If there’s one big theme in communication service providers (CSP) strategy sessions these days, it’s “transformation.” Yet even as CSP networks enable every other industry to adopt disruptive new cloud and AI innovations, CSPs seem stuck grappling with the same longstanding issues: Sky-high costs to operate sprawling, complex networks. Flat revenues. Slow time to market. Inability to differentiate, leading to high customer churn.
Clearly, our industry needs to internalize more of the transformative software and cloud innovations that we enable for other businesses. But how can CSPs best advance on that journey, and what should the end state look like? McKinsey, PWC, KPMG, and other analysts have some advice, which we can sum up in four words: “From telco to TechCo.”
Each analyst (and each CSP) brings their own perspective on the telco-to-TechCo journey, but the destinations they envision share common attributes. First, TechCos are customer-centric, putting the customer experience at the center of everything they do. They are agile, continually releasing new features and software-driven services, and pivoting to new opportunities and business models in days instead of months. They use cloudified, disaggregated, AI-enabled networks that are more automated and cost-effective than today’s siloed vertical architectures. And they’re backed by open multi-vendor ecosystems that fuel continuous innovation.
It’s a compelling vision. But becoming a TechCo also implies adopting new business and operational models that are incompatible with today’s siloed, inefficient legacy network architectures. If you’re part of a CSP organization grappling with these issues, the good news is that you don’t have to navigate this transition on your own. VMware has been working with CSPs and enterprises for decades to unlock efficiency and customer-centricity, and we’re ready to help.
Building Agility and Efficiency
VMware offers the industry’s most agile and proven software portfolio to enable new ways of working. From our Telco Cloud Platform for Core and Radio Access Networks (RAN), to our groundbreaking RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), to our Software-Defined Edge portfolio that extends AI and automation across distributed CSP and enterprise customer sites, we’re helping CSPs worldwide transform their business.
Across all of these solutions, VMware design principles are guided by a simple goal: making your job easier. Drawing on our legacy in virtualization and cloud, our software is designed to abstract away technical complexity at every layer of the network. We free your data from vertical silos, enabling the end-to-end visibility and AI/ML-driven automation that reduces costs and timelines. And we’re committed to helping you unlock game-changing customer experiences and new revenue streams.
As you map out your path to TechCo transformation, VMware can help you:
- Build a customer-centric business: For years, CSP customers (especially enterprises) have viewed telcos as largely interchangeable. VMware can help you apply your unique network and Edge capabilities to deliver customized digital experiences that customers can’t get anywhere else. Create new managed Edge solutions that help enterprises automate their distributed operations and apply real-time AI analysis and decision-making everywhere they need it. Combine Software-Defined Edge, fixed wireless access, API-programmable telco networks, and more to bring each customer the right combination of self-service connectivity and edge computing capabilities. And draw on VMware’s deep, longstanding enterprise relationships to expand your business.
- Radically simplify technical complexity: It’s hard to innovate when you’re bogged down in day-to-day complexities of maintaining infrastructure, assuring services, and customizing workloads for the requirements of different vendors and clouds. VMware can help you realign your business around your unique capabilities to help people connect, automate, and experience in new ways. Our software automates operations across network domains and vendors, so you can use the same consistent toolset across IT, Core, RAN and Edge. And we bring AI-driven insights to detect issues across disparate networks and services, and resolve them before customers realize there’s a problem.
- Boost agility and lower costs: You can’t move quickly if you have to rebuild services every time you want to enter a new market, connect over a new access technology, or serve customers from a different public cloud. VMware sets your workloads free, providing the flexibility to package up your unique capabilities and bring them to any customer, anywhere, over any cloud. Meanwhile, our software simplifies and accelerates operations across the lifecycle of the network. We can help you do more with less by streamlining resources, unifying management, and applying AI/ML-enabled automation. With production-proven, standards-compliant VMware platforms, you can configure and deploy cloud-native resources in minutes, accelerate the lab-to-live timeline for new offerings, and proactively assure complex customized services. And our groundbreaking AI/ML-enabled technologies can dynamically optimize resources to drive down energy consumption and emissions.
- Inject outside innovation into your network and business: Transforming telecom will take many different companies bringing different solutions and expertise. VMware has been a pioneer in building multi-vendor ecosystems since our founding. We can help you break through vertical, vendor-specific silos, so you can work with new innovators to differentiate your offerings. Through our Ready for Telco Cloud partner program, you can choose from more than 300 validated network functions from diverse vendors to build best-of-breed solutions. Using our industry-leading RIC platform, you can run third-party apps right where subscribers connect to multiply spectral capacity, reduce energy consumption, and capture vast amounts of data about your network and customers.
These TechCo capabilities are not theoretical. VMware already supports more than 160 Telco Cloud deployments worldwide. Whether running OSS/BSS workloads in the cloud, deploying new RAN functions, or launching new managed services at the Edge, our production-proven solutions can help you benefit from disaggregated programmable architectures, without the complexity. We can help you modernize your network for a software-driven world, and perform complex cloud-native deployments in minutes.
Envisioning TechCos in Action
What can CSPs do once they’ve committed to becoming a TechCo? Now, you’ve realigned your business models with the requirements of your customers, instead of your legacy network. You have the agility to quickly move into new markets and assemble new kinds of offerings in days, instead of months or years. You’ve broken down network silos to achieve end-to-end visibility and data across all network layers and vendors. And all of your services are now based on an open, adaptable architecture that can readily incorporate new technology innovations from any vendor you choose.
As you look to modernize and differentiate your offerings beyond basic connectivity, you can now:
- Address global markets with virtualized networks and portable multi-cloud solutions
- Customize services with network slices tailored to specific enterprise use cases and programmable network APIs
- Deliver services on-demand via self-service portals
- Support distributed enterprise Edge and AI solutions like industrial automation, AI computer vision, retail theft prevention, and many other use cases
- Capitalize on network and customer data for by acting as a broker for ad targeting, marketing analytics, and more
Start Your TechCo Transformation
CSPs worldwide already work with VMware to enable the multi-vendor, multi-cloud network modernization they need to stand out in the marketplace. Let us help you make your own TechCo vision a reality.
To learn more about how VMware enables the techco transformation, visit our website.
