Month: December 2024

2025 Enterprise Predictions: Cloud Reconsidered for New Agentic Popularity and Data Loss Concerns

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Cloud Enable
C. Dunlap Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• Developers will face limitations on generative AI (genAI) usage.

• Agentic AI represents the largest upskilling opportunity.

GlobalData is closely following cloud trends under its new 2025 market driver category, Cloud Reconsidered. GlobalData anticipates in the new year that enterprise DevOps modeled teams will implement an entirely new approach in leveraging cloud services. The cloud is more pervasive than ever for scalability and efficiency. It’s become evident that a cloud-based IT portfolio brings the greatest promise for providing the highly critical centralized interface for development and automation platform services, which companies are seeking. This centralized management interface is more vital than ever for new challenges, which will spring up in the coming year. This is especially true for the provisioning of genAI tools, security, and management tools as well as reinforcing collaboration between development teams.

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Telcos vs. Hyperscalers: Should Telecom Operators Take a Stand or is Collaboration the Key to the Future?

by Brendan Swan, posted in IT Leader
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

  • The digital landscape is changing, bringing new technologies. Hyperscalers are having a more influential role in shaping the future direction of telecommunications.
  • Telcos and hyperscalers should work together to co-create new initiatives including cross-selling, joint go-to-market strategies, and co-developing innovation and product.

The relationship between telcos and hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Meta, has always been multi-faceted. With the digital landscape continuing to evolve with the emergence of 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud-native technologies, hyperscalers are becoming more influential in shaping the future direction of telecommunications. This can both create benefits for telcos (e.g., agility through digitization) but it can also erode telco business opportunities (e.g., connectivity from telco infrastructure to cloud infrastructure). Should telcos take a stand against hyperscalers moving into their territory? Or should they look to collaborate and coexist together?

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Enterprise AI is Driving New Dynamics for Telco Hyperscale Competition

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in IT Leader
M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• Critical Digital Shift: Hyperscalers and data center providers have started competing for cloud networking services, competing for enterprise dollars in space previously dominated by telcos.

• New AI Driven Dynamic: The emergence of enterprise AI is highlighting the importance of network infrastructure and the need to run more distributed workloads, opening new ways for telcos and hyperscalers to collaborate.

Generally telcos and hyperscalers are cautious collaborators. After a brief period where telcos tried to use their pre-existing data center assets to compete in the emerging cloud market, most have decided to move on from those assets. With the emergence of hyperscale data centers, their ubiquitous presence and common operating platforms, they have slowly taken over the market. While some telcos still offer private data center services, most have given up data center assets and instead moved their own IT environments to hyperscale platforms. Some enterprise focused telcos will still function as cloud service providers, migrating applications and maintain the underlying infrastructure they, for the most part, do not own the data centers themselves. While this may be some lost revenue for telecoms, this area was never their specialty.

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The Price is Right – Or is It?

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• While rivals are aligned in stuffing their platforms full of GenAI features, they diverge when it comes to pricing those features.

• There is no easy answer as to whether GenAI features should cost extra — and not necessarily a right or wrong one.

When GenAI first arrived on team collaboration platforms, widespread fear was generated that hard-earned skills – and the employees that cultivated them – would be displaced. Those fears are softening as GenAI increasingly earns recognition as a tool that makes workers more productive. Mundane and time-absorbing tasks (such as generating meeting recaps, composing emails, and scheduling meetings) are outsourced to GenAI, allowing workers to focus on high-priority activities and increase their value to their organizations. Productivity enhancements have been delivered largely through a proliferation of virtual assistants involving every major competitor (e.g., Microsoft Copilot, Cisco AI Assistant in Webex Suite, and Zoom AI Companion).

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Is Lunchtime Over? Is it Time for Telcos to Give Content Providers the Bill?

by Brendan Swan, posted in Big Data
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

  • Telecommunications companies want webscale providers to contribute toward their data-intensive services delivered via their network for further infrastructure investment. Content providers argue about net neutrality.
  • While there is no silver bullet to fix this global issue, content providers could look to store their content locally and strategically partner with a telco.

The time has come for telecommunications companies and webscale providers like Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, and Meta to settle the bill, but are they going to split the bill, or will telcos be made to pay the bill yet again? Telcos have been dissatisfied that they are paying for big techs’ lunch. Should big tech get their hands out of their pockets and look to contribute toward their data-hungry internet services? As the data traffic continues to surge and telco revenues continue to slide, telecom executives are applying pressure on the regulators to force these big techs to pay for their share of the network infrastructure.

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RingCentral AI Assistant is New Again and Still Compelling

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

  • RingCentral has labeled RingCentral AI Assistant as ‘new’ but it has merely exited an early access preview.
  • The creative spin RingCentral has put on the introduction of AI Assistant by no means diminishes the company’s standing among competitors.

RingCentral recently introduced RingCentral AI Assistant, a component of RingEX, the company’s team communication and collaboration platform. RingCentral AI Assistant can generate real-time call notes and summaries; draft, refine, and translate text messages across six languages; catch up users on group chats; define meeting action items; and create real-time live transcriptions and closed captioning for calls and video meetings. Currently, AI Assistant is available only in the US. An international debut is planned for early 2025, as is the rollout of more features.

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Hyperscalers are Changing the Tide in the Subsea Cables Arena, Further Government Intervention is Required

by Guest Author, posted in IT Leader

Summary Bullets:  

  1. The role of hyperscalers has changed over the last decade as their investment in subsea cables has almost tripled over the last seven years.
  2. Governments must work with their counterparts to help protect subsea cable infrastructure from environmental, accidental, and malicious threats including cyberattacks.

The subsea cable industry was once led by telecommunication and network carriers sharing ownership of subsea cables. Over the last two decades the tides have been shifting with a strong current of hyperscalers muscling in and changing the market landscape. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are now carving up the ocean floor and investing in their own underwater infrastructure highway while navigating autonomously through open waters, while enhancing connectivity and data security. There are concerns that while these developments will improve internet access, greater control by governments is needed to regulate and to protect the critical infrastructure ecosystem.

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Small Business Saturday – An Opportunity for UK Telcos

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, IT Leader, Network, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

  • Held on the first Saturday in December, ‘Small Business Saturday’ in the UK encourages small businesses to promote themselves and attract customer attention.
  • Following Black Friday offers, UK telcos should use this event to target SMBs and SOHOs – acquiring customers is more profitable than slashing margins.

Having started in the US in 2010, ‘Small Business Saturday’ has found its way to the UK and celebrated its 12th anniversary this side of the Atlantic on December 7, 2024 – an estimated GBP669 million was spent on Small Business Saturday in the UK in 2023.

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Colt Technology Services Expands Network Reach in Sydney but it Needs to Tell a Better Story

by Brendan Swan, posted in Network

B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

• Colt will expand its network in Sydney connecting approximately 250 commercial buildings and over 20 data centers with services to commence in March 2025.

• Colt must continue to highlight its network capabilities and global reach to rival other global carriers and NaaS providers.

Colt Technology Services announced that it plans to expand its optical network in Sydney, Australia with direct access to approximately 250 commercial buildings and more than 20 data centers as the carrier looks to promote services from early December with services to commence in March 2025. This announcement from Colt is part of the company’s push in Asia-Pacific and will complement its Asian expansion strategy as the company looks to capture the strong B2B network services market growth in the region., Colt anticipates that by 2028 it will extend services to approximately 300 local and global companies with offices in Sydney. While this announcement points to another international player choosing to focus on the Australian market for growth, Colt is not gaining much differentiation from this announcement.

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Intel’s Future is Murky – CEO Gelsinger Abruptly Retires

by Steven J. Schuchart Jr., posted in IT Leader
S. Schuchart

In a shocking move, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired from his position as CEO as well as his seat on Intel’s board. The resignation is effective as of December 1, 2024. Intel is currently looking for a new CEO, and in the meantime, it has appointed David Zinser – Intel CFO and Michelle Johnston Holthaus – CEO of Intel Products as interim co-CEOs. Officially, Gelsinger retired. Unofficially, it’s likely he didn’t have a choice. The board needed to sacrifice somebody important to Wall Street.

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