In this conversation, I am joined by Futurum’s Ron Westfall and Ericsson’s Miriam Deasy and Rick Mallon to explore where the telecom industry is in their current BSS-to-cloud journeys.
Watch the clip:
To hear the entire conversation, check out the episode here.
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Transcript:
Miriam Deasy: And what we’re really interested in doing is understanding the challenges that our customers are facing, our prospects are facing and having not just the technical conversations, but some of the business conversations around these challenges as well, and figuring out what is the best way to move forward. So whether we do that in written form, or whether we do that using examples of use cases would have a joined product capabilities as blending the whole lot together.
Shelly Kramer: Awesome. You know, that’s kind of a marketing strategy goal, right? Understanding customer pain points and how to solve, how to address and solve those, right? Rick, tell us about yourself?
Rick Mallon: Yeah. So my name is Rick Mallon and I’m responsible for the customer and partner engagement portfolio at Ericsson. So that includes all of our catalog products, order management of CPQ systems and our digital experience platform.
Shelly Kramer: That’s awesome. You know, short and sweet, that’s Rick, right? So let’s talk a little bit about the telecom industry and where that industry is with moving BSS-to-Cloud. What are you seeing from your vantage point in Ericsson Digital BSS across your customer base? Rick let’s start with you.
Rick Mallon: Well, Ericsson has been very successful in the 5G network evolution. So at the last count, over 127 commercial agreements would lead the market with this. It gives us a unique perspective on the rollout of 5g and how we adopt BSS to help our customers take full advantage of those new 5g network investments to make money to improve their revenue situation.
Shelly Kramer: What about you, Miriam? Do you have anything to add there?
Miriam Deasy: Well, there’s a whole heap going on the network evolution is one of these things and that forces a lot of changes in the BSS architecture itself. And we’re completely confident that there’s just so many opportunities to be had at this point in time, whether it’s with consumer, whether it’s with enterprise or whether it’s that wildcard that we really see at huge scope for expansion, which is the B2B to X space. There’s going to be a whole lot of new there. Some of which we don’t even have full definition around it yet. So we’re seeing lots and lots of movement to cloud both public and private. And there’s no question about whether to move to cloud. It’s just the focus is how do we get the most out of it? And that kind of sounds simplistic, but it’s not because there’s just such an enormous variation in terms of where everybody is right now, what their starting points are.
There’s also this enormous variation in where people want their end point to be, or at least where people want their end point to be today. So with this big range variation, like we’ve got 300 customers around the world and those 300 customers span, consumer focus and enterprise focus. They’re big, they’re small, they’re using our individual BSS components that are converging charging mediation, pending order care, product catalog. There’s massive, massive variation and diversity to this group of customers. And the one thing we can say with certainty is that there’s no kind of single beaten path emerging here, and there’s no one size fits all when it comes to moving that BSS to cloud.
Sometimes there’s limitation due to regulations, sometimes due to geographical constraints like the GDPR. But what we do see is that most of our customers and most of our prospects are Laden with these kind of complex and fragmented legacy systems with integration, kind of connective tissue, holding it all together.
All of them are looking to buy new cloud based systems and shift their way down this journey. So this was partly why we wanted to do this report with you guys. We want it to get an alternative perspective or an additional perspective, because we know that we’re seeing a lot of different things here and working with you has helped us gather this, this really, really useful snapshot of where people are at and where people are headed and what progress has been made and how happy people are at this point in time.
Shelly Kramer: Absolutely. And I think that you really touched on some incredibly salient points. And I think the one common thread throughout this is that organizations all have different nuances, different challenges, different legacy systems, situations, different skill sets on staff. And there’s a very real dearth of IT talent out there. And so I think that is where figuring out the vendor partner that you want to work with makes a huge difference because vendor partners come into a situation with all of the expertise that they’ve gained from working with other customers with other challenges or similar challenges. And so I think that figuring out the technology solution is just one part of the equation, but who is it that I can really hand in hand partner with? I think that that is such a big business decision and one that’s a really important part of the equation.
Author Information
Shelly Kramer is a Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked alongside some of the world’s largest brands to embrace disruption and spur innovation, understand and address the realities of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of digital transformation. She brings 20 years' experience as a brand strategist to her work at Futurum, and has deep experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, GTM strategies, messaging development, and driving strategy and digital transformation for B2B brands across multiple verticals. Shelly's coverage areas include Collaboration/CX/SaaS, platforms, ESG, and Cybersecurity, as well as topics and trends related to the Future of Work, the transformation of the workplace and how people and technology are driving that transformation. A transplanted New Yorker, she has learned to love life in the Midwest, and has firsthand experience that some of the most innovative minds and most successful companies in the world also happen to live in “flyover country.”
