This is a cross-promoted blog post, originally posted on the VMware blog. View the original blog post here.
Egon Steinkasserer has been head of innovation at Swisscom since the start of 2014. During that time, the leading telecoms and IT provider solidified its position as the dominant player in Switzerland, while expanding its services to international enterprises with a presence in Switzerland. Innovation has been a key tenet of that success.
“Swisscom has always been a pioneer. Innovation is at the very core of our business, it’s part of our DNA,” Steinkasserer said. “This culture is critical to our ability to stay ahead of the competition, to lead the market and to ignite technology driven innovations that are changing people’s lives and how businesses operate.”
A pioneering approach
There are many real-world examples that illustrate Swisscom’s pioneering approach. Swisscom is intensively driving forward the development of 5G to give its customers faster and more effective access to information and data wherever they need to be. It is developing artificial intelligence applications, enabling systems to feel, understand, learn, and act with ever-increasing efficiency. And it has invested in a dedicated Internet of Things network to help realize the vast possibilities offered by a genuinely interconnected world.
“The network used to lie at the centre of Swisscom’s innovation, but nowadays it’s the network and the cloud,” explained Steinkasserer. “Our cloud platform has transformed the way we launch new products and services, thanks to the agility it has given us. While in the past we were able to deliver releases and new capabilities on only a quarterly basis, now we can do so in weeks, and soon it will be days.”
Discover more about Swisscom’s culture of innovation in the video below, then read on to learn more about the integral role of the cloud.
Disrupting business models
But Swisscom’s cloud platform drives innovation far beyond the boundaries of the telco provider—it impacts its customers too. Swisscom’s Enterprise Service Cloud, powered by VMware and Dell EMC, provides customers with a stable, secure cloud platform. It allows them to spend less time on the management of their IT infrastructure and instead support their organisations to develop new services for customers and disrupt with new business models.
“It’s an incredible time for innovation, both for disruptions and for new opportunities that can help us to create a better future,” Steinkasserer continued. “Swisscom wants to remain the trusted partner of our customers. We want to be the companion in their connected world, and VMware is helping us to deliver on this promise.”
