• Orange Slovakia appoints new CEO
• Cloud native specialists team up to offer XaaS platform for CSPs
• Edge computing investments are growing fast, according to IDC 

A new chief for Orange’s Slovakia operation, a cloud native combo, and anticipated growth in the edge computing sector lead the way in today’s news roundup. 

Mariusz Gatza (pictured above), the current CEO of Orange Moldova, will move west to take on the role of CEO at Orange Slovakia starting 1 April: He will take over from Federico Colom. Gatza has plenty of experience within the Orange Group, having spent 20 years at Orange Poland, where he helped to introduce the digital Flex service, before taking on the Moldova role in November 2020. “I am sincerely looking forward to the new challenge in Slovakia. Joining such a successful player with a wide range of products and services and well-established market position is a natural step forward in my career,” said Gatza in a statement sent to the media about his appointment. “Sustainable growth is key in our industry. We are able to achieve this through satisfied customers and the deployment of meaningful innovations in our comprehensive offering, such as 5G, smart services or cybersecurity."

Two of the companies seeking to disrupt the networking status quo with cloud-oriented developments, Robin.io and STL, have teamed up to provide an as-a-service platform that aims to “empower 5G stacks for enterprises and cloud service providers.” Kubernetes management platform specialist Robin.io is combining its cloud-native platform with STL’s Enterprise Marketplace Platform to enable CSPs to deploy applications and network functions in an X-as-a-service environment in a way that “brings together service providers, partners and enterprise customers from different verticals on the same Platform... [that] provides a complete platform for partnership, collaboration and co-creation targeted for enterprise telco customers.” Partha Seetala, founder and CEO of Robin.io, noted: “Built on the foundation of cloud-native, zero-touch automation and open architectures, the integrated marketplace solution will enable CSPs to deliver new revenue models and accelerate customer onboarding while keeping service delivery costs in check. The marketplace solution built jointly by STL and Robin.io for service providers and enterprises will disrupt the way XaaS frameworks are built and delivered.” Read more.

IDC expects global spending on edge computing to hit $176 billion in 2022, up 14.8% from 2021. Service providers are tipped to invest more than $38 billion into offerings such as content delivery networks and virtual network functions, while enterprises will bet on edge cases for manufacturing operations, production asset management, smart grids among others. Spending on hardware, software and services for edge solutions is forecast to keep growing and reach close to $274 billion in 2025, with the fastest growth expected among use cases for public infrastructure maintenance, network maintenance, anatomy diagnostics and AR-assisted surgery. Read more about the trends in edge computing investments here.

Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) has pledged to invest INR75 billion (US$1 billion) during the next three to five years to upgrade the networks of its mobile business Reliance Jio to 5G in the state of Gujarat on the west coast of India. Spectrum for 5G services will be auctioned towards the end of 2022 at the earliest. The announcement came as RIL pledged to invest more than US$80 billion in green energy and other developments in Gujarat in an effort to make the state “net zero and carbon free” – those developments include the setting up of a Green Hydrogen Ecosystem and the construction of a 100 GigaWatt Renewable Energy Power Plant. Read more. 

French optical transport vendor Ekinops has reported annual revenues for 2021 of €103.6 million, a 12% year-on-year improvement. The company says sales were up across all of its product lines (SDN/virtualization software, Ethernet access, SD-WAN), but that it recorded “powerful sales momentum in Optical Transport solutions across all geographical regions.” Read more.

- The staff, TelecomTV