Telecom Review hosted a virtual panel titled ‘Digital transformation driving the next phase of innovation’, where C-level speakers discussed the important role of technological developments such as Cloud technology and also explored the opportunities and challenges and investing in enhancing the digital skills necessary to meet today’s digital transformation goals.
The panel featured speakers, including Sebastian Alberto Delgado, vice president/Internet of Things & Artificial Intelligence, Etisalat; Karim Benkirane, CCO, du; Günther Ottendorfer, chief technology & infrastructure officer, Ooredoo Qatar; and Danial Mausoof, head of sales mobile networks Middle East and Africa, Nokia.
The panel was moderated by Ghazi Atallah, former CEO, NXN
Ghazi Atallah drove the conversation towards exploring the areas of measure to assess and benefit from the outcomes of the digital transformation.
Responding to Ghazi’s inquiry, Danial Mausoof said, “From a telco perspective, typically transformation has been very focused on operational efficiencies. The KPIs have always been about how to build new capabilities. From a Nokia perspective, it’s about how we make sure that our operations are right sized, consolidation of footprint, shifting to cloud driven automation, etc.
“Beyond the operations aspect, I think there's a lot of factors around resilience that has been brought in now when you look at transformation because of COVID, climate change and so on. Plus, business resilience plays a very important role when looking at opportunities in digital transformation,” he said.
He cited an example of Nokia’s CEO mentioning that there is “no green without digital” to drive the message of how climate crisis has brought in opportunity in terms of transformation and need for change in business models.
Mausoof expressed that digital transformation should be more outcome-based than process-based. Hence, for telcos, transformation is more focused on operational efficiencies as well as resilience. “In telecom and IT, it’s always been buying or building, and that has changed. It’s not about buying anymore, it's how we consume this overall infrastructure with KPIs falling into operational efficiencies.”
