Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:06):
So we're in Dublin at the Fyuz 24 event. I'm here with Fran Heeran. He is the new VP and head of the Global Telco business at Red Hat. Fran, great to see you again. Thanks so much for joining us.

Fran Heeran, Red Hat (00:17):
It's been a while.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:18):
It has. See you again. So you've just recently joined Red Hat. What drew you to that role as the next part of your career?

Fran Heeran, Red Hat (00:28):
Interesting question. It's my second week. Probably two questions. Why Telco and why Red Hat? Because it's interesting. When I was making a move, people did, a lot of people said to me, why not take the chance to exit Telco? It's been a challenging industry for the last few years, but I share a completely opposite view, which is the industry itself I think has been through a challenge. We are the looking at, I think a really exciting period ahead of us in terms of how networks are built, how they're designed, the cloud. You and I have talked before about Cloud Native. It's finally here in all parts of the network. That's something obviously I was working on in my past life as well. So from the radio, the IT applications, O-S-S-B-S-S, we're finally all cloud native, but the manner in which applications are being deployed is going to go through I think a fundamental change.

(01:18):
We're preparing for 5G Advanced and then obviously in the future six G as well. So a lot of really exciting things ahead, ai, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point in this. So that really cemented in my mind. It's a great time to be in Telco. I think it is on an upswing again. And then why Red Hat? And obviously I'd worked very closely with the Red Hat team in my previous role. They're a great team. It's a fantastic portfolio. So the combination I think of where the industry is going and Red Hat as a company that people, that portfolio made it a very easy decision. So delighted to be here. And yeah, it's week two and we're drinking from the proverbial fire hose, but so far so good.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (01:59):
Okay, excellent. I mean, as you mentioned, there is so much going on in this sector. 5G people are now starting to talk more about six G. Finally, as you mentioned, we're in the era of cloud native networks and of course there's AI as well. But where are you seeing the most momentum? What's the greatest area of excitement in the telecom sector at the moment?

Fran Heeran, Red Hat (02:22):
Well, probably momentum and excitement, possibly two different areas. So excitement is ai. I do think on ai, we're finally exiting the hype phase, getting into some real applications Momentum wise, I think on the infrastructure side there is a fundamental shift happening. The hyperscalers are now in play. It's really become a case of application workload placement. We are in an area, a set of cloud native. So that transition from virtualization to cloud native is well underway. It took longer than we thought it would. I think you and I have spoken this way back six years ago when we were rooted in virtualization thinking, right? Cloud native will be here in two years. It is finally here. Pretty much everything being deployed, as I said, from the radios to it, to OSS and now to core is being done in the cloud native manner. But I think the difference in what's changing is how the cloud estate looks and the emergence of hybrid cloud as well.

(03:25):
So it is really becoming, and it's differing on a per application basis, a workload placement combined with commercial considerations challenge. So you've got placing workloads on a traditional centralized infrastructure, whether it's core or it. The edge is now playing an even more important role. And then you have public cloud, I think on edge as well. That's where we'll see a lot of momentum. It's talked about a lot edge, far edge. We've got O Ran emerging, which obviously will drive a lot of that too. But also what we're seeing in 5G advanced, which is going to be, it's been ratified. It'll be here probably in 18 months time, probably two years. It's going to become more about a network for machines as well as people. I think we've done a great job with 5G onboarding people, not so good a job. Onboarding machines, 5G Advanced gives us much, much cheaper options in enabling devices on the network.

(04:23):
So with REDCap, you're going to reduce the prices by up to 90%. The focus on that and commercializing five GI think will be all about machines that in turn will drive a different way to design and build the networks, much more distributed disaggregated. And we're also seeing on a per application basis, whether it's voice being a very centralized application and core packet core being much more distributed, the underlying infrastructure needs to be far more flexible, far more adaptable. It'll be far more distributed. And then you have the automation needed on top. And I think Red Hat from its OS into OpenShift has an excellent portfolio designed to address that.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:00):
Okay. Let's dive a little bit deeper into AI in telecom networks. What kind of use cases do you see emerging? Obviously there's been a lot of chat and development already in applications like chatbots and also for a long time AI has been used in terms of predictive maintenance and networks. But are there other use cases that you see emerging that you think are going to really take off in the next year or so?

Fran Heeran, Red Hat (05:32):
There is. I do think, and thankfully it's happened quite quickly, there was the hype around AI was enormous and it was applying to everything. I think in telecoms, perhaps unusually, we've been actually quite quick at narrowing it down to what's actually going to be a practical use. And it's not just chatbots. I mean that's obviously the obvious use case on that kind of customer touchpoint side of things, but actually we're seeing practical and the emergence of both large and small language models in combination. I think it's really important, but everything on the lifecycle and how you design, build, operate your network, we're seeing AI being applied to it in a practical way. So network design is actually a very labor intensive, very expensive part of the process. The cloud design, the resource placement, the workload placement, we're seeing some really, really promising results coming from using AI to do that and reduce the time and the cost it takes.

(06:25):
So how we design the network, how we build it. And then once you're into an operational phase, and we've got to be careful not to confuse machine learning or analytics with ai. And I think people are still using that word interchangeably, but we are seeing some very real examples of using AI on the operational side of things. And interestingly separate to ai, one of the big hype areas in telecoms is APIs. It's back after a bit of a break, but they're actually really important in this conversation because it's one thing to use AI to make decisions. Acting on those decisions means you have to have open networks, you have to have APIs at every layer from the radio through into the core and the it. So the combination of increased openness and the use of ai, not just in building the network but in analyzing what's happening and then applying the results and decisions into actions.

(07:17):
We're seeing actual applications of that now in the industry. And then of course on the consumer side, you mentioned chatbots, but I think much more intelligent, not just chatbots, but being able to interact with the local knowledge, which is where I think small language models become really important. And that's where at Red Hat we've enabled both our underlying OS and RRE AI and OpenShift AI as well to give the tools to build those models or those small language models as well. Combine it with large language models so you have a much more intelligent conversation, but also one that can result in actions at the end. And again, back to the open API story, so you can see it all coming together. That's where it's a really interesting time to be in telecoms. And I think we're being more pragmatic, quicker on these hype cycles than we had been before, which is great.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:03):
That's an interesting perspective, but I think we are seeing more pieces of this puzzle now coming together and fitting in place. And of course that enables so much more of the other elements to be put together as well.

Fran Heeran, Red Hat (08:17):
Yeah, they're not silos anymore. They're starting to be a purpose beyond just doing it for the sake of it. Open APIs is, you and I have been around long enough as my favorite one. We did it before in oh nine. It had its challenges. It was too consumer focused. I think the API is really about internal, but also enterprise, enterprise use cases. So the reality is now kicking in and then it's enabling the upper layers. And of course AI emerging is key to that. And with these much more distributed clouds and infrastructure, being able to automate the management of that moving workloads between locations, workload placement, really important. So it's all coming together finally and really excited.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:58):
Excellent. Now, I mean, open source has been considered really important for telecom for a very long time, even as long as 20 years ago, telcos were definitely making use of open source tools to improve the speed of innovation, to get cost efficiencies and so on and so forth. Where do you see the biggest opportunities for open source and telecom right now?

Fran Heeran, Red Hat (09:28):
There's a few. I mean obviously Red Hat, we're rooted in open source. Everything we do goes to the upstream community. We're founded on that principle. I do think in telecoms, we need to be careful not to confuse openness with open source. I do see them used interchangeably, which is a mistake. So you can have openness in RAN or APIs, it doesn't mean open source. It's two are quite different, but quite complimentary in open source. Security is one key area. I think that community-based approach, some of the key areas and security becoming more and more critical, especially in a more distributed network, open source is contributing a huge amount in terms of giving the visibility to finding and fixing the problems. There are debates sometimes whether opening up the code is a good or a bad thing for security. I think it's fundamentally a good thing.

(10:15):
So your foundational layers in terms of allowing community-based contribution into things like security, it does contribute towards the open API initiative as well, because it's a foundation for that too. And also I think in terms of the contribution and the iteration, so we've been around and we've seen a lot of open source projects in telecoms. I've been personally involved in a few of them. Some have worked very, very well. Some not so well. I won't mention which ones. But the ones that have worked well have all done one thing that the ones that didn't work, didn't do, which is they focused on quality and on small, but rapid iterations versus quantity, large features, monolithic designs and so on. So that ability to implement quick, start off with your minimum viable implementation, iterate fast with the community, have the transparency, focus on things like quality on security as well.

(11:16):
And it's really important for any open source project and anything in telecoms to follow that approach and not fall into the trap, which a lot of projects do, which becomes this giant committee-based, monolithic, put everything in the kitchen, sink into it. Invariably they always fail. So I'm always watching for that. In terms of Red Hat, we obviously take the former approach, but it is foundational to everything that we're doing. And I think in those areas of anything requiring that openness, that transparency and that community-based approach is going to be critical on the infrastructure side, on the automation side, the cloud management, obviously it's fundamental to what we're doing at Red Hat.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (11:52):
Well, I mean for anybody asking you why you stayed in Telco, I think you've pretty much answered a hell of a lot of reasons there. So many exciting developments happening right now that this is as good a place to be as any and probably faster moving. You mentioned that things are moving faster, and I think that's clear even without the influence of ai.

Fran Heeran, Red Hat (12:19):
Absolutely. There is a realization that we have to move quicker. I mean, as an industry, we're not known for speed necessarily. But that I think is changing

(12:27):
The adoption of AI is a really good example of where that is changing. And I think it's people taking a much more pragmatic, regionalized approach to things, trying things, not being afraid to fail. That's definitely more prevalent now in the industry than it's been before. So yeah, I think we are going through a fundamental change, and not just at the infrastructure layer, but how we build the networks, but how we run them, how we interact with the consumers. 5G advanced. I do think we're asked, when I meet carrier customers, there's two very simple categories of questions, either make me money or save me money. Everything falls into those two categories. Invariably the save me money piece gets too much attention. And I think we're going to see a shift in that with 5G advanced. I know it sounds like another cycle coming, another hype cycle, but I genuinely think it's now going to enable this kind of human machine approach on networks. The commercialization piece will come from the enterprise that will in turn drive the open API initiatives. So it's all coming together and I think it's moving faster than it's done before. So really exciting times ahead. And you and I will meet again soon I'm sure, and we can compare notes and see how true and accurate that was.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (13:39):
Well, but that's a very positive note to end our conversation there, Fran. So thanks very much for joining us today. And yeah, like you say, I'm sure we'll speak again soon.

Fran Heeran, Red Hat (13:48):
Absolutely. Thanks Ray. Good to see you.