Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (00:16):
Welcome back to Extra Shot with me, Charlotte Kan We are live from Windsor and it's day two of the DSP Leaders World Forum. Many rich discussions that happened here this morning. And we're going to talk about session number six, which was all about how to leverage Telco Cloud for advanced operations and of course the benefits of adopting a hybrid model, which was actually before I introduce you to my lovely guests here. Well, we conducted the survey, didn't we? To find out what the best way to go about the cloud is. So let me introduce you to my lovely guest. We've got Martyn Warwick, who's co-founder and editor in chief at TelecomTV. Alex Foster, DSP Leaders Councillor, thank you for joining us. Was a pleasure to see you here. And Francis, we had you on extra shot yesterday, but it's also always a pleasure to welcome you back. Okay. Francis has principal analyst at Appledore Research. Welcome to all of you. So yes, Martyn, we conducted this survey, a bit of a rhetorical question around which cloud is best for telco operators. The overwhelming result was hybrid.

Martyn Warwick, TelecomTV (01:18):
It was, and not really surprising, although it surprised Ray that it was more than he expected, but the practical reason why it is, it is the best current solution that you could possibly have to the problem.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (01:31):
Alex, your thoughts?

Alexandra Foster, DSP Leaders Councillor (01:33):
I really liked one of the comments that came from one of the panelists and they said, you don't buy cloud, you do cloud. And I think that really brought it to life that actually in the doing it's an action and therefore it is a choice, which is why I think it has come out as hybrid. So the right solution for the right user case and therefore the action in the do.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (02:05):
And sis,

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (02:06):
My observation I think with the cloud is the cloud means a lot of things to a lot of people. And these terms of hybrid cloud or public cloud or private cloud are kind of abstractions really. The honest thing is there are really only three things in this model. There's hardware, putting hardware somewhere, there's putting software on top of it and there's connecting that all up. But most importantly, there's commercial models that are on top of it. When we are making the story about our choices of hybrid cloud and public cloud or private cloud, actually most of the time we're not really talking about what the underlying technology is. We're talking about commercial models and how that is played. On top of that one, I think that's why you are seeing the reaction in terms of hybrid cloud. Public cloud is great for some things. Jeff in the said, it's great for that kind of scalability, that ability to start small and scale up. It's probably not a great opportunity for many of the telco loads, which we know already plan and deploy with sort of five-year timescales if you know what the capacity's going to be in five years time. There's very little, there's very little agility and scale in that one. So I think the important thing is actually to recognize these three fundamentals and most of it is about the commercial model that supports in what's best for the application that Telco wants to deliver.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (03:33):
What's key here by the stand of it is having that flexibility. It's very important. Nevertheless, some operators may not have the resources to build and run a private cloud and have this option of be switching to a hybrid cloud model if they would like to. So I'm wondering is the public cloud sufficient to meet their needs? Do they have to go for private and hybrid and have that range of options?

Martyn Warwick, TelecomTV (03:59):
I would say that the answer is private clouds have a very specific purpose and there are reasons for that security generally others as well, but they're very specialized to a particular purpose or set of purposes. Public cloud is not quite like that and so there is room for both and there has to be room for both, certainly for now, and I can't see that being any different in the next decade.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (04:24):
Okay, so flexibility, security, what else?

Alexandra Foster, DSP Leaders Councillor (04:27):
Yes, I mean it depends on who the customers are that you are supporting in certain circumstances. As we heard from the panel, actually there are certain industries where actually you've got to have that data containerization from a regulatory point of view, and so therefore it has to be private in that instance. However, we know working with some of the public clouds, they're absolutely working on regulatory compliant clouds that would then drive that efficiency, that would drive that scalability would drive the flexibility that would also be needed.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (05:00):
Thank you, Francis.

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (05:02):
I'll come back to the, I think it's the commercial model. There's a lot of examples where the public cloud providers, the hyperscalers are actually delivering in-country, secured, allocated, separated capability. Some are finding that is to all intents and purposes, that is a private cloud, but it's run and delivered by a public, what we term a public cloud provider. So I think again, I would emphasize it's really down to the commercial model, both of the cloud do you want to deliver the infrastructure you want to deliver and how you are intending to monetize it. Regulation is a means of determining that monetization. If you're a small provider though, maybe the larger providers providing you a private cloud is actually the better way because they take the operational, the scaling problem away from you, but at the same time give you that kind of security and geolocation.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (06:05):
So we're going to take a break, a long break for lunch. There's a lot of hospitality and entertainment going on here at the Fairmont in Windsor. But before we go and before we resume our conversation around hybrid cloud and which solution is best for telcos, I just wanted you all to maybe take turns to share the content, the takeaways, the sessions, what you've heard here so far that has really resonated with you on data of the forum.

Martyn Warwick, TelecomTV (06:32):
Well, I was going to say the AI session, but seeing as we've moved on from that, I would say probably the last session that we just did that we're talking about now was the most relevant to what I've been writing about and discussing a lot in TelecomTV and therefore I think that was the hardest hitting and it's very, very more than interesting. It's fascinating to hear the different approaches by people who are really doing it.

Alexandra Foster, DSP Leaders Councillor (06:58):
I love the AI and API sessions that we've had. We've had some very, very big numbers thrown out. Was it this morning GSMA saying it's between 103 billion in terms of the opportunity. And we heard on the last panel that the telco cloud opportunity was a 23 billion opportunity for vendors. So hopefully all of the sessions are given something for all of the ecosystem here today. But one thing on one sentence really stood out today was when one of the panelists said, slow is the new down.

(07:40):
And when we start to think about APIs, when we start to think about applications and latency, and that sentence about actually slow actually is down and the data that we then discussed on the panel about, well actually what did that mean in terms of loss of customers actually then starts to move towards that inference at the edge, looking at edge and edge compute and being able to do real time decision making at the edge. So I think that as we talk about APIs, as we talk about Cloudification, actually that next leap is absolutely into inference. Cloud decision making at the edge.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (08:27):
Slow is the new down. Good one, isn't it? Killer quote of the farm. Definitely Francis,

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (08:33):
Actually it was another quote that resonated with me. It was from Jeff Hollingworth, the Rakuten Symphony. He said, we need to be asking why are we doing this? If we are not very clear why we're doing this, all of the problems that we've been generally discussing throughout the two days are a consequence of we don't quite know why we're doing this one. And he made the emphasis at the end of the day, Rakuten Mobile particularly did this because it was a commercial imperative to do cloud. It's not that they're choosing cloud because it's the next tick box on the CV or something like that. They're choosing it because it's necessary for the business model that they want to be as a fourth operator in Rakuten. So I'll come back to that. I think that's the big thing that resonated with me. Ask yourself the question why and if it doesn't have a commercial imperative to it, question yourself further.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (09:31):
Why always a good one to ask yourselves whatever you undertake. Thank you very much to our wonderful guests. I hope to see some of you after the lunch break, hopefully to discuss cloud and APIs, ai, all the challenges and opportunities of the telco industry right now. So stay with us. We're back in one hour for extra shot and in the meantime, well happy lunch. I guess. Welcome back to Extra Shot with me, Charlotte Kane. I'm delighted to have you joining us on day two of the DSP Leaders World Forum here in Windsor where I'm joined by Francis who was with us before the lunch break. Thank you for sticking with us, Francis, for more analysis of course on some of the sessions we've had here at the forum. And a special guest, Cormick Willan, head of the telecom systems business for Europe, middle East and Africa and Dell Technologies. Thank you for being with us. Thanks your

Cormac Whelan, Dell Technologies (10:38):
Honor. Pleasure.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (10:39):
So you were here last year, I remember it because we had various chats around the telco sector and the various challenges it's facing. So I'd like you to maybe tell us how you think conversations have evolved since last year.

Cormac Whelan, Dell Technologies (10:54):
I think it's been a very interesting year on a couple of different fronts. I think from a macroeconomic point of view, unfortunately we still feel that the market is a little depressed, which for our industry requires innovation, requires investment, and so sometimes it's difficult against a macroeconomic depressed background. So that's a challenge everybody in the industry is facing. We've seen a massive obviously sudden interest over the last year in particular in ai. I think everyone has been talking this week about AI and it get into a little bit later in sort of some detail, but that's one massive change from last year. Interestingly, I'm not seeing as much this year in the conversation around things like sustainability and the ESG agenda, not because it's gone away just because I think we're in danger maybe of some of the AI hype overtaking the conversation and the sound bites.

(11:42):
So I think that's a thing we need to keep an eye on, but fundamentally it's still a very positive industry on the forward looking nature that communications and critical infrastructure requires and brings to the world. We've all seen from the covid years now as we've come out of this that the need for constant ongoing improvement in communication and availability is more important than ever and will continue to be even more so as we go forward. So I think directionally still going in the same way bit of an economic challenge, but some new exciting things happening in the area, sort of AI

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (12:15):
Francis, and I should remind the audience that your principal analyst at Appledore Research, Francis, going back to the point that Cormack was making on those shifting conversations that the telco sectors having, it is true that there's possibly less emphasis on sustainability and skills. We talked about skills and upskilling the workforce as well last year. That's because there's been the switch to ai. I guess it's hard to escape conversations across any industry from AI since obviously Gen AI appeared and that's really been a massive step change for the industry. And I know you enjoyed that session, didn't you, Francis, the AI session. Could you share some of the key takeaways for us?

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (12:55):
Yeah, for me, the AI session, I concur with the point which is I think we're getting a little bit more realistic about a lot of the things that we've been discussing over the last few years. And I think some of that is actually driven by this kind AI bombshell that we've had over the last year through decades explosion,

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (13:16):
Absolutely

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (13:16):
Explosion would be a better word. And I think what it is doing is it is making Telco actually focus on two things. One of which is being rather than taking Gen AI as a kind of general thing is what do I want it to do? I think I mentioned in the earlier session, Jeff made a really key point on just about everything we discuss here, which is ask yourself the question, why are you doing that one? So I think there's the opportunity for AI to drive why conversations within the existing business of that one. I think the other thing that was coming out in the session, which is this opportunity of how do we support that AI explosion within our networks, it requires networks. Andrew Coward in the last session made one very key thing. A lot of these AI use cases are going to require edge capability, otherwise just the time latency does time latency work. And I think that's the key thing to focus on is not that we are trying to be AI companies or LLM providers, but rather that what is AI going to require of the network and the capacity of the network to deliver that. One great conversations. I think beginning here, it's a very early stage,

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (14:46):
Of course it's sunny Jones

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (14:47):
In terms of what we're doing, but I think there's both the opportunity, how do we apply AI into our business? How do we leverage what AI requires of the network

Cormac Whelan, Dell Technologies (14:57):
To

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (14:57):
Grow our business?

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (15:00):
Cormac, the industry is currently facing many challenges with the need to automate, need to integrate ai. Of course, like I've said, the need to upskill its workforce, we've got opportunities as well. Of course we talked about APIs, clarification, et cetera. So I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about the role Dell technologies is playing currently to help the sector transform and grab those opportunities or face those challenges.

Cormac Whelan, Dell Technologies (15:26):
Yeah, of course. So we've actually created about four years ago a dedicated telecom business unit within Dell Technologies specifically to address what we saw happening in the areas of edge computing, edge networking, AI, and open ramp. Because fundamentally, all of those are going to run or require increased compute power. They're going to require much more open platforms than maybe some of the traditional network, particularly radio stacks we've seen in the past. And this is all understood and well known. The question is how does that transition get made to a more open X 86 generic compute platform going forward? Not that I think anything in the telco world is ever generic because by the very nature of the business it is rather specific and then by very nature of each telco, they're rather unique in some way, shape or form. So what Dell has done is created a telecom business unit to address that transition from telcos from the traditional proprietary stacks into an open X 86 compute environments, which is going to come in at the hardware level and then work its way up through a CAS layer level and up into an application level going forward, as I think more and more of the traditional vendors move maybe out of unique hardware into software defined networks into software applications and RAM becoming a software capability on a network that requires the growth of more standard technology.

(16:51):
And we are one of the largest standard X 86 based technology companies. So it seemed like a natural intersection point for us to play in that space. And thankfully it's all sort of moving in that same intersection trajectory at the moment. So that's why we're here.

Charlotte Kan, TelecomTV (17:04):
Okay. Well thank you so much for your thoughts today. We need to wrap up because the next session is about two commences. It's around improving network optimization through automation, so it's very topical indeed. Many thanks to both of you for your insights and for your feedback. And stay tuned for more extra shots where we'll discuss, dissect the conversations happening on the main stage here. So stay with us. We are back in one hour. Once again, Cormack Francis. Thank you. Thank you.