I'm buying.

I turned a few telco heads recently when I said I would bid on some Ericsson cloud software and services assets the company is looking to exit. Why did I do it? Because?somebody?has to refactor telco software for the public cloud. The big vendors aren’t doing it, so my team will—through the $1B Telco Transformation Fund. We expect 2023 to be highly acquisitive, and we’re PUMPED.?Learn more about our acquisition criteria in my latest blog.

Catch the public cloud train with TELUS

I talk with TELUS CIO Hesham Fahmy about how TELUS got the industry buzzing about its cloud journey and strategies for refactoring apps.

Listen NOW on?Apple Podcasts,?Spotify, the?TelcoDR website.

I’ve booked my ticket and I’m heading to Barcelona for this year’s Mobile World Congress. The?best way to find me at the FIRA is to attend the GSMA’s conference-within-a-conference,?MVNO Summit. Totogi, where I’m acting CEO, is the gold sponsor. Whether you’re building a digital brand or you’re building a straight up MVNO, plan to attend for great sessions (including a talk by yours truly), awesome networking opps, and a supercharged fiesta you won’t want to miss!

Did you see the news??I recently made?a few?headlines?when I said I’d be interested in buying?the cloud assets Ericsson is deprioritizing?as part of a recent strategic review (PS: I’m serious). See my blog above for more about what I’d do with it and get the scoop on what other kinds of assets I’m looking to buy.

It’s January, so it’s time for predictions about what’s coming to telco in 2023. Every start of the year there’s a flurry of them. This year, I passed on joining the party because all I would predict for telco was “MORE PUBLIC CLOUD!,” and it would come across like I was a deranged Christopher Walken screaming, “more cowbell!” But one set of predictions that really resonated with me?came from my buddy, Ferry Grijpink, partner at McKinsey & Company. I especially like his first and last ones—about B2C pricing moving away from unlimiteds and to a new paradigm (I think AI-predictive models to personalize plans), and about edge networks finally hitting the mainstream, which cites the recent?DISH?and T-Mobile network API announcements.

Telcos are hamstrung by bureaucracy and poor customer service (paywalled), says Olaf Swantee, former chief of EE and current (?) candidate for the Vodafone CEO role. Yet customers have higher expectations for service than they used to, according to Fit Small Business. Telcos are falling more and more behind the longer they neglect this area.?Here are 11 contact center stats?that provide a benchmark to help you improve. The standouts for me: 77% of customers are willing to provide personal data in exchange for a superior buyer experience (so much for privacy!), and 71% expect you to know why they’re calling. Better start mining that data.

Most telcos can’t use the data they generate and store because it’s lying all over the place within their organization, siloed, locked down, and scattered. When people ask me about telcos’ efforts to use their data for valuable business insights, my favorite example is Vodafone and its partnership with Google Cloud.?Catch up on the latest installment in this blog post. It details why and how Vodafone Hungary migrated its data platform. Pass it on to your technical teams—it’s a great read about how to architect the movement of your data to the public cloud.?

From the core … Tech Mahindra and Microsoft announced a?strategic collaboration?to enable cloud-powered, 5G core network modernization for telecom operators, which will allow them to develop 5G core use cases to meet customers’ growing tech, IoT, and edge computing requirements. By harnessing the power of Microsoft Azure, telecom operators can provide more flexibility and scalability, save infrastructure cost, use AI to automate operations, and differentiate their customer offerings. Hmm, sound familiar? ??

To the edge … Telecom Italia and Google Cloud just?launched the first 5G edge cloud platform, and will use it to test self-driving cars, among other smart mobility applications. It’s an exciting development from a telco with an eye on digital transformation and Google Cloud’s Milan region (which went live only last summer).

Will 2023 be the year of public cloud repatriation? I think we are going to talk about this topic a?bunch this year. Hopefully not for telcos, which have?tons to gain from refactoring applications for the public cloud?to take advantage of all the software, services, and scalability the public cloud offers. If you plan to repatriate eventually, don’t even bother with the public cloud to begin with. Why build a house if you’ve already decided not to live in it? I say, burn the boats and move to the public cloud!

Meanwhile, Mr. Cloud Repatratriation himself,?@DHH, is having a?struggle-fest back in on-prem land, trying to get as-good enterprise software, priced in his budget, and deployed. He could be focused on building his email service and developing customer relationships, but instead he’s having to deal with building his private cloud stack instead. Is he #winning? Methinks not.

If it’s the cost you fear, don’t.?AWS is happy to help with cost optimizations?for telco BSS workloads—as are Azure and Google Cloud. (And as is?Totogi, where I’m acting CEO!) And there are so many?cloud computing use cases for the telco industry—and consultants and tools—to check out. Don’t know where to start? Give me a call. We can help you save up to 50% on your public cloud spend!

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