On the sidelines of GITEX 2022, Telecom Review secured an exclusive interview with Red Hat’s Sales Director for Telco and Service Providers, Ayhem Alzaaim, to further discuss the company’s strategies and services being offered to its clients in this digital era.
In your opinion, what does Red Hat offer that other telco companies don't, and what are you highlighting this year?
One of the key messages this year is around flexibility. At Red Hat, We are in a really unique position to provide our customers with the full flexibility and the freedom to deploy anywhere. Our customers are ready to deploy on premise, in public clouds or at the edge by deploying a single, consistent horizontal platform that allows you to work with many applications that serve a multitude of use cases from a very extensive ecosystem. This enables our customers to address the constantly changing and evolving needs and requirements of their customers. And this is very important, because it provides a single cloud operating model, that drives the cost of deployment down, it drives that cost of operations down and ensures that as a customer or an end user, you have enough skills to be able to run and operate your business.
What other strategies do you deploy for your existing or potential clients, especially in this region where telcos are going big on cloud adoption?
Our strategy is to be an enabler of technology so that our customers are able to serve and respond to the growing 5G business needs. Over the coming two to three years, much of the telco industry growth areas will be coming through partnerships with enterprises and other sectors. Telcos and service providers must ready themselves through their digital transformation programs to ensure that they have the capability and the technology to support their business and address that requirement.
Automation, for example, is super-crucial when it comes to operators. One of the many benefits that automation will bring is quicker the time-to-market, and for enterprises, time-to-market is key for competitive advantage.
What additional services can you provide for your clients to advance digitalization?
Digital transformation is not just about the products; it's having the right people, the right process and the right tools in place and making sure that they all work together seamlessly to serve a common business goal.
At Red Hat we help our customers on their Digital transformation journey, by bringing technology, processes and tools together. The Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform allows our customers to deploy on multiple environments (on premise, cloud and at the edge), and our extensive partnerships and alignment with cloud providers, ISV's and Industry accelerates our customers ability to address their internal and external customer needs and requirements
Following IBM’s adaptation of your open source storage products, how do you intend to enhance Red Hat's services even further?
IBM's involvement in the storage business will help further accelerate investments in technology, in the ability to scale and reach more customers and partners. the technology available today is excellent, and with farther support from IBM, we can reach more of our customers and partners, ore address our customers’ demands.
From your point of view, what do telco customers look for?
Telcos and service providers are really looking for flexibility which will enable them to provide a platform for their internal and external customers to innovate. Innovation is at the center of why we're doing all of this. Business requirements change, and these requirements are changing very quickly. If you do not have the right platform and the ability to bring service anywhere, everywhere, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you will be missing a very key competitive element.
Our customers are working to ensure that they can bring their expertise to enterprises and the wider community. One of the ways in which they are doing this, is by having that flexible platform for the customers to innovate, everywhere, and at the right price point.
