Listen
to the podcast. Find
it on iTunes.
Get the mobile app. Read a full transcript or download
a copy.
We’ll
now learn how this mobile business support infrastructure possesses a low-maintenance
common core -- yet remains easily customizable for regional deployments just
about anywhere.
Here
to help us define the unique challenges of enabling mobile telecommunications
operators in countries such as Bangladesh and Uzbekistan, we are joined by Mario Agati, Program
Director at Ericsson, based in Amsterdam, and Chris
James-Killer, Sales Director for HPE. The interview is conducted by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
Here are some excerpts:
Gardner:
What
are the unique challenges that mobile telecommunications operators face when
they go to countries like Bangladesh?
 |
| Agati |
Agati: First
of all, these are countries with a very low level of revenue per user (RPU).
That means for them cost efficiency is a must. All of the solutions that are
going to be implemented in those countries should be, as much as possible,
focused on cost efficiency, reusability, and industrialization. That’s one of
the main reasons for this program. We are addressing those types of needs -- of
high-level industrialization and reusability across countries where cost-efficiency
is king.
Gardner: In such
markets, the technology needs to be as integrated as possible because some skill
sets can be hard to come by. What are some of the stack requirements from the
infrastructure side to make it less complex?
James-Killer: These
can be very challenging countries, and it’s key to do the pre-work as
systematically as you can. So, we work very closely with the architects at Ericsson
to ensure that we have something that’s repeatable, that’s standardized and delivers
a platform that can be rolled out readily in these locations.
Even
countries such as Algeria are very difficult to get goods into, and so we have
to work with customs, we have to work with goods transfer people; we have to
work on local currency issues. It’s a big deal.
Gardner: In a partnership like this between such major organizations as Ericsson and HPE, how
do you fit together? Who does what in this partnership?
Agati: At Ericsson,
we are the prime integrator responsible for running the overall digital
transformation. This is for a global operator that is presently in multiple
countries. It shows the complexity of such deals.
We are responsible for delivering
a new, fully digital business support system (BSS). This
is core for all of the telco services. It includes all of the business
management solutions -- from the customer-facing front end, to billing, to charging,
and the services provisioning.
In
order to cope with this level of complexity, we at Ericsson rely on a number of
partners that are helping us where we don’t have our own solutions. And, in
this case, HPE is our selected partner for all of the infrastructure components.
That’s how the partnership was born.
Gardner: From
the HPE side, what are the challenges in bringing a data center environment to
far-flung parts of the world? Is this something that you can do on a regional
basis, with a single data center architecture, or do you have to be discrete to
each market?
Your country, your data center
James-Killer: It is
more bespoke than we would like. It’s not as easy as just sending one standard
shipping container to each country. Each country has its own dynamic, its own specific
users.
 |
| James-Killer |
The
other item worth mentioning is that each country needs its own data center environment.
We can’t share them across countries, even if the countries are right next to each
other, because there are laws that dictate this separation in the
telecommunications world.
So
there are unique attributes for each country. We work with Ericsson very
closely to make sure that we remove as many itemized things as we can. Obviously,
we have the technology platform standardized. And then we work out what’s additionally
required in each country. Some countries require more of something and some
countries require less. We make sure it’s all done ahead of time. Then it comes
down to efficient and timely shipping, and working with local partners for
installation.
Gardner: What
is the actual architecture in terms of products? Is this heavily hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)-oriented, and software-defined? What are the key ingredients
that allow you to meet your requirements?
James-Killer: The
next iterations of this will become a lot more advanced. It will leverage a composable infrastructure approach to standardize resources and ensure they are available to
support required workloads. This will reduce overall cost, reduce complexity,
and make the infrastructure more adaptable to the end customers’ business needs
and how they change over time. Our HPE Synergy
solution is a critical component of this infrastructure foundation.
At
the moment we have to rely on what’s been standardized as a platform for supporting
this BSS portfolio.
We
have worked with Ericsson for a long time on this. This platform has been
established for years and years. So it is not necessarily on the latest
technology; the latest is being tested right now. For example, the Ericsson
Karlskrona BSS team in Sweden is currently testing HPE Synergy. But, as we
speak, the current platform is HPE
Gen9 so it’s ProLiant
Servers. HPE Aruba
is involved; a lot of heavy-duty storage is involved as well.
This
platform has been established for years and years. So it is not
necessarily on the latest technology ... but it's a good, standardized,
virtualized environment to run this all in a failsafe way.
But
it’s a good, standardized, virtualized environment to run this all in a
failsafe way. That’s really the most critical thing. Instead of being the most
advanced, we just know that it will work. And Ericsson needs to know that it
will work because this platform is critical to the end-users and how they operate
within each country.
Gardner: These
so-called IT frontiers countries -- in such areas as Southeast Asia, Oceania,
the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Indian subcontinent -- have a high
stake in the success of mobile telecommunications. They want their economies to
grow. Having a strong mobile communications and data communications
infrastructure is essential to that. How do we ensure the agility and speed?
How are you working together to make this happen fast?
Architect globally, customize locally
Agati: This
comes back to the industrialization aspect. By being able to define a group-wide
solution that is replicable in each of these countries, you are automatically
providing a de facto solution in countries where it would be very difficult to
develop locally. They obtain a complex, state-of-the-art core telco BSS solution.
Thanks to this group initiative, we are able to define a strong set of
capabilities and functions, an architecture that is common to all of the
countries.
That
becomes a big accelerator because the solution comes pre-integrated,
pre-defined, and is just ready to be customized for whatever remains to be done
locally. There are always aspects of the regulations that need to be taken care
of locally. But you can start from a predefined asset that is already covering
some 80 percent of your needs.
In
a relatively short time, in those countries, they obtain a state-of-the-art,
brand-new, digital BSS solution that otherwise would have required a local and heavy
transformation program -- with all of the complexity and disadvantages of that.
Gardner: And
there’s a strong economic incentive to keep the total cost of IT for these BSS deployments
at a low percentage of the carriers’ revenue.
Shared risk, shared reward
Agati: Yes. The
whole idea of the digital transformation is to address different types of needs
from the operator’s perspective. Cost efficiency is probably the biggest driver
because it’s the one where the shareholders immediately recognize the value.
There are other rationales for digital transformation, such as relating to the
flexibility in the offering of new services and of embracing new business
models related to improved customer experiences.
On
the topic of cost efficiency, we have created with a global operator an innovative revenue-share deal. From our side, we commit to providing them a
solution that enables them a certain level of operational cost reduction.
The
current industry average cost of IT is 5 to 6 percent of total mobile carrier revenue.
Now, thanks to the efficiency that we are creating from the industrialization
and re-use across the entire operator’s group, we are committed to bringing the
operational cost down to the level of around 2 percent. In exchange, we will
receive a certain percentage of the operator’s revenue back.
That
is for us, of course, a bold move. I need to say this clearly, because we are
betting on our capability of not only providing a simple solution, but on also providing
actual shareholder value, because that's the game we are actually playing in now.
We
are risking our own money on it at the end of the game. So that's what makes
the big difference in this deal against any other deal that I have seen in my
career -- and in any other deal that I have seen in this industry. There is
probably no one that is really taking on such a huge challenge.
It's a real quality of life issue ... These people need to be connected and haven't been connected before.
Gardner: It's
very interesting that we are seeing shared risks, but then also shared rewards.
It's a whole different way of being in an ecosystem, being in a partnership,
and investing in big-stakes infrastructure projects.
Agati: Yes.
Gardner: There
has been recent activity for your solutions in Bangladesh. Can you describe
what's been happening there, and why that is illustrative of the value from
this approach?
Bangladesh blueprint
Agati: Bangladesh
is one of the countries in the pipeline, but it is not yet one of the most
active. We are still working on the first implementation of this new stack.
That will be the one that will set the parameters and become the template for
all the others to come.
The
logic of the transformation program is to identify a good market where we can
challenge ourselves and deliver the first complete solution, and then reuse
that solution for all of the others. This is what is happening now; we’re in
the advanced stages of this pilot project.
Gardner: Yes,
thank you. I was more referring to Bangladesh as an example of how unique and
different each market can be. In this case, people often don't have personal
identification; therefore, one needs to use a fingerprint biometric approach in
the street to sell a SIM to get
them up and running, for example. Any insight on that, Chris?
James-Killer: It
speaks to the importance of the work that Ericsson is doing in these countries.
We have seen in Africa and in parts of the Middle East how important telecommunications
is to an individual. It's a real quality of life issue. We take it for granted
in Sweden; we certainly take advantage of it in my home country of Australia. But
in some of these countries you are actually making a genuine difference.
These
people need to be connected and haven’t been connected before. And you can see
what has happened politically when the people have been exposed to this kind of
technology. So it's admirable, I believe, what Ericsson is doing, particularly
commercially, and the way that they are doing it.
It
also speaks to Ericsson's success and the continued excitement around LTE and 4G in these markets; not actually 5G yet. When you visit Ericsson's
website or go to Ericsson’s shows, there's a lot of talk about autonomous
vehicles and working with Volvo and
working with Scania, and the
potential of 5G for smart cities initiatives. But some of the best work that
Ericsson does is in building out the 4G networks in some of these frontier countries.
Agati: If I can
add one thing. You mentioned how specific requirements are coming from such countries
as Bangladesh, where we have the specific issue related to identity management.
This is one of the big challenges we are now facing, of gaining the proper balance
between coping with different local needs, such as different regulations, different
habits, different cultures -- but at the same time also industrializing the
means, making them repeatable and making that as simple as possible and as
consistent as possible across all of these countries.
There
is a continuous battle between the attempts to simplify and the reality check
on what does not always allow simplification and industrialization. That is the
daily battle that we are waging: What do you need and what don’t you need.
Asking, “What is the business value behind a specific capability? What is the
reasoning behind why you really need this instead of that?”
At
the end of the game, this is the bet that we are making together with our
customers -- that there is a path to where you can actually find the right way
to simplification. Ericsson has recently been launching our new brand and it is
about this quest for making it easier. That's exactly our challenge. We want to
be the champion of simplicity and this project is the cornerstone of going in
that direction.
We at Ericsson want to be the champion of simplicity and this project is the cornerstone of going in that direction.
Gardner: And
only a global integrator with many years of experience in many markets can
attain that proper combination of simplicity and customization.
Agati: Yes.
Listen
to the podcast. Find
it on iTunes.
Get the mobile app. Read a full transcript or download
a copy. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard
Enterprise.
You may also be interested in:
- How VMware, HPE, and Telefonica together bring managed cloud services to a global audience
- IoT capabilities open new doors for Miami telecoms platform provider Identidad IoT
- How Nokia refactors the video delivery business with new time-managed IT financing models
- Retail gets a makeover thanks to data-driven insights, edge computing, and revamped user experiences
- As enterprises face mounting hybrid IT complexity, new management solutions beckon
- How a large Missouri medical center developed an agile healthcare infrastructure security strategy
- Get ready for the Post-Cloud World
- Philips teams with HPE on ecosystem approach to improve healthcare informatics-driven outcome
- Inside story: How Ormuco abstracts the concepts of private and public cloud across the globe
- Inside story on developing the ultimate SDN-enabled hybrid cloud object storage environment
