Transformation-driven

Telcos are particularly warming up to the potential opportunities they see in the infrastructure-as-a-service platforms

The telecom industry in India is at the cusp of an epic transformation, not only from a network point of view but also from an IT standpoint. Legacy access networks, including 3G, are giving way to technologies like 4G LTE and beyond. At the same time, telcos are also in need to digitize their internal as well as customer facing processes by embracing paradigms such as cloud and big data.

As a next step, telcos have already started exploring various business opportunities in the cloud. For example, towards the close of fiscal 2016 Airtel tied up with Amazon Web Service (AWS) to offer private network solutions for global enterprise customers, to the AWS platform. As part of the service, Airtel would establish a dedicated network connection between customers’ premises and Amazon’s data centers, thus helping the customers to reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and experience a more consistent network connectivity. Airtel had, in May 2015, announced a similar service that offered a dedicated connection to Airtel customers

into Microsoft’s Azure cloud data centers.

Tata Communications conducted trials of Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN), aimed at providing WAN-scale connectivity among IoT and M2M devices, across Mumbai and Delhi. The company said it would roll out the network across the country, with full coverage starting in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.

In November 2015, Reliance Communications with its subsidiary Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), announced a major expansion of its cloud platform, connecting as many as 3,210 Indian enterprises, 14,505 global enterprises and 231 of the Fortune 500 customers through the RCom/GCX network.

Also, RCom and Jasper, a global IoT platform provider, had announced a partnership to enable enterprises throughout India to launch, manage and monetize next-generation IoT businesses. RCom is Jasper’s sole telecom partner in India. This partnership pairs the capabilities of Reliance’s 11 data center facilities and its Cloud X platform with Jasper’s global IoT services platform to enable enterprises to capitalize on IoT services.

Readying for a richer cloud play

Clearly, the telecom service providers are exploring opportunities other than just providing better connectivity into various public and hybrid cloud platforms.

Various options and possibilities exist, depending on the IT-readiness of a given telco. However, in almost all the cases, telcos need one or more specialist IT partners to help them navigate the new paradigms without facing disruptions in their existing business streams.

Thankfully, IT service providers capable of supporting telcos in their new business goals have long been their outsourcing partners, and are well positioned to deliver as per the new needs. These include the likes of IBM, TCS, Wipro and Tech Mahindra, among others.

Competitive landscape

IBM continues to be the elephant in the room, with all the top three telcos— Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular—being its customers of past several years. Those apart, it also clinched an agreement with Reliance Communica-

tions to provide the telcos’ customers with a portfolio of infrastructure-as-aservice (IaaS) offerings off the IBM cloud platform. In fact, it is this line of business that IBM stands to gain the maximum from if it is able to successfully bring more telecom service providers to its fold. The IT service provider is uniquely positioned in this context through its SoftLayer offering. Additionally, it also has the Blue Mix cloud platform to complement and supplement other cloud service needs of customers.

TCS, Wipro and Tech M too have grown their footholds in the India telecom market. TCS has served group company Tata Teleservices and also bagged a part of the Airtel deal in 2014, which was also shared with IBM and Tech M. (Airtel opted for a multi-vendor approach when its earlier exclusive partnership with IBM drew to an end.)

Wipro too has had a strong footing in the market by way of its earlier deals with Aircel and Telenor.

Other solutions & services

From network-intensive outsourcing to multi-year deals that reduce costs and complexity through IP and unified communications, the telecom vertical for IT service providers like IBM, Accenture India, TCS, Tech Mahindra has come a long way. These IT services providers have a wide gamut of services, including the ones related to integration of private and public clouds with emphasis on security and disaster recovery, and end-to-end incident management. These are over and above the traditional pieces like system integration, enterprise software, middleware, computing services, hardware and network management, which continue to stay relevant for all IT environments.

IT service providers also have domainbased competencies, including custommade solutions for billing and CRM, network assurance, service offerings management, and network and enterprise management. Their 24x7 service model helps telcos reduce operational expenditure, and improve incident management, apart from database administration and support and helpdesk for data center and managed services. These apart, telcos also outsource their call center operations to enhance customer experience. In 2015, Reliance Communications signed a five-year multimillion dollar agreement with Avaya to overhaul its BPO centers.

Reliance Jio is reportedly in talks with at least a handful of BPO companies to outsource its call center and support services. The proposed deal is considered to be a lucrative contract involving voice support, KYC and activation services, among other things. At least five companies namely Serco, Concentrix, Wipro, Aegis and WNS besides others are believed to be pitching for the deals with Reliance Jio.

Players are pumping millions of dollars in developing intelligent platforms that could automate more and more IT processes. Currently, IT service providers have built their telecom service portfolios with emphasis on platforms and solutions; pre-integrated OSS/BSS and enterprise applications; digital customer experience transformations, business simplification across products, processes and systems; and so on. But with changing technology landscape, service providers are enriching their platforms with digital components like mobility and pervasive computing, big data and analytics, social media, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and robotics to realign their business processes, products and services for superior customer engagement.

This digital transformation will help operators mitigate the challenges of shrinking product lifecycles, customer engagement and high churn rates. These new additions will help operators attract new subscribers, contain customer attrition, improve services at affordable costs and offer superior technology service.

The IT solutions component also includes enterprise mobility, which helps telcos with scalable technology, software and applications that help improve quality of services, including emerging areas like cloud services, and on-demand services. The convergence of fixed and mobile networks and the execution of IP strategies are rapidly transforming the industry and IT solutions also help operators to offer bundled products.

Telecom analytics plays a crucial role in aiding telcos and enterprises. The analytics solutions tactically provide optimized means to enhance subscriber experience. Operators can analyze vast subscriber data on real-time basis, gain insights into customer preferences, and reduce churn rates, among various other things.