Unlocking the True Benefit of
Software Defined Networking
- With Amol Phadke
Video Transcript
Martyn:
Hello and welcome to Telecom TV,
we are in London’s Docklands at
Broadband World Forum 2016. I’m
talking with Amol Phadke, who is
managing director at Accenture.
Welcome, it’s good to see you again.
You have done a keynote here at
Broadband World Forum on the
notion of migrating to software
defined infrastructure. As a broad
remit, what was the nub of the
argument you were making in that
presentation?
Amol:
Well, Martyn, the key tenant of what I
was describing was that there’s
three dimensions to look at in terms
of unlocking the benefits of software
defined network. There’s the
business dimension, the technology
dimension, and the operations
dimension, and we really believe
that all 3 dimensions have to be
addressed to really unlock the
benefits of software defined
network. And that was I think the
key principal behind the discussion.
Martyn:
Well let’s look at that in a little more
in depth. To begin with, which
comes first? Do you look at the
technology first, and say well this is
the base of anything we can do? Do
you look at the business case and
say the business case is there
therefore we can apply the
technology and then operationalize
it. How does it work, how does the
virtual circle rotate?
Amol:
Very interesting point. What comes
first is almost a circuitous questions
because the technology dimension
is where a lot of the energy is
currently being spent, you know a
lot of investment, a lot of resources
involved in the technology which is
great and we need to do that. But I
believe there is a balanced approach
required which almost needs parallel
investments in all three areas. A
business dimension which talks
about how I actually create a new
product set or a new catalog that is
going to be fully software powered.
And then you have technology
platform, which is how do I create
the platform of the future that can
help you monetize products and
services. And then the operational
dimension is also very critical
because you need to have a real
time self-service layer that sits on top
that lets you manage this new
software defined ecosystem. So
really to answer your question I don’t
think there’s a specific point you
want to start on, but the key point
here being don’t focus on only one
dimension, start looking at all three
in parallel.
Martyn:
So this isn’t a cookie cutter
approach, because your clients, your
customers vary and differ according
to what they are doing. But do you
have a base template approach to
say well this is what we find under
normal circumstances? Then you
add some bespoke pieces to it.
Amol:
Absolutely, I think that’s a great
question. So we’ve actually come up
with a digital playbook, what we
describe as at least a rough blueprint
of how we believe a provider can go
through these three dimensions.
Now obviously as you said, there’s a
customization and the specifics
around an environment and how we
have to condition around that
environment, but the fact remains
that a blueprint does exist and we
are taking our clients through that
blueprint. Now the customizations
are required because there are
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certain operators or providers that
are incumbents in a particular
geography, and they have a
separate set of challenges on
maintain what they have while
rotating to the new. And on the other
hand you also have some
challengers in the industry who don’t
necessarily have that incumbent
base and so they approach this
problem in a very different way and
say let us go aggressive on some of
the business and operations and
technology dimensions because we
really don’t need to spend that much
time on rotating.