I’m speaking at #MWC22 in Barcelona today. To get into my talk you need to spend thousands of euros for a VIP pass, but I am going to LIVE TWEET it just for you!
I’ve spoken with over 40 telco strategy officers about moving to the public cloud. Here’s my advice for them. A 🪡:
Here we go - @TelcoDR’s talk “The Cloud is NOW” is starting at #MWC22. Best seats will be about halfway back, towards the middle.
On stage is Isabel Romeo (@isshodaiko), a Spanish taiko drummer.
In feudal Japan, taiko were used to motivate troops, call orders, and set pace. In the 1500s, they were used to communicate orders to retreat or advance.
I am calling the telcos to join my #CLOUDCITY Army.
Intro: a cloud montage set to *awesome* taiko music.
I want the audience to FEEL that the PUBLC CLOUD is NOW.
DR takes the stage:
Hello MWC! Welcome everyone, whether you’re here in the room… or watching from around the world (or on TWITTER!) 😉
Last year, I came to MWC with a clear message for the telecom industry: the public cloud is coming.
And it will change ev-ery-thing.
Well… I’m back to beat the drum about the public cloud!
(LOUD DRUMMING)
CAN YOU FEEL IT! (yes we can, DR!)
If you don’t believe me… look around.
The industry’s most important event now has a cloud theme - CloudNet!
And Tuesday, a hyperscaler CEO delivered a keynote here at MWC.
Our industry is changing RIGHT before our eyes.
Even though I KNOW the public cloud has come to telco, I’m still hearing from execs all the reasons why they *CAN’T START* when we should be talking about what we *CAN DO* in the public cloud.
The proof points about the public cloud are everywhere.
Vodafone signed a strategic partnership with GCP to move all analytical workloads to GCP.
See my case study on how much Vodafone saved by moving to GCP:
telcodr.com/wp-content/upl…
AT&T sold off its Network Cloud business to Microsoft, which will refactor it to run natively on Azure.
about.att.com/story/2021/att…
And the news that ROCKED the industry, the move by DISH to go ALL-IN on the public cloud!
See my case study on how much Rakuten vs. 1&1:
telcodr.com/wp-content/upl…
LET. ME. BE. CLEAR:
If you haven’t started your move, then you are already behind. It’s time to GET GOING!
As leaders - your job is to come up with great ideas, and use your assets to better position your organization for success.
The public cloud is a BIG OPPORTUNITY.
Once you realize what you can do with the public cloud, you will have wished you started yesterday.
Do you know who wishes he started yesterday? Jamie Dimon, CEO, JPMorgan Chase.
He started out thinking the public cloud was just about outsourcing.
He used to think, “Why in the world would I move anything to AWS when I’ve already built up my own data center capacity and capability?”
But on his latest earnings call, he made it clear that he was ALL IN.
He said if he could spend $2B to get to the cloud TOMORROW, he would do it in a SECOND.
He would do it in HEARTBEAT.
(LOUD DRUMMING!!!)
What is it about the public cloud that causes a CEO of ~$440M company to change his tune?
He thinks that using the public cloud is a COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.
… and he’s right.
I bet you’re wondering: can telco create a competitive advantage by using the public cloud?
TOTALLY!
But you have change the 3 things slowing you down.
🦕 Your systems are outdated… built on a tech stack from the 90s
😵💫 Your data is messy, with different dbs and data models
🤷🏻♂️ And your employees don’t know how to use the public cloud!
Instead you need to:
🤖 Modernize your systems
📈 Cleanse your data
😶🌫️ Hire cloud talent
Inside a telco, there are thousands of legacy applications, running on-premise, loaded with tons of technical debt.
A heavily customized, heavily integrated, rat’s nest of CRAP.
(Yeah, I said it - it’s a mess!)
While modernizing legacy systems will give you the opportunity to save lots of money, that’s not the main reason you move these workloads to the public cloud.
You do it for the NEED for SPEED.
Your legacy systems hamstring you - and getting a new idea to market takes 5x as long as it should.
It’s time to change that.
New modern systems, built with cloud-first principles that are fast, flexible, open, and easy to use are coming to telco and you need to go buy them.
(SEE: totogi.com)
The second thing you need to do is cleanse your data.
One of the most valuable assets inside a telco is the petabytes of data you have about how subscribers use the network.
But it’s hard to extract the signal from the noise to get the insights that can drive revenue growth.
You can do that by moving your data to cloud databases and using the world’s best data tools to drive a more personalized experience for your customers.
I’m talking about machine learning, AI, and analytics.
Extract personalized insights in seconds, not days, and put them into action the moment they are needed to influence customer behavior.
Your data is a mess, so clean it up.
And last but not least, you need to acquire cloud talent.
You need to hire and upskill your people on how to design applications using cloud-first principles.
Cloud skills are most in demand in the job market, and you’re competing for talent against the world’s best tech companies.
You need software devs that can build applications in HOURS that are auto-scaling, self-healing, lowest TCO, and use the right cloud service for the job.
Once you:
🤖 Modernize your systems
📈 Cleanse your data
😶🌫️ Hire cloud talent
You’ll be able to unlock a competitive advantage and be able to leverage your biggest asset: YOUR NETWORK.
No other industry has the assets to own the SuperApp better than telco.
Telcos own the NETWORK!
You own the relationship with the SUBSCRIBER!
But your terrrrrrrrrible NPS is stopping you.
Global tech leaders like $AMZN, $NFLX, and $AAPL have customer loyalty that is through the roof.
They understand that without customer love, you can’t expand your ARPU footprint.
They don’t have the leverage to force their customers to use their next-generation like telco does.
The tech companies put CUSTOMER LOVE at the center of their biz models.
They focus RELENTLESSLY on their customers.
They provide great experience after great experience, and their revenue continues to grow and grow.
That’s how you support a growing, demanding, customer ARPU.
Amazon started with books and now they sell you everything - including data centers.
Uber Eats only exists if Uber RideShare is AWESOME.
Apple’s customer experience is world class, so people line up to buy their products.
They can expand because all the experiences are great.
Can you see the pattern? CAN YOU FEEL IT?
(Drum beats like a heartbeat - yeah we feel it!)
But telco - YOU AREN’T EVEN CLOSE.
You have to drive NPS UP so you can expand ARPU.
If telcos use the next 10 years to adopt the public cloud, change their culture, and fix their NPS, they will be the future of the digital consumer.
The telcos that make that transition have the most exciting decade in front of them.
This is what @totogi is focused on.
We know telcos need to get high NPS scores so they are invited to compete in 10X larger ARPUs.
This is doable when you embrace the public cloud AND change your culture to focus on customer love.
Give up the security blanket of the network.
But you can’t do this until you:
🤖 Modernize your systems
📈 Cleanse your data
😶🌫️ Hire cloud talent
This is a MASSIVE opportunity, but you have to start in a real way.
The best day to start your move to the public cloud was YESTERDAY, but the second best day to start is TODAY!
THE. PUBLIC. CLOUD. IS. NOW!!!
It’s time to get going - let’s do it!
Thank you for joining me on this live tweet! I am always more powerful (and funnier) in person, so to watch the 10 minute video and hear the amazing taiko drumming of Isabel, here’s a link:
telcoDR.com
And if you’re a telco ready to move to the cloud and want to fix your NPS and want to using powerful public cloud SaaS software - DM me and I’ll hook you up.
It’s time to change telco: let’s go get 10x ARPU.
❤️❤️❤️
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