhance productivity and efficiency within telecom organizations?

Janne Koistinen, Telia (00:08:48):
Yeah, how I see this is that it enables us to focus our own resources to the services and the technology stacks that are the moneymaking machine at the moment and still have the flexibility to explore. The new ones are not yet carrying themselves, but they are promising for the future revenue sources and we can do this exploration with less overhead when compared to the approach that we would do it all. So this gives us the necessary flexibility and agility to focus on the essential of these new initiatives instead of the repeating the basics that are still needs to be in place in order to proceed. So that's how I see that the efficiency to our operations will come in.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:09:57):
Thanks Janne, and Robin, what's your thoughts on how SaaS can enhance productivity and efficiency?

Robin Leblon, Citymesh (00:10:06):
Sure. I think maybe a relevant point here is that typically an operator or a CSP is dominated by the consumer side of things, right? That's where typically the largest amount of revenue is, and that requires a specific set of features or specific type of services to be deployed city measure. As a Greenfield B2B focused operator with a sibling that is focused on B2C, we want to have a sufficient flexibility and I guess we want to be able to make our own decisions without having an impact on the B2C side of things. So having a fully controllable core network, which is independent of the typically larger scale B2C infrastructure just gives us a lot more flexibility. It allows us to deploy features that might not make sense on the B2C side, but make a lot of sense on the B2B side. So by using a sauce service for a niche part of our customer base, it allows us to actually have a full deployment with all of the flexibility that comes with that, whereas otherwise that might be a bit overshadowed or dominated by the B2C requirements.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:11:29):
Thanks Robin. Well we've been through the benefits or certainly we've highlighted some key benefits here, but what about some of the hurdles or challenges that telecom operators face in adopting the SaaS model? Mark, let me come back to you and ask you this first with particular reference to areas like security and technical considerations.

Mark Bunn, Nokia (00:11:49):
Yeah, there's three primary concerns that I hear most often raised about cloud and software as a service and those three guy are security control and economics. So regarding the topic of security, as you mentioned, I think there are misconceptions that the public cloud is not secure, but contrary to these misconceptions, great deal of investment and focus goes into making the public cloud as secure as any on-premises data center, if not more. So now when we provide our Nokia SaaS services on the cloud, we assure the security with a defense in depth strategy that begins with applications that are designed with security not just as a priority but as a mission critical priority. And we augment those applications with operational security best practices, network threat protection, rigorous access control, as well as compliance certifications to validate that we've done our job well. The second concern that I hear about control, Robin actually touched on it, and yes, while it's true that the SaaS service consumer turns over, the management controls largely to the SaaS service provider doing this enables the consumer to then turn its attention to more important strategic matters such as how to use the SaaS service to drive new revenue streams.

(00:13:17):
It was the comment that Robin made about his business being focused on connectivity, on providing connectivity solutions rather than the plumbing that is used to provide those solutions. So that's how we partner together. And then finally on that topic of economics, one of the most common questions I get is about this idea of converting from a CapEx to an OPEX model, which is implied by cloud and SaaS. However, the reality is that SaaS can be accounted for differently depending on the deal structure. So it makes both CapEx and OPEX models possible.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:13:55):
Interesting. Well thanks for highlighting those concerns and hopefully alleviating some operator operator concerns there. Janne let me ask the same to you. What do you see as some of the challenges in adopting SaaS?

Janne Koistinen, Telia (00:14:10):
Yeah, in addition to what I said earlier, I would highlight the aspect of regulatory obligations put to network operators. Like the services we provide must run when needed even without any connections to other worlds. So that limits the technology stack choices. So basically we may end up having a kind of situation where the technology stacks may become custom made and tailor made and then that's of course then the killing, the benefits of having volumes in the production whether offered by SaaS or other models. But another aspect that we need to take into account is related to legislation and often data must stay under national legislation, especially with the customers having governmental connections or similar. So basically this leads to the same, let's say the challenge with the free choices of technology stack that can be utilized for the SaaS model. When it comes to technology, I would say that the SaaS providers definitely have the engineering power to overcome all those aspects. I haven't seen myself any such technology challenge that couldn't be dealt with, but let's say this, it is more related to the environment where we operate the networks that how far we can take the D SaaS model in practice in today's world.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:16:13):
Thanks Janne. We're going to look forward to seeing how far we can take it. It's going to be a very interesting journey. And Robin, what about you? Any additional challenges that you can add to operators who are looking to adopt saas?

Robin Leblon, Citymesh (00:16:26):
Yeah, the regulatory topic is obviously a big one. As Janna explained quite clearly. The security one was for us, one of the major ones the security topic because essentially you have to rely to some extent on your partner there, there's only so much auditing and compliancy checks that you can do. So looking at track record there, looking at way of working helps. But I think for us that was one of the major challenges. It is to some extent a bit of a leap of faith, but yeah, we were able to solve that by plenty of interaction. And I think transparency here between the SaaS provider, in this case Nokia and Citymesh helped out a lot. I think maybe because we've gone through an RFP process and there were different vendors running there and if there's a lack of transparency there that really stresses the process and that makes it complicated.

(00:17:36):
So I think that was for us, one of the biggest ones. Indeed. And of course no one is forcing you to take all of the components and put them in a SaaS solution. It remains a three GPP compliance solution and to some extent it's not mutually exclusive that because it is a SaaS solution that you have to be putting everything in there. In our case, obviously we keep things like data playing in our own data center. We keep IMS in our own control. So there is plenty of ways to alleviate that and a full best of breed approach is probably not the best idea, but to some extent it is still possible to mix and match a bit and take back some of the control where it might be forced by legislation or local regulation or privacy laws or whatever, or maybe just a preference to keep certain things under control.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:18:33):
Sure. Good points. Well thanks everyone. I mentioned at the start of the program that we have been sent some questions from viewers and we will get to those soon. But before we do Janne and Robin, I'd like to ask you if I, you could share some primary use cases where you are planning on using Core as a service. Very interesting topic. Janne, perhaps we could start with you and get your thoughts as to your thinking here and where you may be using it and how.

Janne Koistinen, Telia (00:19:04):
Yeah, thanks. I would like to actually share the story that how did I get engaged with the core as a service overall? So creating innovations on the production network is for the telcos is sometimes a little bit challenging. So I wanted to have an environment where I got together with the customers and together with the advanced developers to explore the potential of the 5G features, even the features that are not yet in the production shape but still under development. So I wanted to create an innovation core and connect that to a wide area radio network and that's what we did. We call that actually the project series and the idea is that they would have an environment with all the bells and whistles that the 5G and 5G advanced can provide basically. Basically that's the idea. It starts off with the highways and seaways from Helsinki airport to the west coast of Finland, Toco Harbor, and from there over the sea to ham in Holland.

(00:20:23):
And from there it continues to Sweden where it is the project creates a 5G corridor towards the south and west within Sweden. But the idea is that is to create and cultivate the environment where the adopting new 5G features is rather norm than an exception or kind of a long wayed thing. But the idea where we could together with our customers and developers and research institutes to live the world of tomorrow. So we have already first customers signed up and the research institute signed up in this environment and the first use cases derive from different sorts of video analytics to help the safety and productivity of the logistics on this corridor to remote control of, for example, drones and vessels over the sea. And then actually the vessels and the drones can be part of the video analytics for the safety and productivity solutions by themselves, by carrying the different types of detection devices like sensors or video cameras and then the feed gets analyzed for further insights. So this is the way how I used the, I wanted to create a kind of a dynamic environment where we could explore the future together with my customers. That's how I got engaged with the chorus, a service

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:22:08):
Absolutely fascinating. We look forward to seeing how that develops as well. Robin, what about you? Any primary use cases that you can share with us and how you are planning on using Core as a service?

Robin Leblon, Citymesh (00:22:19):
For those of you that know Citymesh, probably more of you that don't know us yet. We come from an integrator, an IT and a networking integrator background, right? We've started out as an integrator, we are still an integrator but now we're also becoming an operator and this is a bit of a different breed where you typically see telcos also starting to take care of integrator parts of the business. We are a bit upside down in that regard, so a lot of our use cases come from there. Obviously we have the vanilla use case where we simply need to get B2B subscribers connected over the public ran. That's the base case of course. But on top of that, we're deploying a lot of private networks, full private mobile networks, S-N-P-N-P and I type of architecture.

(00:23:17):
What we are planning to do in our testing now is actually to have a fully isolated private network seamlessly blend into slice on a 5G network and have that terminated on the local infrastructure of the customer. Another nice use case that we're deploying is called the Sense Project, which is a national deployment of safety drones, which are interconnected with the one two dispatching system, which can be actually autonomously deployed and which are remotely piloted from our control centers where we have pilots operating and running the drones. So this is a use case where you obviously need to have full control where you need to have full priority on the network. Another nice one I think that we're trialing now is a priority on demand scenario where we want to be able to provide first responders or whatever type of customer actually with the possibility to activate priority on the network on demand just from their my city measure app, just by the click of a button in a matter of seconds, be able to take priority on the network and to be sure that they have sufficient bandwidth for whatever is going on.

(00:24:39):
And of course in case of first responders, be able to handle whatever calamity might be ongoing where we're seeing use cases where customers want to connect ambulances, where they want to do security use cases is a big one as well. We do a lot of temporary events at festivals, large public events, soccer games, a lot of large sporting events, I guess I should say the same applies here. You want to be able to flexibly reconfigure and change your network. You might want to be able to terminate some traffic locally whilst having other traffic streams go to the central networking infrastructure. And by using this SA model that basically unlocks all of it at the same time because generally to be able to get all of these 5G advanced features in production, you're looking at a big investment, you're looking at a lot of lessons to be learned, but by leveraging the Core SaaS solution, we can actually hit the ground running and we're trialing and deploying kind of all of them at the same time.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:25:59):
It's absolutely great to hear how much innovation has been enabled by this model. Mark, what are you seeing over at Nokia? Can you share with us any additional examples?

Mark Bunn, Nokia (00:26:09):
Yes, Guy, first of all, I want to say those are fantastic use cases that were shared by Janni and Robin and I want to make a key point. I think if you look at or really pay attention to what they said and you look at the theme that's coming out, I've been known to say in the past that S is an acceleration engine that helps our industry to realize its full potential. The investments that we've made in 5G and the investments we'll make beyond 5G traffic on the networks, it's going to continue to grow, right? It's been growing exponentially, it's going to continue to grow, especially as we see a higher proportion of machine to human users on the network and we cannot continue to rely on telecom network over Bill to address this demand. It's just not viable. So we have to have networks that are elastic, that are available on demand in order to support this increasing need for connectedness, connected people, connected vehicles, connected companies, connected factories.

(00:27:19):
You heard those comments made in particular by Janne. This network in its future state of secure and programmable and orchestrated and available on demand can be used to enable straightforward use cases. And you heard some increased capacity for weakened events or for first responder needs all the way to complex and really still to be realized if not imagined cases where we talk about mixed physical and digital experiences. But there is another customer that we have that recently talked about their experience with COR sa and what they did was they demonstrated an advanced IO OT wearable that was made possible by the fact that our core SaaS solution could be made readily available and made available close to the point of data consumption.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:28:10):
Alright, that's really interesting. Thanks very much. Mark, I have to move on though and I'd like to explore now the role that partnerships and collaborations play in the successful adoption of SaaS and programmable networks in the telecoms industry. Janne, let me start by asking you, and there's two different aspects here, but what are your views?

Janne Koistinen, Telia (00:28:32):
Definitely, there are two different aspects here. I was thinking about the, of phrasing that point when you were asking this. If you look at the partnerships in SaaS arrangement, then of course the driving driving force here is that the departs must take my conditions and the environment, the regulatory applications I've mentioned earlier into account and obviously need to comply with that. There's no way around it. So mobile networks are increasingly seen as a critical asset and whenever the service reaches a critical mass, then the surrounding society starts to have more and more critical dependencies to it. So the mobile networks for the large operators are built and prepared also for the D use. So it's requires different stuff from the partners that are being part of this SaaS as well. But when it comes to programmable networks, there's another driver, at least in my mind, I've mentioned that there's a timing gap between the investments put in and the recognized revenue.

(00:30:00):
And we still have as an industry, a ton of work to be done in order to get the market to recognize the added value created by the improvements in connectivity by 5G. And a few weeks back, I read about one of the market research that told me that what the telcos are often selling is not exactly what the other industry customers are willing to pass those. So there's some mismatch in the level of things that we do. So I believe that we need to get the innovation back into the very core of telecommunications. We've been kind of going towards the bit pipes scenario for too long, and the partners that are willing to work with me on the programmable networks and get the features in such a use that it starts to attract the new revenue sources, the partners will need to play the same goal. So providing the flexibility in the core network deployments for different purposes helps me to quickly adopt to different requirements and the APIs provided will then expose the very valuable data that my network can provide. So the partners in this space, we need to be able to share the value, the new value that we create and get along with the road towards getting the innovation back to the very core of telecommunications.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:31:58):
Great. Thanks Janne. And Robin, what about your thoughts and views on the road of partnerships and collaborations?

Robin Leblon, Citymesh (00:32:06):
Well, firstly, let me agree with what Janne said. I think that that was spot on. Another thing that we're seeing is the telco and the IT world have generally been pretty hard separated. A lot of IT players and application developers and especially the large scale ones is consider the telco part or the connectivity part to just be there and to just be working. And if it's not working we'll blame it. I think that needs to come together, that needs to, that world needs to be, or those two worlds need to be more intertwined. And by exposing these kinds of APIs and by creating a very developer friendly environment around them, you could potentially bridge that gap quite easily. We need to let other parties into our networks in a safe and secure manner, of course, in a way that it can bring value for everyone, that it can create revenue for everyone.

(00:33:12):
And looking at these new programmable features, the APIs that are available are incredibly powerful and they're built in such a way and documented in such a way that basically any developer out of his garage all the way up to the largest application developers can get started with it. So I really think it opens up a world of possibilities where even smaller players can enter the game at almost no cost because let's be honest, getting an application built, integrated with the core network or the RAN or any part of the telco infrastructure is a huge and a very costly project. Typically with these APIs, with these new features, I think that gap is closed significantly and I think we can look forward to a lot of innovation maybe from parts and angles in the industry that we don't expect, but at least the possibility is there now and is accessible to anyone.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:34:21):
Well, this leads me nicely onto my next question, and Robin, let me stay with you first with this one. Can you share any lessons you've learned so far or best practices for those telecom operators who are looking to transition to a SaaS model?

Robin Leblon, Citymesh (00:34:39):
I guess that's a bit difficult question to answer sitting from our greenfield chair as we're basically starting from scratch, what we've noticed along the way is, well, maybe let me say this first. We don't have a legacy, right? I think an enormous challenge with more traditional operators who have been around for a longer time lies in legacy. We've decided quite early in the process that we would focus mainly on 5G. There's a small 4G part in our network of course as well, and there's a tiny two G part for compatibility reasons. But I think making the jump to 5G and making it all the way, at least for us as a greenfield operator is a good choice. It significantly decreases the complexity and it allows you to launch a lot of things much earlier on without having to invest in technology which is close or somewhat close to being sunsetted.

(00:35:55):
I guess what also applies here, and I noticed this in the discussions with our board, was actually actively involved in this decision. It's a big decision as we touched on earlier, it's a lot of eggs to put in one basket and there needs to be a relationship of trust. There's some black box aspects to it. And to be honest, it took quite a lot of convincing. We had a couple of strong proponents in our leadership and a couple of relatively strong people who were against us going the sarway. I defended it quite adamantly and I tried to convince everyone, which luckily succeeded and I guess yet dare to make the jump. I can imagine that for a lot of operators out there, it feels like you're giving up a large amount of control, but just imagine with the amount of resources that is freed up, what you could do and how many new services you could think of and how many other aspects of the business that you could improve. Because in the end, that's at least in my humble perspective, what matters. You want to get the best possible solutions out there, you want to be able to focus on that. And I believe that by moving the burden of running this complex part of the infrastructure partly towards the vendor that actually builds it and that knows it best is the way to do it.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:37:44):
Good advice. Well, from Greenfield to Brownfield, Janne, any early lessons you've learned so far that you can maybe share to other operators who are looking to start this journey, this transition journey?

Janne Koistinen, Telia (00:38:01):
Yeah, good question. Maybe a bit too early to give advice to colleagues, but as we are taking the very first steps only now on this, but what I can tell you is that within few months we had SaaS model based core up and running MOC and arrangement works very well. Network slices are up and running straightforwardly and the programmability of the core has been applied without any hurdles. So basically jump into it within the context that you feel confident to do it. I said we did it in the context of creating an innovation environment and so far so good, but of course time will tell not too many SaaS providers yet to compare with, but at least to me it looks like for this purpose, it is working very well.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:39:18):
That's positive. And as you say, so far so good. Mark, let's come back over to you and from what you are seeing through the industry, any lessons or best practices you can recommend?

Mark Bunn, Nokia (00:39:31):
Yes, I do like the advice though that you heard from Robin and from Janne. I think it's important to take that on board. I think the pace for telecom SaaS and the adoption, it's got to accelerate it just for the benefit of the industry, but certainly not beyond our ability to define a clear and deliberate approach. So my recommendation is always to start where you're most comfortable. Like Janne used the word confident, where you're comfortable or confident perhaps with analytics or security applications. We have those assessed services at Nokia, they're adjacent to the communications network. So it's not a situation where you are asking the core to be put into this model. But for those who are looking to do that, as we've been discussing today in particular, if you're focused on Core saas, then focus on new business lines or new use cases. I think that's the obvious place to start.

(00:40:34):
And then the benefits of the adoption are obvious just to name a few, look immediate availability of software, no long lead times for deployment and planning required. So it greatly cuts down the time of network build and network availability. And then an added bonus is you're always on the latest release, which is really important from a security point of view. Robin's touched on it. You start to eliminate some of the operational costs associated with running your own services. So the 24 by seven after hours operational costs, the staff that has to understand cloud native technology, there's a shortage of that, plus they come at premium costs. So turn those responsibility and those costs back over to the company who built the software, the ones that are best able to. And then finally, SaaS comes with it, an implication of simplified pricing. So the SaaS services include support, they include upgrade, they include the hosting environment. So there's a lot that comes with that subscription or subscription plus usage based pricing that simplifies the whole procurement process.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:41:43):
Great. Thanks very much, mark. Well, before going to our next question, lemme come back over to Robin. Robin.

Robin Leblon, Citymesh (00:41:51):
Yeah, that's actually a very interesting point that Mark touches there because I kind of forgot to mention it, but just the fact that you're able to roll out a new service which requires specific features in your infrastructure, not having to make a huge upfront investment and getting people trained on that. It's an enormously valuable thing. It allows you to try things. It allows you to very, very quickly and almost frictionless try out new things in a production environment actually with customers that otherwise would probably take a longer cycle to get approved and to get funded and to get educated on and then actually put into the market. So I think that's extremely valuable to be honest.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:42:43):
Yeah, thanks very much Robin for that. Well, let me ask you all another question now. I'm going to ask you this to each of you in turn, what is your vision for the potential of on demand networks to shape the future of the telecoms industry? Janne, I'm going to start with you first. What do you see as the potential here?

Janne Koistinen, Telia (00:43:06):
Yeah, assuming that with the on-demand networks, you mean the networks utilizing the D SRS model or the programmable features maybe alone, difficult to find a particular kind of storyline for that, but the DFE combined those features with the automated dependency management to legacy services, maybe AI guided network integrations also similar. If we add those in the equation, that would result to me as a vision of more efficiently operated networks, though I remember we've been talking these topics for at least past 15 years already. So hopefully these things start to come together pretty soon. I mean, it looks like that the potential that we have with the 5G and the narrative of 5G utilizing mobile networks beyond the mobile phone driven use cases definitely will require us to put more effort on creating networks that can adapt to more demanding requirements for the use of mobile mobile connectivity.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:44:52):
Thanks, Janne. There's a lot of possibilities out there. Robin, what about you? What's your thoughts about how this model may shape the future of the industry?

Robin Leblon, Citymesh (00:45:01):
I think there's the traditional way of how networks are deployed and operated I think are significantly changing, right? The infrastructure is becoming more distributed. The RAN is going through an enormous change as well. And obviously the core part or the data center parts of the network changing as well. And that's been, I think, blocked in the past or maybe not blocked, but it was complicated because of the fact that we had a large, centralized, very complex infrastructure that is, let's admit it, not easy to get up and running. If you have the possibility to deploy that on demand very quickly on different types of hardware, be it on the edge, be it in a data center, be it in a kind of a metro situation, I think that just opens up a lot of possibilities for the networks to become much more flexible and to much more easily adapt to certain events, to whatever's going on either in a specific region or for a specific technology. So just having that flexibility I think will allow us to unlock a lot more use cases and be much more responsive as an industry.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:46:23):
Yeah, thanks Robin. And that alone is a big benefit. Mark, let's hear from you as well as to your thoughts.

Mark Bunn, Nokia (00:46:30):
Thanks. Yeah, I've already said that I see SaaS as an acceleration engine to us realizing the full potential of 5G. So my vision is that we would advance from where we are today, which is principally characterized by long network build cycles, and we've moved to rapidly deployed secure programmable AI enabled and ultimately autonomous communications networks. And I think that we're well already well on our way to achieving this vision with the partnerships like the ones that Nokia has formed with C Meshia, I believe that the idea of connectivity when you need it, where you need it and delivered at scale is not far away. So with this future coming very quickly at us and all of its heightened expectations and extreme demands, the complete modernization of the communications network must happen now in my view. And I see core SaaS as a key and vital component to this modernization.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:47:34):
Great. Thanks very much Mark, and thanks everyone for all those comments and insights. Now as promised, we have some questions here from our audience and let's see how many we can answer in the next 10 minutes or so that we have remaining. Okay, so here's the first audience question from a viewer, and it reads to me, SaaS means the vendor taking full ownership and control. Why should I put all my eggs in one basket? Why indeed? Mark, have you got a good answer for our view?

Mark Bunn, Nokia (00:48:06):
I hope I do. It's interesting that Robin used those very words in one of his responses, but he also used the word trust. And so from a vendor's perspective, I don't say trust me without having a lot of weight behind that. There's a lot of rigor that we built into our process. I already talked about how we deal with security, how we deal with control. I mentioned how we have compliances that are audited regularly by third parties in order to ensure that we're doing our job and doing it well. The other thing I think is important to consider is that it's not an all or one proposition, even though I would assert that taking SaaS services and then putting them together into a collective use case that solves N 10 problem is very valuable, at least where we are in the industry today with regard to telecom SaaS, very nascent, very early days, starting with where you're comfortable or confident. I suggested earlier in one of my answers, analytics might be a good area to focus on is security and then move to core SaaS for use cases that are new or represent new lines of business. I think that's a very measured way of adopting something, this new paradigm that's going to be a necessity in our industry going forward.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:49:29):
Yeah, thanks very much Mark. And it leads to another viewer question. We have along very similar lines actually. And the question is, is SaaS an all in approach? Should I use it across my entire network or can I start with parts of it? And if so, which areas do you recommend we start with? Janne, I'm going to come to you for this one if I may, because I know you picked up on this early on in our conversation, but what's your view as to how an operator should apply SaaS?

Janne Koistinen, Telia (00:50:02):
Yeah, the operator with the legacy with the message, of course, not in the position to start replacing all the legacy stuff now with the new one, but as I said in the beginning, it allows to avoid yet another full stack in-house kind of a burden when dealing with the new services that are not yet carrying themselves on the way. So basically it allows to compliment with the lighter weight, the offering that we have and have created. So not a kind of full replacement, but instead of complimentary approach. That would be how I take it.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:51:01):
Thanks. Complimentary approach. Absolutely. And Mark, did you want to pick up on the comments you made earlier about this one, about the fact that it may not be an all in one approach?

Mark Bunn, Nokia (00:51:11):
Yeah, yeah. I think it's important. Again, the word measured that I used earlier, I think that's the right way to think about this, be very deliberate in the approach that you take to adoption of the model, the business model, as well as the technology. Again, I'll recommend areas where it's already, you already see a transition in the telecom space to as a service models in analytics, different parts of AI or different aspects of AI as well as security. Those are relatively accepted today as SaaS services. So start there. That just makes sense to do that with sa, I understand the conflict, I understand that the concerns that people may have because the core is its critical infrastructure, but as you've heard some of the use cases that were expressed today start with new business lines, start with new use cases that you're experimenting with. Eventually, as core saas, becomes more proven as it's more widely adopted. I think the comfort level will grow and we'll see that becoming more overwhelmingly accepted as an option.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:52:28):
Thanks very much, mark. And we've got a question here about the corn. It's a question for Telia and Citymesh, so I'm going to ask you each in turn, because you have different perspectives on this, will you be replacing your entire core with SaaS or do you plan to add core SaaS as an additional capacity? Robin, let me start with you because the operator who's starting from scratch.

Robin Leblon, Citymesh (00:52:54):
Yeah, a bit of the odd duck here, but we had a choice to make, right? Either we go all in or we do it in parts. We looked at where the value lies for us because as we have a sister company in the group that is deploying its own on-prem traditional core network, which will be used to service the B2C clients, we approached it in, okay, we have a piece of infrastructure there that is capable, that is trusted, it's cutting edge and it does what it needs to do, but it's going to be focused on the consumer. So we looked, okay, what do we want to do differently on the B2B side? And that's how we started defining the pieces that we want to control ourselves in the B2B side of things. And for us, that came mostly down to 5G data related use cases.

(00:54:03):
Aside from that, obviously we want to keep the data plane on-prem and under our own control in our country. But other than that, we quite quickly came to the realization that just taking care of the data core networking and made a lot of sense to do that in the SaaS part. So in our approach, it is actually a bit of a hybrid approach, be it that it is a very significant part and the part where we expect to be able to make a difference, where we want to be very flexible, where we want to be deploying new business models, new ways of servicing the clients very quickly. That's the part that we selected to onboard in a SaaS solution.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:54:46):
Great. Thank you, Robin. Thanks for sharing that approach with us. And Janne, let me ask the same question to you then. Ultimately, what's your plans? Do you plan to replace the entire core or do you plan to add core SaaS as an additional capacity?

Janne Koistinen, Telia (00:55:00):
Yeah, in the beginning, as I explained, I used that for expanding our capability to support innovation with the serious environment. But along the way, of course, I look at the ways how I would bridge the gap between the network investments and the new revenue recognized. So basically it goes beyond the cultivating. So I'm looking for ways how to do that and the AS model when the aspects of partnerships that we went through earlier, the aspects of technology stacks that can be used for different purposes complying with the language obligations that the environment here creates. Then of course, I look forward to applying the SaaS model into other areas of our services as well. Not only limiting to initial step here.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:56:08):
Great, thanks very much. I think we've got time to squeeze in a couple more questions if you can. Here's the next view of question we've got and the viewer asks, are ideas like cause of service more attractive to niche telcos and those service providers with less resources? And could this model be extended to non-traditional telcos? And perhaps I could ask each of you for some views on this one. Janne, have you got any thoughts on this?

Janne Koistinen, Telia (00:56:37):
Yeah, well, I can only talk on my behalf. So to us it is a valid approach. Along the way we'll see it to mature and hopefully the variety of technology stacks and so become available. So I really much look forward on exploring this path further.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:57:03):
Great. Thanks very much. And mark your thoughts on this one as to whether they're more suitable to niche and less resource telcos?

Mark Bunn, Nokia (00:57:11):
Yeah, I don't think that size of the telco or the resources available really matters. It may be one of the guidelines that a niche operator or a Greenfield would use to get started quickly, but frankly, the use cases that we've heard today from telia and from Citymesh are ones that are applicable to really any sized operator. And so I would suggest, as in my earlier answer, look at ways that you could take advantage of telecom SaaS in particular core SaaS in order to create new revenue streams that we all need no matter what size of operator and certainly the industry needs in order to take advantage of the investments that we've made in 5G to date.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:58:08):
Great. Thanks very much. Mark And Robin, do you think size is a defining factor here or not?

Robin Leblon, Citymesh (00:58:14):
We looked at all models and we considered going very traditional or some other hybrid approaches. Ultimately, I think it boils down to a where you want to create value, and for me, the main driver is the agility that you create by overloading a certain amount of efforts and not having to build up that very, very deep, deep expertise on it. That to me is the driving force as a CTO, honestly, I might sleep a little bit better knowing that if the core network goes down that it's Nokia immediately full service on it or the vendor immediately full service on it. But I think for us, the main driver is business agility, and I think that matters and applies to any player out there. The 5G monetization is a relevant problem I think, in the telco industry, and I think course can help solve that to some extent. So I think that's the driving factor.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:59:37):
Thanks very much, Robin. And there's a really short question here, another viewer question. Let me just read this one out and Robin, I'm going to stay with you if I can for this one. The question is how does SaaS help with unlocking network APIs?

Robin Leblon, Citymesh (00:59:51):
Essentially, it shouldn't, right? Essentially it's deploying the same type of solution, but again, it boils down to when you focus your resources on it. Because if you're deploying it in-house and you're doing it on-prem and you're going through an enormous cycle of getting things deployed, most probably I guess, that unlocking these APIs, getting the NEF functionality up and running is not going to be the highest one on the priority list, right? It's going to be slicing, it's going to be the different approaches. So I think in our case, what would happen is if we would be doing it ourselves with the in-house team, it would just take us longer because there's so much work to be done. Whereas when you have a vendor that has a broad set of people working on this that have done this before, that have built all of the automation that to get this up and running quickly, I think you just shortcut. You just take a huge shortcut and you can start bringing features that I think would generally be much further down the roadmap quicker.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:01:07):
Thank you, Robin and Mark. Let's finish up with some comments from you.

Mark Bunn, Nokia (01:01:11):
Thanks. Yeah. So in the industry, we've been on a journey for some time. I've been in this industry longer than I care to admit, and we've done a very good job of, if I can use the word, creating pluggability, creating standards that enable us to break down some of the proprietary barriers that exist in networks and be able to create these hybrid networks made up of various components of different vendors and do it successfully. But now the challenge in front of us is how do we monetize? It's no secret that in the 4G era, a lot of the value that came from our investments in 4G went to others that use the network in order to unlock that value. And programmability, programmable networks seems to be the right answer for us to not just have pluggable capabilities, but also to have accessible ones, ones that we can open up to ecosystems of developers and other companies to come and build applications on top of these platforms that we've implemented so well.

(01:02:26):
As been mentioned a couple of times in this webinar, we've talked about business agility and speed, and so I'll say it again. SaaS is an accelerator, and so SaaS makes sense to bring these pluggable capabilities together, but do it in a way that's expedited much faster than we've done in the past. And so to that end, yes, we need a complete modernization of the communications network must happen. Now, sore SaaS is key, a key component to that modernization, but so is programmability, and so we also have a SaaS service that we're offering that is complimentary to Core SaaS that we call Network as code and Nokia, but indeed tries to achieve the objectives that the industry is looking for today.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:03:18):
Thank you, mark. Well, we must leave it there. Thank you all very much indeed for taking part in our discussion. If you would like further information on any of the issues raised in the program, then please visit nokia.com/saas or click on the link below this video. And thank you for all of the audience questions. Those we didn't have time to answer today, we will share later with our guests. For now though, thanks for watching and goodbye.