During FutureNet MENA, Telecom Review conducted an exclusive interview with Stelios Savvides, CTO, Vodafone Oman, who highlighted the company's dedication to providing the latest capabilities, ensuring an exceptional customer experience, prioritizing sustainability, and enhancing cybersecurity and operational efficiency across their network and IT infrastructure.
Vodafone Oman has emerged as a pioneer in the deployment of cloud-native 5G networks. How has this development brought about transformative changes in the enterprise sector?
Vodafone Oman is a new operator. We've been live for just over two years, and we've been in the enviable position to be able to build a future-proof, cloud-native architecture from day one. This has allowed us to offer the latest capabilities provided by our network vendor and offer a great customer experience.
Currently, we are getting ready to bring enterprise to the market. I won't tell you too much (and ruin the surprise) but what we are definitely doing is making sure that the great experience and great service level that we've offered to consumers to date will be brought to enterprise, along with a lot of the Group’s products.
Please tell us about Vodafone Oman’s efforts in running energy-efficient IT networks in its own and customers’ operations.
From day one, we have built a future-proof architecture. By doing so, we built both our network and IT cloud with the latest capabilities. These cloud infrastructures not only have a smaller footprint than all the legacy deployments that exist out there but, ultimately, they have a much lower energy consumption.
Having said that, sustainability has always been at the forefront of our thinking—in both the networks and the IT space. As we've evolved, we have grown our capabilities and capacity, while always making sure that we do so in an efficient way.
How is Vodafone Oman utilizing AI to strengthen cybersecurity in its networks with regards to securing the digital Omani way of life?
Cybersecurity is top-of-mind for us in everything we do. We need to do this so that we always keep the trust and strong connection with our customers safe, as well as their data. Ultimately, we are now looking at all the new and smart capabilities that exist to try and ensure that any threat is handled quickly and incident response engages automatically.
We have implemented generative AI (GenAI) in a number of areas within our cyber defense. One of which aims to cleanse data when it sees a threat approaching. We immediately scrub it to prevent it from impacting our services. At the same time, we are also looking at other threats within our office IT, particularly phishing, which is another threat that we all need to be vigilant about.
To sum it up, we’re able to identify, isolate, and clean in a fast and automated way, and GenAI is helping us do this very quickly so that people are spending less time analyzing and more time fixing the problem.
How is Vodafone Oman leveraging cutting-edge technology to drive innovation within its operations? Would you like to highlight any key examples to illustrate this approach?
From day one, Vodafone Oman has aimed to bring smartness and automation into our operating model. First off, in the IT space, our key asset to the customer is the My Vodafone app. This is the one place every Vodafone customer is connected to. They use it to complete individual tasks, giving them power in their hands, thus, making it an essential part of our operations ecosystem. Having the latest capabilities and an app that works and offers functionality was key to help drive a ‘smartness’ in how we deliver service to our customers.
From an operations point of view, we've also leveraged GenAI, employing a ‘smartness-centric’ approach to optimize the network, reduce our power consumption, and address our sustainability goals.
Moreover, we have implemented this ‘smartness’ to protect ourselves, avoid threats, and address incidents in an automated way so that we don't need people to wake up in the middle of the night if something is happening. Instead, the tools are running and the matter is being addressed in that instance. We can then take care of any residual aspects in the morning once people identify and see what's happening.
Also Read: Vodafone Oman: Pioneering Oman’s Digital Transformation
