Charlotte Kan (00:17):
Good afternoon, evening, morning, wherever you are and watching us right now. Welcome to your Extra Shot. I'm Charlotte Khan. We are live from Windsor at the DSB Leaders World Forum and I am joined by guests, very prestigious guests of course, like all our guests on the forum today. So please welcome Nico Marziliano who, VP of International Telco sales at Wind River. Thank you for joining us. Marco,

Nico Marziliano, Wind River (00:42):
Pleased to be invited.

Charlotte Kan (00:45):
Anita Döhler CEO at NGMN Alliance. Thank you for being with us. Hello. And Miko Voltolini his VP of innovation at Colt Technology. So thanks for being with us this afternoon. Thank you. We have just been attending and following a session on cloud native. Anita, you were on stage. What was your key message? Well,

Anita Döhler, NGMN Alliance (01:06):
Representing an organization which is operator driven, my main message is of course that we need more industry collaboration when it comes to achieve a true cloud nativeness. We see first implementations, first successful implementations, but at the same time our members experience that actually there is still a long way to go to achieve openness, compatibility and interoperability when it comes to cloud nativeness and this is actually where we will also continue our efforts on.

Charlotte Kan (01:39):
Thank you very much. And can I ask the other guests about their key takeaways from the conversation we've just heard on Teleco native, cloud native? Sorry.

Nico Marziliano, Wind River (01:47):
Well, as I like to connect topics, listening, the cloud native conversation now in the previous session about AI makes me thinking about how the two connect and I think on the AI automation side, one of the key message was makes the AI a buddy, a friend of our engineer to automate routinely things in an easy way error free. Now cloud native, if you put that in conjunction, that can be a way the AI may automate the cloud native development because at the end of the day I see the complexity and skillset on the cloud Native engineers, you may use the AI to generate codes at a cloud native in a faster speed so they fail fast. That concept can be surpassed by NNI Gen I kind of technology and vice versa because then with the cloud native you accelerate the AI creation. My real consideration, the second consideration challenge is that we talk a lot about the innovation, but do we need to innovate only or to invent something? And sometimes we get in the trap that the innovation is just an incremental change but not a significant disruption change. So is it AI the right tool to create the invention or it's just an innovation tools? That's just my maybe philosophical question

Charlotte Kan (03:25):
Mecca, what sticks with you after the conversation we had on stage about cloud native?

Mirko Voltolini, Colt Technology (03:30):
So my key takeaways, if you look at the telecom industry over the last years and there were talks on the panel about the fact that total shareholder returns has been negative. And so how do we change that? How do we move from a model that we have today where we have traditional operations, developmental operations, which has led to stagnating revenues to a model where we have open cloud native development, DevOps, let's put it that way. It is a massive shift for the industry. It requires us to change technology, it requires us to change the skills and the mindset to the people requires us to change the commercial model. So it's a massive change across these three dimensions.

Charlotte Kan (04:14):
And I guess we should have started this conversation with a definition around what we mean by cloud native and maybe separated from cloud. What's your take on this, Nico?

Nico Marziliano, Wind River (04:28):
Well, yeah, I think there was a great analogy in the furniture. I don't remember the name the other, the presenter. She was giving a great example in the difference. I mean the flexibility of the cloud native gives is completely as just related to the AI is a difference between gen AI and AI eventually where the gen AI is really creating not automated routine, but is really try to being able to create istic in the solution which are not necessarily routinely and cloud native open up completely different kind of opportunity in software development that can be completely different from what the Austin solution, which is capacity in computing was already probably available in the industry since the case I would say.

Charlotte Kan (05:23):
Okay. Do you want to follow up on that Anita?

Anita Döhler, NGMN Alliance (05:27):
So how do we define cloud nativeness? I think it's, so NGMN issued a cloud native manifesto just in autumn last year. It is an operated driven document, but I think it's really reflecting what the industry understands. I'm a cloud native and it's a good summary like APIs first or declarative and intent based automation, DevOps processes, a meaningful end gen certification so that Kubernetes our like reconciliation patterns. So all that should support that. It's easy to add applications to let applications talk to each other, to compose services, to react on customer demand and to enable security in a fast deployment and of course total cost of ownerships and efficiency. And I think that's something which is going beyond the concept of cloud hosting.

Mirko Voltolini, Colt Technology (06:35):
To add on top of that, the transition from the current way of operating networks to a model where the roles of engineers, architects, project managers, analysts is expanded and changed and increased. If you think about how today we operate and develop networks and network engineers is working on his own portion of the stack, the model changes to expand the role from an automation engineer to test and quality assurance engineer to a DevOps engineer. And again, also on the governance side, you can think about the changing role of managing projects. How do you control the development moving from that model to a model? We have s SCM masters, so you have agile, agile control of the process. So that's the other angle I would add on top of it,

Charlotte Kan (07:36):
Up

Nico Marziliano, Wind River (07:36):
On that while you were talking, thinking about another analogy of what the clown native is, it's like in the language. So the clown native is a kind of a grammar that will create a kind of new parental language compared to the dialect or the local language because now we are vertically, I mean you develop a software which is vertically integrated and it's just not for the German, the Italian, the French, the English. It's just very proprietary and then you go to parental language, which is going to be a grammar that everybody can't just combine and recombine and contribute at the end of the day. So everybody talk the same language,

Charlotte Kan (08:11):
But Ika has two Europeans. I think we can agree that experiment was not exactly a very successful European project was it?

Nico Marziliano, Wind River (08:18):
I know after I say that, but just not to say the common language.

Charlotte Kan (08:23):
Common language language, of course. Yes, indeed. I'd like to ask you all one more question before we take a very short break and we talk about how we go about implementing cloud native. Of course it's the fact that we need to do more or the industry needs to do more to create sector-wide definitions of cloud native, which is what we've attempted to do here and cloud native capabilities for software and hardware in order to give DSPs confidence to invest in new products that will really be cloud native. So how do we create that environment of trust and confidence?

Mirko Voltolini, Colt Technology (09:01):
I can start. So I was thinking again about that massive transition was the fact that today we're operating in a certain manner, traditional manner, and it's a massive change across the three dimensions, technology, people and commercial. How do we go about that? Typically what we have done is that we build islands, we start with the team, you build the initial technology, you build the factory on top of it and then you build the commercials. And I think that's a way to prove how this model can work and what benefit it can bring from both the efficiency standpoint from both and the commercial standpoint. How can we take services to market faster, how we can reduce the cost of what we build? And I think the challenge is expanding from that small initial development, initial deployment of the capability across the board to take over the rest because it's easy enough to build this initial portion of the stack and then need to expand. I think for that you need to be able to run programs that for instance, take the technology and move them across the board, take the people investment you made and move that also alongside to other technologies to the part of the stack.

Charlotte Kan (10:16):
Anita, let's hear from you before we take a break.

Anita Döhler, NGMN Alliance (10:18):
Yeah. I believe that we need to achieve that operators or anyone, every party in the value chain don't need to retest stuff again and again. So we really need to achieve a common understanding of what does it mean to have a containerized application and for being able to substitute and to really compose services without having the risk of non-working services there. And I think that's something where industry initiatives play a role. So it's also something where when it comes to the technology basics, the operators don't really differentiate anyway. So we differentiate the operators differentiate when it comes to the services to the customer experience and therefore it's about to really agree on specific schemes and requirements when it comes to how we assess the cloud nativeness of platforms and applications.

Charlotte Kan (11:22):
Anita Ko and Nico, thank you very much. Stay tuned. We're back in five minutes for more discussions around cloud native. Stay with us

(11:48):
And we are back at extra shots live from Windsor, from the DSP Leaders World Forum where I'm delighted to be joined by Nico Ano. Nico is Vice president of International Telco sales at Wind River. Hello again, Nico and Tamir Ker Vol who's vice president of innovation at Colt Technology. So thanks for sticking with us. Okay. Before the break we were talking about how we create cloud native software engineering teams and let's talk about the challenges to do that and the various obstacles and hurdles you are facing. What are they? Is it lack of interoperability of end-to-end integration moot, would you say are the key challenges?

Mirko Voltolini, Colt Technology (12:34):
I can start. Yes. So let's define what I think the problem we need to solve. So I think we need a cloud native platform, which is technology related. We need a cloud native factory, which is more people and process related. How do we shift from the current model to the future model? I think for the platform, some obstacle we have today, we need to rethink about our existing stack. I think it's impossible to build a cloud native capability sticking to the current technology stack we have think about our O-S-S-B-S-S that needs to be rethought from up from the ground because it's impossible to build on top of that and change. So that's on the platform side, on the factory side. So people and skills and mindset we need to rethink about the roles moving engineers and architects to the new model, which is about upskilling. It is about also bringing in new talents and it is about changing the way we operate with those teams. So moving away from waterfall to agile capital development. Okay,

Charlotte Kan (13:41):
Nico, before hearing from you, I feel I have to apologize to the audience for the noise, the racket happening in the background. It's the pinball tournament, isn't it? One of the attractions of course of the forum and obviously we've got very keen players this afternoon, given the noise they making good luck to them anyway, Nico, go for it. Yeah,

Nico Marziliano, Wind River (13:59):
Yeah, thank you. I have to say we are, at least from Wind River perspective, we have an advantage as our company is completely focused on the Kubernetes cloud native. I mean we are cloud native first, so we are actively on a cloud native. Sorry for the jar for the J, the joke for the party. Yeah. So the challenge we face is not internally, I mean from an engineer perspective, our team is a cloud native by definition, and we are the one believing and pushing for that. Our challenge is on the country is and is helping the client to go toward the client native. So our challenges is slightly different. So it's how to educate, how to help the client, how to enable the client native world to be enabled. That is not always easy because as you have heard in the panel, cultural change, skillset mindset are still there and then you have a lot of legacy to be maintained because also from a business perspective, I think one other topic that was mentioned but not completely attached is the legacy has to be there because still it is attached to a return on investment for which you cannot just simply wipe out and say, okay, I will replace with a cloud native.

(15:16):
So you need to keep the transition not only because of the legacy of the technology and the skillset, but also because you have a business to maintain operator they need to maintain today ongoing activities, so they cannot just simply change over the night.

Charlotte Kan (15:33):
Being successful is also a matter of mindset and culture, isn't it? The telco industry is not exactly known for its fail fast attitude or concept as loved by big tech for instance. How can we encourage that a bit more within the sector?

Nico Marziliano, Wind River (15:52):
Well, if I can follow what I was just saying before and it comes across various conversations in the different panels, definitely maybe starts more MVP product but stick on it. There was a message this morning from one probably from Hoffman, he was saying that do small stick on it and keep going until he scale up and the same here. So we need to have an opportunity to prove it. In telco, there has been a very good moment in the last decades in term of the business model was pretty easy, the connectivity, you got a customer subscriber grow, boom, boom, boom. You grow the business just by expanding connectivity. Then of course when the maturity level of the technology and the market is rigid, then how you go to the next level. That is exactly the challenge that telco has been facing and is now facing today.

Mirko Voltolini, Colt Technology (16:58):
Yeah, I think it's a massive shift. We need to rethink how we've been operating. So significant transition, we have a model, so I come from a fixed network operator where we've been used to work in a certain manner for the last 20, 30 years. So it's a significant change. So it requires a lot of leadership first of all, and I think again, that needs to come from the top. You cannot expect that the company will change. Companies will change automatically without that top level leadership. The second angle is about, I think we need to supposedly set money, time and people aside to actually work in that fail safe model. If you don't, then there is always the risk that we think that we're going to lose money. So if you set aside certain amount of money that you're going to invest into some informed be, but with the ability to actually lose some of that investment, that will change the picture and icontinue to start somewhere, actually set something up to do that.

Charlotte Kan (18:09):
Last year at the DSP leaders World Forum, there were loads of conversations around skills upskilling teams in particular, and do you feel that the sector currently has the skills, the workforce at its disposal to become cloud native? I mean, and how do you go about it? Internal efforts, external efforts, contractors, partners, how do you address that skills issue?

Nico Marziliano, Wind River (18:30):
Well, as I said before, we do have the right skillset and mindset if you wish on our company. But listening to partners, listening to client generally, there is a general sentiment, not only specifically on the cloud native skillset, but in general in that sector. In our sector there is a lack of engineering people, people that want to embrace that unit. So how do we make the new generation, how do we make the younger at the university getting excited, oh, I want to be in the telco, I want to be in the cloud, I want to be in that industry. We need to make it more sexy if you allow me to say you need more attractive, more really, and the way of being attractive can be multiple, can be career. It can be having the freedom having in a kind of startup mentality, the possibility to get them. If you look at the younger, do you want to be in that kind of sector? I dunno, we are facing a huge problem. A lot of people say, Hey Nico, do you have names to suggest me? I want to hire 10 engineers or five engineers, two engineers. They are really out of the university. There are only few people that are getting out as an engineer. It's

Mirko Voltolini, Colt Technology (19:52):
True. Yeah. Reality is that it's impossible to find enough people on the market. So I think it's a combination of upscaling, rescaling, the existing workforce, and I think there is a good amount of people in engineering or operations that are willing and able to do that. So that's an element. Then there is also the help we can get from partners and vendors. So I a hundred percent agree that and then is the internal influx from the outside, how you make it attractive as Nico was just saying, how do we make the industry much more appealing than what it is today to attract young talent. I think there are lots of recipes for that.

Charlotte Kan (20:32):
One more question before I let you go and attend the last leg of the forum, how have you found the conversation so far? What have you heard in particular that really resonated with you?

Nico Marziliano, Wind River (20:43):
Yeah, well from my side is what I just before, the connection between it makes me thinking a lot about this AI and the cloud native. So how AI and gen AI will be transforming and how that goes between innovation and invention. For me, that is a critical ask and question that is not easy to be answered. So innovation comes from a stepwise changes we need sometimes to invent something new. Honestly, I feel like we need to have a significant radical change,

Charlotte Kan (21:23):
Meko.

Mirko Voltolini, Colt Technology (21:24):
So there is a general thread across, as Nico was saying, across this panel so far, innovation, ai, cloud native. I think I expect greater from the rest of the event as we continue to talk about important topics. So across the board.

Charlotte Kan (21:41):
Fantastic. Many thanks to both of you and enjoy the rest of the forum. Indeed. We're back for morning hour's time. Stay tuned.