Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:24):
Hello, you are watching the Cloud Native Telco Summit part of our year-Round DSP Leaders Coverage. I'm Guy Daniels and today's discussion looks at how telcos are identifying new roles and developing key skills for successful cloud native implementations, from reskilling and upskilling to leveraging partnerships and external expertise and to hiring and nurturing new talent. We'll also try and identify some of the essential cloud native skill sets, and I'm delighted to say that joining me on the program today are Yogesh Malik, who is group CTIO for Tele2; Diego Lopez, senior technology expert at Telefónica, and an Etsi fellow; Greg Dalle, director of product management service providers with F5; Ranny Haiby CTO of Networking Edge and access for the Linux Foundation; And Francis Haysom, principal analyst with Appledore Research. Hello everyone. It's good to see you all. Thanks so much for taking part in today's discussion. And let's start by looking at broadly what strategies telcos are using to acquire the skills they need to transition to native operations and networks. And indeed, what are some of these key skills? Diego, perhaps we could start by coming to you first.

Diego Lopez, Telefónica (02:06):
Yeah, well I would say that the strategies, I'm not that much different. So with other transformation opportunities that telcos have gone through in the past, for example, when we started to deploy digital based infrastructure or with the mobile revolution, there was moments in which you had to look for new knowledge, new ways of applying existing knowledge, and well look for talent and try to identify which are for sure the strategic partners that can collaborate with you. You cannot start from scratch. It's good to have people that help you in the journey. Right now what we're doing is well, trying to find this talent and trying to find or we have found already a number of trustworthy partners are helping us. The point here and the difference in this transformation journey I would say is double on the one hand is the fact that we are facing a competition that we didn't have in the past when you were looking for someone knowing about mobile communications or looking someone that it was in the transformation of the infrastructure into digital infrastructure things where, well people knowing about that were focused on the tele environment.

(03:28):
Right now, the competition is much wider, much more complicated, but because people that have some of these skills are very much demanded by other sectors and we have the problem that in the past telco has been perceived and something a little bit dull, I believe that this is changing somehow we are managing to sell the idea that we are changing and this is good, that we are going to be cool again. And secondly, the other problem is that the need for multidisciplinary environments is we need these new skills, but we need to maintain. It's about we are changing everything. It's not that we're changing a segment of the network or a particular technology, we're trying to change everything and we need people that is able to think cloud with some network background and that's challenging. But I think that we are, well when you're going into these transformations, we do have several stages and I think that we are right now in a stage that is quite promising for the future.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (04:43):
That's good to hear Diego, and thanks very much for highlighting the differences we're going through now and from other transformations and what's unique about this journey. Now we've got more comments we want to hear from, but first of all, Francis, let's come over to you next.

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (05:01):
I think it's worth almost backing up a little bit on cloud native. I think one of the key things in terms of getting a successful strategy for cloud native is to ask the key question, which is why do CSPs want it and what is the business imperative that they're trying to solve? By having cloud native networks on its own, there is not a requirement for telcos to be cloud native. Cloud native helps telcos to do something and I think in terms of a lot of the skills, the skill sets, who you work with, et cetera, a lot of that is determined by what is the business aim of actually becoming cloud native. We to some extent have had this experience before with the whole NFE virtualization strategy, which has been to a greater or a lesser extent, not quite as successful as I think everybody hoped it right at the beginning.

(06:00):
So I think it's very important that we understand what is it we're trying to do. Are we just trying to be the network that we are today? Are we trying to be a utility network, in which case very different strategies are needed for cloud native or are we trying to be that innovative telco? What type of areas, industry sectors that we are looking to be that make that innovation in? And again, that will drive very different decisions in terms of what you are adopting in terms of cloud native and the skills that you need to bring into your organization or to partner with.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (06:30):
Great, thanks very much Francis. We're going to hear from Greg in a minute, but first of all I want to go across to Ranny and Ranny. What are you seeing from your position at the Linux Foundation?

Ranny Haiby, The Linux Foundation (06:40):
Yeah, so from what I'm seeing in the open source ecosystem is taking me by maybe one step further, even back from what Francis just said to the question of what does it mean to be cloud native in telecom? And what we're seeing in our open source communities is operators trying to address this question first so they can go ahead and retrain and reeducate their workforce. So it's quite clear what cloud native means in general, and that's been going on for years, but when you apply this to telecom, it doesn't naturally translate and there needs to be some extra work to figure out what it means to take these telco applications and services and transport them to cloud native. So I think we've all seen last year the NGMN Cloudnative Manifesto that kind of summarized the collective thinking of many operators about what does it mean. And this year we're continuing with the cloud native telco initiative under the Link Foundation networking that works on defining the best practices of what it means to be cloud native. So I think once we make progress on these fronts, it would be easier to clearly define what needs to be done in retraining and reeducating the workforce.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (08:02):
Great. Thanks very much Ran. I'm glad you brought that up as well because in yesterday's panel we had a tremendous discussion about the ambiguity that still is out there about cloud native or the misinformation as well, which needs to be addressed. I'm going to go to Greg next and then Yogesh, but Greg, let's get your views in next.

Greg Dalle, F5 (08:23):
Yeah, sure guy. So what we're seeing with cloud native is now you need to aggregate the stack. So that means in the old days you would choose a vendor, maybe it's a finished vendor, maybe it's a Swedish vendor, and then you would get everything that comes, right? The beauty of cloud native is that you can decide how to architect your stack. You can make very custom decisions based on your own business needs, but the difficulty is that you need to re-aggregate stack and that means you need to understand cloud, you need to understand Kubernetes, which is sort of the defacto container orchestration environment, DevOps, observability. So what do you deal with the data? And all of this is expertise that you might not have today and that you need to acquire. What we've seen in several service providers is that the IT organization actually already has this exposure and some of these skills because they already adopted cloud before the network side. And so we are seeing one of the approach from service providers is to converge the IT and the networking organization and cross-pollinate between IT and the networking folks. And then there are other approaches relying on partners hiring new talents and I'm sure we'll discuss about that in a few minutes.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (09:50):
Yeah, great points. Thanks very much Greg. And we will indeed, we'll pick out a few of these approaches and go into them in a bit more detail, but let's go across to Yogesh and get your thoughts about how telco such as yourself are acquiring these new skills.

Yogesh Malik, Tele2 (10:06):
I think that's first of all, thank you. Thank you. I think this is a great subject, great topic. The reason I'm wearing this T-shirt here, as we at tele two have been recognized by time and statista to be the world's most sustainable company and in Sweden we are number one in the world. We are number 37 and Diego should celebrate as well because Telefonica stood a great rank too. So proud of that. And the reason I want to bring this topic is everything starts with what do we want to do as a telco? We want to become a leading telco, providing connectivity and enabling societies with unlimited possibility, which means we are critical infrastructure. We know that cloud native is a big thing, but we can start internally as well trying to go what are the critical milestones to cross? And I will share with you how we are embarking on the journey in multiple stages and as multiple of us we mentioned it is the way of the future to be a part of the ecosystem, we need to start thinking cloud native.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (11:27):
Great. Thanks very much Esh. Well, I'm going to stay with you because I want to move the conversation on to look at these specifics and I'll come to you first if I can because we want to look at some of the various ways telcos are securing these necessary skills. And you mentioned looking internally there. So let me start by asking you, how are telcos such as yourself and up-skilling existing employees? What are you doing with your existing workforce to bolster the cloud native skills?

Yogesh Malik, Tele2 (11:57):
Yeah, so I think we started our journey by developing expertise in ai. We used to call that AI hub, so we would have all the people who have knowledge of rag of programming, of algorithms, of architecture, of dependencies, of the peripherals in the same department. I think that helped us a lot. It helped us a lot to get a momentum. We focused on the strategy and the strategy for us was to look where we want to be in the next three years to four years. From there, then we started focusing on what does it take to mobilize execution on that strategy? It came to us very clearly very early. The skills are going to be a big formation, especially data skills, AI skills and observability skills. And once we got to know that, we started going into the domains and we selected two or three domains because it's very important to focus, to link it to the P&L because once it's linked to the P&L, there is enough pressure in the fabric in the organization to deliver in a very sustainable manner.

(13:18):
And the way we are doing the skillset is in, we have a print, I won't call, we call that a trainee program. And what we do with the trainee program is we get the best of Sweden to work with the CXOs in our company. And I think that gives a great input in the skillset for us. And we have a lot of experience, people experience in the domains of telco, whether it is network planning, whether it is customer operation, and we go through that too. Combining these together, we find ourselves domain application and AI skills working together. Now we are enriching towards observability because observability domain is growing into different areas as well. And we are now very focused on data infrastructure, strategy data, education ethics and role of AI and observability. So that is the way we are doing it.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (14:24):
Yeah, fascinating to hear your approach there, Yogesh. Thank you very much for sharing that with us. Ronnie, can I come across to you and what are your thoughts for, I wouldn't say necessarily retraining, but certainly continuing education and training to upskill and reskill existing workforce.

Ranny Haiby, The Linux Foundation (14:43):
So there are more and less formal ways of training. So if you go to look at traditional training, the open source community and the cloud native computing foundation offer a large set of actual training courses about cloud native computing. Many of them are even free of charge, so it's a good starting point. So that's a more like a traditional way of educating folks about new technologies. But I think in addition to that, the open source ecosystem actually presents many opportunities for more informal training. So the fact that engineers and operation folks from operators can participate in open source projects, I think helps a lot with the education of these individuals and later their entire organization. I think what we're seeing is that telcos that are more active in our open source ecosystem and various open source projects that are related to cloud native are actually more advanced in their thinking and how it applies to their network. So I think getting your hands dirty in working on an open source project and it doesn't necessarily require contributing lines of code. It could be participating in discussions, work group, contributing use cases, and participating in POCs. I think that kind of involvement helps a lot for those operators to kind of get their people to start thinking in the right way about cloud native and start being really native on cloud native.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (16:28):
Great. Thanks very much. Ran. Yeah, let's hope more TURs do that. I'm going to come to Greg in a moment, but Francis, let's come across to you next.

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (16:37):
Yes, guy. I think it is worth calling out a couple of examples that I've recently come across just in terms of understanding some of the key changes here. BT at Future net World earlier in the year presented on its really quite radical change in terms of the way that IT is developing software for its network and its operational systems. And one of the key things that they brought out there, they actually brought along a sponsor company, GitLab, which is I think the first time I've seen an IT company being present at a telco or organization. But the key thing there was a very big change in the way Telco builds, its IT Telco has tended to say, you will use one system, I want that system consistently used across the whole of the network. And they'd flip that very much on their head. In bt, which is much more, I use software functions I developed with software functions, I enabled my developers to use the best that is available at the time and to constantly evolve that.

(17:43):
So that was I think a change in the way Telco typically builds its, which is quite important for the adoption of TAG Native. The second one was actually at a VMware conference where T systems were showing how they were really changing the network into a configurable software item IE, they did described it as a Magento wash, which is this idea that we reinstall the configuration of the network on a regular, regular basis. And one of the key things that meant was that the typical knock environment was moving from a kind of swivel chair, CLI, coating the network to becoming much more of a software configuration change and implementing that on the network. So building in software development and software configuration control mechanisms on the network as a software artifact was quite important. So we are seeing those skills becoming addressed in telco.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (18:47):
Thanks very much, Francis. A lot of different approaches being taken by telcos out there. Fascinating to hear about them. And Greg, what are your thoughts on this approach of looking at your existing workforce and reskilling and redistributing skills?

Greg Dalle, F5 (19:01):
So look, obviously a lot of new technologies, and by the way, it's evolving almost monthly. There are new projects and new technologies that folks have to learn. So it's not just about learning, but also making sure you have the mechanism to stay on top of new things. And there are courses, there are certifications for Kubernetes and other things, but one thing I wanted to focus on is also even for more traditional roles in the telco. So think about people designing the network, et cetera, even if they're not specialists of GIT or Kubernetes, et cetera. One of the big changes now you need to work across the layers. And one of what I thought I was very proud of in the 4G world a few years ago I worked on interoperability with big Chinese vendor and we were a thousands of miles away, probably very different teams, and we got a GX interface to interoperate between vendors and I was very proud of it.

(20:07):
But if you think about it, it's pretty straightforward because we were looking at the same three GPP specifications for gx. We are looking at the same IETF RFCs for diameter. Now in today's world with cloud native, you have to walk more across the layers. So that means you might have A-C-N-F-A 5G, CNF, you need to understand how it's going to work together with let's say an service mesh or the lower layer with the Kubernetes environment, et cetera. And so you need to learn even in your traditional role to work across the layers, work with different open source project, different vendors, your storage vendors, et cetera. And so to the point that Diego made at the beginning of people have to be multidisciplinary, that's also big evolution. So it's not just the certification, the new technologies, but it's also a change of mindset and culture for everybody at the telco.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (21:05):
Yeah, good points, Greg. I think it's getting harder as well. Diego, let's round out this selection of views on this particular approach with your thoughts.

Diego Lopez, Telefónica (21:16):
Just a short comment on this, and Greg made this idea that people, we are asking not only people that know about cloud native technologies, but as well people that have the network in their mind because the network has specific requirements. What we're trying to do is to make a mutual posture between people that have operational experience and people that comes with the new ideas. And in particular the team I lead that is mostly connected with the innovation standards, et cetera. This is something that we try to expose them at the projects we have and the people that come to work with us that normally are in average are quite young in these days is to expose them to the old timers that have been running the network for a while. So this kind of cross-pollination that the people that haven't been around the network can experience how new technologies can change and how they have to start to behave in a different way. And the other way around, the people that come with the new ideas, with the radical proposals can understand why things are the way they are and which are the things that we had to preserve one way or another. That's important as well.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (22:38):
Yeah, good points, Diego, there's a lot of knowledge within turco, a lot of network knowledge there to be tapped into Yogesh, let's come across to you for an extra comment for you on this.

Yogesh Malik, Tele2 (22:50):
No, thank you very much. I think we should look at it as opportunity. Opportunity on how to bring domain experience and AI expertise together by both contributing to a purpose. And in that our partners are very important because AI is spreading across everywhere. So network domain, IT domain, customer care domain, productivity domain, and I think it's important to bring along, it can be a real change journey which we can embark on together.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (23:28):
Well you're absolutely right. Which leads me on to my next point because we've looked at existing internal resources. So let's look at partners. What are the advantages and disadvantages of relying on partners such as strategic vendor partners, ecosystem partners to either acquire or at least access the necessary skills? And Greg, I'd love to come across to you first and get your thoughts and your experience on this.

Greg Dalle, F5 (23:56):
Yeah, look, there are plenty of opportunities for partnerships and I think it's really a two way method. It can't be just trying to get the knowledge from external partners. One thing to mention is telcos nowadays have to manage an ecosystem. Instead of managing a small one or two or three vendors, they have to manage an ecosystem. And that ecosystem may have vendors, system integrators, hyperscalers, and also open source projects. So that's a big change. The one thing I wanted to give as an example is a lot of service providers are looking at hyperscalers and are multiple projects in general going on between telco and one or multiple hyperscalers. But the challenge there is it's not just taking cloud and applying it to telco. Think about it, 5G was actually started in terms of defining it, standardizing, et cetera, prototyping. It was started before Kubernetes. Kubernetes is 10 years old, so it's quite recent. And so we cannot assume that a 5G application is like a web server and just apply that transparently. And I think the hyperscalers also these past few years have learned through the process that the stack that they have for traditional enterprise applications also has to evolve to deal with the complexity of those 5G applications. And at F five, we're also looking at this mediation between traditional clouds and those 5G applications to make sure that we can actually marry that together in an optimized way.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (25:55):
Great, thanks very much for those insights. Greg ran, let's come across to you then we'll have a word with Francis, but Ronnie, what are your thoughts about the approach of telco's partnering with other companies to acquire or access these skills?

Ranny Haiby, The Linux Foundation (26:11):
So I see it as a kind of an all hands on deck situation where telcos need to get the expertise wherever they can and they should not rely on just one source. I think there's not enough expertise to go around for everyone. So again, from my vantage point, the open source communities is where telcos and operators can share the burden and work together towards building the necessary best practices, building the necessary know-how, and then disseminating it around in their organization. So I think it's best to use all possible avenues, both growing internal talent, relying on partners, and of course using the open source world as kind of hedging against relying too much on a single vendor or a single source of expertise. I think there's a lot of expertise that can be gained by taking part in the different open source initiatives. I mentioned the cloud native telco initiatives and others, but I think the more operators are participating and contributing to that, the more they can replay their and in benefit and kind of getting more than they put in.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (27:32):
Thanks Ronnie. And as you articulated there, this isn't an either all approach. These are approaches that can be done in parallel. Couple more comments to get through on this question, Francis, though I'll come to you next.

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (27:46):
Yes, I come back to my original point. I think the partnership part comes really is driven by what is the strategy of what you're trying to achieve here. There are partners for a whole host of end goals for CSPs. Some people will want to be highly innovative, they will want to be in industry sectors. They will want partners that can take them into those industry sectors that can help 'em build the applications or build network capability into those applications. Others are going to be, let's be honest, the major part of the industry is going to be utility. A lot more of those are going to be looking for what I would term as partners that can offer the one throat to choke aim here. We talk about a sort of really dynamic delivery organizations here, but in a lot of cases telcos want that kind of who owns this, who owns this when it gets wrong, et cetera. And again, that choice of partner may be maybe very effective. So I think there's lots of partners there that they can be used very well if we're very clear what is the strategy we're trying to achieve? They will be awful if we're not clear what is the strategy we're trying to achieve.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (29:07):
Yeah, absolutely. A lot of different partners out there and the approach is so critical. Yogesh, let's come across to you. What are your thoughts on this?

Yogesh Malik, Tele2 (29:17):
I agree with Rani that we have to not stick on one approach. While I understand as figure of speech choking throat one throat, I think I prefer accountability partners are also exploring this domain and what we can offer them is in the true partnerships and that they can bring what have they achieved in their own domains and we can see what is the longevity, how sustainable is that and when do we come out of it, enrich it, modify it, and that transparent dialogue and having multifaceted approach is going to be critical going forward.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (30:06):
Yeah, thank you very much. esh. Right, so we've looked at partnerships. So what about hiring and developing new talent? I mean we were reporting on telecom TV a few weeks ago and Verizon had an intern program, which has been tremendously successful according to their metrics. So there is a lot of good news to come out of this, but I like to ask specifically, what's the role of apprenticeship programs for telcos to try and acquire and nurture the skills that they need? And Ronnie, given your involvement in the open source community there, what are your thoughts and what are you seeing?

Ranny Haiby, The Linux Foundation (30:48):
Yeah, so if we think about the skillset of telecom and cloud native as a kind of Venn diagram where on one side you have telco experts who know three GPP standards and all these telco related technologies. Then on the other side you have people who understand and are educated on what does it mean to be cloud native. I think currently the overlap section is very narrow and the motivation is to bring these two circles together and increase the overlap. So apprenticeship and mentorship programs are one traditional way to have people from one discipline embedded in the other discipline and both learn about the other discipline. And also I think Diego mentioned the term cross-pollinate, which I like. It's a way to cross-pollinate between these two disciplines. So yeah, I think apprenticeships and mentorship programs either within operators or with vendors or even in the open source world, we have occasionally mentorship opportunities.

(31:53):
These all help to increase the overlap there. Also, I think we need to think more broadly about how to do this. And once again, I am observing that just participating in activities and initiatives in the open source world really help kind of bring people out of their comfort zone and bringing them to absorb expertise that were previously exposed to. So I think operators need to look at open source initiatives as yet another type of method for educating and exposing their workforce to technologies and disciplines that they're not naturally exposed to. So that's the end of the day, it becomes yet another type of apprenticeship or mentorship.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (32:45):
Thank you Ronnie. And as Greg mentioned earlier on this panel, we are having to work across many disciplines now, right? Few more comments to get through here, but Francis, let's hear from you. First,

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (32:58):
I'd like to build on what Ran was actually saying. I think it's that cross-pollination key and whilst I think apprenticeship is a very formal term for that one, but it's creating the environment in which that cross-pollination can occur. I actually have the privilege of going to the cube conference earlier in the year in Paris, and I can only describe it as revelatory in terms of what is going on in the open source community, what is going on particularly in the Kubernetes in environment and walking into that from history of going to telecoms conferences. There is just a completely different energy there, a completely different mentality of solving problems there. And I think if nothing else, this ability to go to these types of events slightly drink the Kool-Aid if I might say that. But just to ibi that kind of very different experience of what it is to develop a cloud native software, what it is to innovate it potentially in real time at the conference rather than what is tends to be a very static view within the telco thing. So I think apprenticeships or the willingness to invest people from your telco to be involved in open source initiatives or just to imbibe or engage with different types of software environments is key to getting this right in telco.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (34:30):
Yeah, thank you very much Francis Yogesh, let's come across to you and your thoughts about apprenticeships or at least cross-pollination, trying to expose new hires to this new technology

Yogesh Malik, Tele2 (34:45):
And these are two separate skills and the happy marriage or the more overlap in the Venn diagram as Ronnie was mentioning, is going to be great. And now my experience there is, and I have had four trainees over four years of my journey with Intel two, and it has been a pleasure of learning, sharing, giving, but my role was to act as a bridge between operations and use that new skills and instill them step-by-step in the whole process. And that was one thing which really worked very well, both from involvement but openness from both sides of those circles and skills to make a common achievement and make sure that we do things in a sustainable manner.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (35:39):
Good. I'm very pleased to hear that Yogesh and Greg, let's get your thoughts on apprenticeships and as we've been hearing about widening that overlap in the Venn diagram.

Greg Dalle, F5 (35:51):
Yeah, I think look, it's a great tool in the toolbox, right? It's not the only avenue to get those cloud native skills, but we do see that most of the colleges or universities out there that do computer science programs have the skills being taught actually in those colleges. So it's easier to find a new grad with let's say Kubernetes expertise for example, than one with let's say SS seven or diameter. So that's the good news is actually the skills are there. And also at F five we do internships programs, we do new grad programs and what we find out is a lot of young people who are actually passionate and they can start to contribute pretty quickly. Yes, they do have to understand and learn the telco specific aspects, but that can come over time and they can contribute very quickly. Actually.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (36:57):
That's really interesting, Greg, because it has changed over the past 10 years. I'm much more optimistic about this approach to hiring and acquiring skills and people than ever have been. Final question for all of you. We've covered the skills, we've covered some of the approaches to getting these skills. There's a lot of job titles and roles associated with cloud native. It's changes every year. There's come in vogue and one's disappear. It's difficult to keep up with 'em all at times. But can we take a look at a couple of specific roles that are getting a lot of attention at the moment and how they fit into the cloud native telco picture and the ones that want to really pick on are finops and DevSecOps. Francis, maybe we could start with getting your views, especially with regards to finops.

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (37:55):
Thank you guy. Yes, I think both to set the context for both of these terms. I think that cloud native has really accelerated this idea that if you are going to have good software, you really need to join up the process of development and operations so that there is a natural feedback. There's an increasingly agile feedback in terms of developers and operations developing and operating that at coders one really both of these terms. And that wasn't a natural thing, that wasn't a natural way that software was organized and it's certainly not the way typically telcos have been organized to a degree, very, very separated siloed operations department. Very, very siloed development departments. I'll start with the DevSecOps really, it's really just recognizing if you're going to have a software network, if you're going to be developing code, you need to be thinking about the securitization of that code and it should be part of the same process.

(39:03):
It's really just thinking that it is not that security is a siloed thing that is separate to this process. It is actively part of the process and it's actively part of the process, not just that requirement stage but ongoing through the lifecycle of the network. finops is a little bit more obtuse, but it's really sort of saying the same thing goes to the financing. I think there's a danger that we look at perfect the perfect software or we can invest in huge amounts of money. It's really bringing the finance aspects of how we operate cloud native software very specifically in terms of where the term is used today. It's your ability to compare different options. Do I put this on a hybrid cloud? Do I put this on a public cloud? Do I build this in my own data center? All of those are finance decisions.

(39:56):
How much scalability do I need? Do I understand my capacity in that network? So I think it's a very important aspect for telcos, but it also involves some quite significant changes in the way that telcos buy things. So building financial modeling, financial planning into your development cycle and your deployment cycle, prioritizing things on your willingness to invest, what you are hoping to achieve from that is built into that one. However, that is quite a major change from the way we've typically built networks. CSPs tend to be very capitalization that we are looking to define what we're going to do. We're going to set projects to go forward on the basis of capitalization. finops is a much more dynamic process that is continually evolving and changing things. So it has huge potentially benefits for the ability for us to actively use cloud native and adapt as things change as they always will within the network. But it is a very different model than the kind of upfront financial capital expenditure five-year plan for deployment of the network.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (41:16):
Great, thanks Francis, for providing some context on those two relatively new jobs in Cloudnative, telco, Yogesh, are these two jobs of relevance to you at your organization? What are your insights and thoughts on this?

Yogesh Malik, Tele2 (41:33):
So DevOps has been there with us in tele tool at DevSecOps. We had to uplift the security element to a big degree. So that has been a focus over the last two years and we made some very good progress. Now is I think we are trying to become more agile and not just be certain and predictable but think in a more agile manner. And that is closer to the finops I would say. But the other thing which we do is hackathons, the crosspollination bonding ideas, sharing whether it's 48 hours, two days or two and a half days. It really brings a skillset together, teams together and brings the company together as well.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (42:25):
Thanks very much. And yeah, I'm pleased to hear there's a lot of progress being made with DevSecOps. That's very encouraging. Greg, we'll come to you next. What are you seeing with these roles as well? Anything you'd like to add for us?

Greg Dalle, F5 (42:41):
Yeah, look, the finops, it's not something I use with my daily life and I don't really know anybody with this title, but I'm sure this is coming up in certain contexts. What I do see in terms of coupling the quantification and technology, obviously now that you have this aggregated stack, you can make many more choices on where to run functions, but those choices need to be made based on financial aspects. Also, power consumption is a critical part. So we do see some of our counterparts at telcos running business cases and analyzing the best options. So just to give an example, it's not just cognitive, it's not just software, it's also hardware. It's like where do you decide to run the functionalities? And you do have newer options with smart nicks. More recently the dpu that are prevalent in AI cloud architectures, but will be also very relevant for 5G going forward.

(43:49):
So do you run this networking function on CPUs, on Smart Nick, on dpu? These are all quantification efforts. And so everybody has to learn these new tools, not just technology tools, but also financial tools to make those models. And I think that speaks to the broader theme that people working at telcos and in the industry now have to learn multiple roles. And coming into this call, I was looking at a few telco websites in terms of their careers and job openings, et cetera. And when you look, for example for radio roles, people are asking if you know AI techniques, tensor flows or other things. So not just radio. You need to understand a lot of different aspects and I think that's the future of those roles is to actually be hybrid or multidisciplinary as we said at the beginning of this conversation.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (44:55):
That's really interesting to hear. Thanks for researching that for us, Greg. Much appreciated. And Ronnie, let's come across to you for your thoughts on these roles.

Ranny Haiby, The Linux Foundation (45:06):
Yeah, so indeed finops and DevSecOps are kind of new or even alien to network operators. But the good news is that once again, the open source community is where a lot of the innovation in these two domains is happening. So finops for example, we have the finops foundation under the foundation that is dealing with developing tools and best practices for doing that. And DevSecOps, we have the open SSF Open Secure Software foundation that deals with the managing the secure life cycle of developing a deploying software. So the good news here is that operators can tap into these communities and ecosystems and they don't have to go at it alone. They can first of all use the technologies that are developed there, but additionally, by taking part in these ecosystems and communities, they can educate their workforce and kind of start to adopt these way of thinking of finops and DevSecOps.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (46:13):
Thanks Ronnie. There's plenty of knowledge and expertise out there. Well, we must leave it there for now, but I'm sure we will continue this debate during our live q and a show later. For now, thank you all very much for taking part in our discussion. If you are watching this on day two of our cloud native Telco summit, then please send us your questions and we'll answer them in our live q and a show, which starts at 4:00 PM UK time. The full scheduler programs and speakers can be found on the telecom TV website, which is where you will also find the q and a form and our poll question For now though, thank you for watching and goodbye.