The death of Amdocs

Fintech giant Klarna just dropped a bombshell: it's ditching Salesforce and Workday in favor of AI-powered, homegrown solutions. This isn't just another tech swap—it's a seismic shift that could reshape the $500B+ enterprise software market.What if industry titans like AT&T could replace their $1.1B Amdocs ($DOX) contract with superior, AI-generated software? No vendor is safe, and the implications are staggering. Don't miss this analysis of a trend that could redefine telco IT strategies for years to come. Read my blog now.

Ep 99 – Will TM Forum’s idea of interoperability really work?

Industry consultant Caroline Chappell and I dive into the promise and challenges surrounding TM Forum's Open Digital Architecture (ODA) and Open APIs. We shine a light on telcos’ massive data harmonization problem, what needs to happen to make vendor interoperability in telco BSS systems work, and why incumbent vendors are dragging their feet (SHOCKER!).

LISTEN NOW: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, TelcoDR website

Episode 100! Coming October 1

HOLY SCHNIKES, the 100th episode of Telco in 20 drops next week! Did you know that less than 7% of podcasts reach this milestone? Over the past four years I've had a ton of inspiring conversations with telco?thought leaders about the move to the public cloud, the impact of AI in our industry,?Totogi’s game-changing telco solutions, and more. Be sure to tune in to our special 100th episode, dropping on October 1!???

LIKE & FOLLOW:Apple Podcasts,?Spotify,?YouTube

?Next week, I’ll be at the NOVACOM Africa Digital Transformation Strategy Summit, which runs from October 1-3 in Cape Town, South Africa. If you’ll be there and want to find out how Totogi can help you supercharge your telco, let’s meet! Shoot me a DM on Linkedin or X @TelcoDR and let’s make a plan.

I’m also taking part in Telecom TV’s AI-Native Telco Summit, an online event running October 15-16. Catch me on “The benefits of becoming AI native” panel with Vodafone’s Komal Aggarwal and Appledore’s Patrick Kelly on Tuesday, October 15, at 10 am CDT. We’ll dig into how telcos can fully embrace AI to reshape their entire organization.

Microsoft is on track to spend well over $200B in data center CapEx over the next four years. The hyperscaler just announced?a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy for 835 megawatts of electricity. In May, Microsoft announced?a deal with Brookfield to deliver over 10.5 gigawatts of new renewable power capacity. How much might it all cost? Microsoft is spending $15.8B for the Constellation deal and $199.5B for the Brookfield data center. About $19/watt, based on the rough math from?Brian F. Jones of RBC Capital Markets. I guess when Satya goes big, he goes BIG. Add to that its undisclosed contribution to the?$100B?Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership, and we’re talking sky-high numbers.

T-Mobile US is partnering with OpenAI to build IntentCX, an AI-driven platform designed to enhance customer experiences by proactively addressing issues in real-time. As part of the deal, the operator will provide OpenAI with data from millions of its customers and get access to OpenAI’s development team to assist with the implementation. T-Mobile is already testing IntentCX?and plans to begin integrating it with internal systems sometime in 2025. Want to bring AI that works into your organization ASAP? Totogi’s?BSS Magic is ready to roll, no marquee partnership required. If you're looking to add AI as a co-worker (not just a co-pilot!), shoot me a DM!

12 telcos and Ericsson are forming a new company that will cooperate on developing and selling network APIs. The idea is to offer the APIs to platforms like Vonage and Google Cloud to give developers easy access while helping telcos speed innovation to support new use cases in things like fraud prevention on dynamic video streaming.?Iain Morris’ article in Light Reading reminds us of Ericsson’s earlier attempt at network APIs with the Vonage acquisition (newsflash: didn’t go well), and wonders if this move will go better. My take: telcos are giving away their strategic advantage to other players because no one wants to do the hard work of building a developer network—and it’s a BIG missed opportunity. All the fancy APIs and joint ventures?in the world won’t fix this fundamental problem. You need DEVELOPERS, AKA users (and a lot of them) to make money with APIs.

68,000 Vodafone employees are about to get access to Microsoft 365 Copilot, where an earlier trial rollout reportedly saved participants an average of three hours per week.?The telco says it anticipates that workers in customer service, product development, and network management will benefit the most. They’ll be using the latest version of Copilot, which just launched last week and costs $30/seat, per month. At roughly $25M?per year, I’d be pushing for more productivity improvements than three?hours per person per week…

OpenAI released o1, its first model with “reasoning” abilities—AKA Strawberry. The first in a new series of models, it's designed to handle more complex tasks, like coding and solving multi-step problems. By explaining its reasoning, it?should help users gauge accuracy. OpenAI apparently sees o1 as a step toward building more autonomous systems that can make decisions and act on their own. ??

Anthropic, meanwhile, has?a new Claude Enterprise plan that introduces advanced features to help organizations securely collaborate using internal knowledge. It has an expanded “500K context window,” which allows it to consider more text at once. It also has native GitHub integration for your dev teams, higher-grade security, role-based permissions, and more to help large teams do more and better work. Sign me up!?(And shhh! Be on the lookout for an Anthropic guest on the Telco in 20 podcast coming to you on October 15th!)

Apple rolled out its new iPhone 16 Pro phones last week—the devices that support the AI features of Apple Intelligence. The earliest adopters are playing with the improved Siri, writing support, and emoji-generation capabilities as we speak. I have my????on this story because I know it’s going to change how we interact with our devices (remember:?the promise of AI is no UI). As LLMs continue to become more powerful and smaller, we’re going to see a lot of changes in the way humans interact with electronic devices. Exciting times, people!

AWS continues its ambitious data center expansion! The hyperscaler just announced?plans to invest in the UK and Brazil. The UK will get $10.5B USD; Brazil will get $1.8B USD. More capacity in more places is great news for telcos looking to shift to the public cloud and power their AI apps! ?

The?GSMA is getting in on the AI action with its Responsible AI Maturity Roadmap. Developed in collaboration with McKinsey & Company, the goal of the map is to help telcos assess and improve their responsible use of the technology. The roadmap includes tools to gauge AI maturity and offers industry best practices aligned with global standards and regs. Nineteen operators have committed to using it already. And the timing couldn’t be better—the European Commission just signed the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence on behalf of the EU. Reliance Jio experienced an India-wide outage on September 17 due to a fire at one of its data centers. Talk about another great reason to have disaster recovery in the public cloud. And it’s easy, too, with?seven hyperscaler data centers available in India (two AWS, three Azure, and two Google Cloud). Maybe Jio should consider improving its “Reliance” (pun intended) with a failover to Totogi in the public cloud????

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