Autumn seems to have suddenly arrived, reminding us that it is time to reap what we sow and make plans for the future. Over the past couple of years, we have gradually adapted to virtual meetings and connections, so it was very exciting for us to finally meet peers in the industry face-to-face at TM Forum Digital Transformation World (DTW) in Copenhagen from September 20 to 22, 2022.
The week saw over 3,000 participants from 600+ companies and 200+ trailblazing speakers gathering in Copenhagen to learn, share and discuss with peers and thought leaders how to succeed in the hyper-competitive market. Whale Cloud participated in the event and demonstrated our latest strategy, solutions, and best practices to today’s most pressing challenges.
Many topics were up for discussion this year, including 5G, Cloud and OpenRAN, open digital architecture and APIs, AI and autonomous networks, etc., but the key theme was still the digital transformation of telcos, permeating throughout the event agenda. We’ve been talking about digital transformation for a decade - it is still the main task for telcos at this stage. The pandemic has actually driven the acceleration of digital transformation for months or even years, given that customers are embracing digitalization on a larger scale. Businesses of all sizes must adapt strategies to deal with the change, and Whale Cloud has refreshed our strategy as Digital Transformation 2.0.
As I elaborated in an interview with TM Forum at the DTW, telcos achieved explosive business growth by investing in infrastructure, system consolidation, and process optimization to grow their customer bases and reduce operating costs in the Digital Transformation 1.0 era. Currently, they are in a bottleneck that impedes them from sustainable business development. The need to break through this bottleneck and break past the revenue plateau is driving telcos towards digital transformation 2.0. Compared with IT architecture upgrading - which almost every organization would focus on back to Digital Transformation 1.0 - Whale Cloud Digital Transformation 2.0 strategy shines a light on three keys: improving core connectivity of telcos; innovative services to make a difference; and accountable digital service delivery.
Without a doubt, connectivity is still the core commodity offered by telcos. Improving connectivity means focusing not only on the IT architecture but also on business outcomes for our customers, with a TM Forum ODA-Compliant Open Platform and rich Plugins, helping telcos to be more agile in facing market changes. We also offer innovative services to enable our customers to maximize opportunities beyond connectivity. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, we combine local economic development, competitor situation, etc. to provide customers with digital solutions that are more suitable for them, such as payment, cloud solutions, and eCommerce. Moreover, accountable digital service delivery is of great importance in a post-pandemic era. Whale cloud actively explores the combination of remote delivery and large-scale agile delivery, to support various delivery approaches to guarantee the success of customer transformation and long-term customer success.
Whale Cloud has been moving forward to turn this strategy into action, together with our customers. We have helped telcos of all sizes around the globe improve efficiency, reduce the total cost of ownership with system unification and shorten the time to market with an open approach. For innovative new services, we have supported telcos to unlock more potential by making innovative services easier. During a joint speech titled “Where do CSPs fit in the new value chains?” at the DTW, Zain KSA, Whale Cloud and Alibaba Cloud took a deep dive into how a telco unlocked potential and reaped unique benefits. This is one example of how we explore new revenue streams with our customers. We also renovated the delivery approach to help telcos maximize value during periods of uncertainty. Earlier this August, Whale Cloud successfully completed migration of U Mobile customers to ZSmart Cloud BSS. Due to the pandemic, U Mobile and Whale Cloud adopted a remote delivery model based on the Digital Transformation Delivery Framework (DTDF) from Whale Cloud. The lean and agile phased delivery approach allows legacy and new platforms to run in parallel. It achieves a smooth migration that mitigates risk and improves maturity in business operations for U Mobile without impacting customer experience.
Telcos can act as the digital infrastructure providers for society. We are ready for the second half of the digital transformation game, supporting CSPs to move beyond connectivity, and be the digital infrastructure provider with our Open Platform that integrates a myriad of best practices, eventually driving digitalization to the next level.
Jacky Chen Jiang is the Executive Vice President of Whale Cloud.
