Author: Malcolm Rogers

Based in Sydney, Australia, Malcolm Rogers is an Analyst with GlobalData. He is responsible for delivering research and consulting projects leveraging research and analysis from across the Global Data technology group. Malcolm offers impactful market data and insight to enterprise buyers, service providers and the vendor community across Asia-Pacific. Current areas of focus include telecommunications networks and services, mobile markets, and enterprise ICT services. He specializes in the analysis of the communications and technology markets across the countries in Asia-Pacific. Malcolm is also in charge of modeling and forecasting demand and service revenue for fixed, mobile and pay-TV services on a quarterly basis, and regularly publishes research and analysis on key country, regional and global trends on telecommunications networks and digital services. He also contributes to custom and consulting projects in Asia Pacific.

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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Critical Industries Going Digital Requires Critical Technology Ecosystem

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in Cloud Enable, Internet of Things
M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• Critical Digital Shift: The critical industry are evolving to take advantage of new digital solutions as traditional radio-based operations evolves to include AI, video, and automation.

• Wider Ecosystem: The adoption of digital solutions by critical industries will require mission-critical clouds and mission-critical broadband, opening critical comms to a wider ecosystem.

Critical industries in areas such as defense, emergency services, and transportation are seeing broader adoption of digital technologies. Previously more hesitant than traditional enterprise, the use of digital technologies like AI, video analytics, automated workflow software, IoT, and even drones, are making an impact for these industries. Long-time providers of critical radio systems like Motorola, Tait, and Thales are now evolving software and video solutions. Meanwhile, newer digitally focused providers like Orion Labs and Streamwide are targeting critical industries with solutions around digital platforms and automation, competing on ability to deliver creative integrations with partners to unlock new use cases. However, this shift toward digital will also require a shift in the underlying infrastructure to deliver critical services.

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Maturing LEO Satellite Ecosystems Offer Opportunity for Operators

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in IT Leader
M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Emergence: The number of LEO satellite providers is increasing, with leaders Starlink and OneWeb being joined by newer competitors like AST Space Mobile.

• Operator Opportunity: As LEO ecosystems mature there are many opportunities for operators to partner with LEO providers beyond just basic remote connectivity.

The market for LEO satellite connectivity is rapidly emerging. While in some cases the emergence of LEO might be seen as a competitive threat to traditional telco business there are many emerging opportunities for network operators to partner with LEO providers.

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BT Seeks to Stand Out in the NaaS Space Through Global Fabric’s Reach and Sustainability Story

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in Network

M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• BT is establishing how its Global Fabric Platform stands out in the NaaS marketplace with its extensive reach, focus on managed services and tooling and automation around routing and security.

• BT also has a very unusual proposition to stand out with its sustainability features, including its Carbon Network Dashboard

BT recently held an event in Sydney showcasing the latest updates to its Global Fabric Platform. Almost a year since the company announced its answer to the emerging network as a service market, BT’s positioning and differentiation in an increasingly crowded landscape is starting to crystalize.

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The Future is Liquid Cool: How AI is Driving Data Center Transformation

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in IT Leader

M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• Telco AI Leader: Data center industry leaders like Vertiv and Equinix are supporting the need for more liquid cooled data center infrastructure to meet demands of rising GPU use.

• Dream Bigger: While today hyperscalers are deploying the technology, private AI will drive demand for liquid cooling in smaller enterprise data centers, with potential for bottlenecks.

Data centers around the world hosting consumer and enterprise applications may see a shift towards using liquid cooling techniques, as opposed to the various forms of air cooling (e.g., room, rowm and rack) that are used for the vast majority of data center workloads today. Liquid cooling instead uses water or a refrigerant to dissipate heat from CPUs and GPUs. The advantage of liquid cooling is the higher thermal efficiency of transferring heat through water as opposed to the air. While liquid cooling is not a new technology, it has been eschewed in favor of air cooling due to the more CapEx-intensive nature of building liquid cooling systems within data halls, and the ability of air conditioning systems to largely keep up with the heat generated by IT workloads, up until this point in time.

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SKT’s Unique Approach to AI Among Telcos Makes it a Leader in the Industry

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in IT Leader

M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• Telco AI Leader: GlobalData ranks SKT a leader among telcos for its approach to AI, as its ambitions strategy targets a multi-billion dollar business by 2028.

• Dream Bigger: While not every telco can replicate SKT’s strategy, a more forward-thinking approach should be adopted to avoid losing out on the AI revenue opportunity.

According to GlobalData’s “Thematic Intelligence: Tech, Media, & Telecom Themes 2024” report, South Korea Telecom (SKT) has the highest ranking among rated telcos (along with a few of its peers) in the AI theme, with the rank of leader, the company’s activity in this theme will improve its future performance (for more, please see Thematic Intelligence: Tech, Media, & Telecom Themes 2024, December 8, 2023). SKT has some of the most ambitious goals for the use of AI technologies, including generative AI (GenAI) and large language models (LLMs). Announced in H2 2023, SKT’s AI pyramid strategy seeks to grow AI revenues to KRW25 trillion ($19 billion) by 2028, by pursuing growth across three categories: AI Infrastructure, AI Transformation, and AI Service, with a focus on both domestic and international growth. While the use of AI, including GenAI, is a topic of interest for most if not all major telcos around the world, the focus is often on internal adoption to improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve customer experiences. While these are all key benefits of the technology, one area that sets SKT’s strategy and execution apart is its focus on using AI technologies to drive new revenues across both the B2C and B2B space domestically and globally.
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Generative AI Watch: SK Telecom Partners with Anthropic to Improve AI Capabilities for Itself and Partners

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in IT Leader

M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• SK Telecom’s (SKT) partnership with Anthropic builds on its continued investment in large language models (LLM) technologies as it looks to develop the technology foundation to enhance its operations and business as well as for the Global AI Telco Alliance.
• SKT will need to coordinate more closely with the alliance to ensure innovations built with Anthropic align to the overall needs of alliance members.

This week SKT announced that it was investing an additional $100 million into start-up Anthropic, a San Francisco-based company focused on artificial intelligence (AI), specifically LLMs. While the investment will net SKT a minority, the pair of companies are also engaging in a strategic partnership that will see efforts to build out multi-lingual LLM based on Anthropic’s “Claude” model, focused specifically on addressing telecom industry use cases across areas like customer service, marketing, sales, and interactive consumer applications. SKT and Anthropic will work together to deliver the industry-focused LLM with capability to respond to queries in Arabic, English, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. The choice of language reflects SKT’s ambitions for the partnership: SKT is a founding member of the recently announced Global Telco AI Alliance, where it is joined by telcos Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat by e& (e&), and Singtel in a mission to develop a shared industry platform for AI innovations (for more, please see Generative AI Watch: Global Telco AI Alliance Touts the Platform Cooperative as the Key to Telco AI Business Model Acceleration, July 31, 2023).
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Snowflake Showcased its Considerable GenAI Efforts at its Data Cloud World Tour

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in Big Data

M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• Snowflake showed off generative AI (GenAI) enhancements to its platform including enabling workloads to be run natively without data egress and a range of partner LLMs offered directly on the platform.

• While Snowflake has been aggressive in adding tools and features to support GenAI, it remains in many ways a closed ecosystem competing against larger rivals for the fast-growing market.

At the Data Cloud World Tour Sydney, held this August, Snowflake laid out updates and enhancements to its cloud-based data management and analytics platform. Further, it demonstrated its momentum in the Asia-Pacific region, bringing together local customers and partners to showcase its capabilities and efforts in Australia and the wider region. Snowflake’s core proposition remains providing a cloud-based “single source of truth” for data across an enterprise. By migrating all data and related workflows onto the platform Snowflake aims to eliminate silos, reduce costs related to data transfer and copying, and improve security and governance by creating one perimeter. This remains the core value proposition for the platform, as the company continues to expand capabilities and services beyond its roots in data warehousing, to offer a greater range of related data and analytics services. The event was used to showcase updates made to the platform in the last year through internal development as well as via acquisition as the company continues to expand the scope of what is one offer. One of the most central themes was the company’s effort to tackle the emerging market for GenAI services.

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VirtualPlatform Joins the MSP Wholesaler Ranks with API-Driven Automation

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in Network
M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• Wholesale MSP: VirtualPlatform will join a growing trend of Aussie companies white labeling ICT services to MSPs, leveraging APIs for automation of some services.

• Mid-Market Play: This approach, while not new, benefits from improved automation and has seen success in the mid-market – something larger telcos may want to replicate.

This week, a new competitor in the Australian MSP space, VirtualPlatform, announced its official launch. However, rather than compete directly with other MSPs, the company plans to function like a wholesale platform for other MSPs, opting for a 100% channel play. The company plans to offer voice (SIP/CTS), connectivity (services form nbn, Telstra, and AAPT), Microsoft365 licensing, cloud and data center infrastructure-as-a-service, backup-as-a-service, DNS and SSL for webhosting, SMS services, and a fax-to-email service.

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Parent and Child: Optus Should Seek Deeper Collaboration with Parent Singtel to Boost Enterprise 5G Ambitions

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in Cloud Enable, Internet of Things, Secure
M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• Both Optus and Singtel have invested heavily in 5G with an eye toward the enterprise market, but Singtel has surpassed Optus in terms of deeper partnerships and solution innovation.

• Optus and Singtel should focus on deeper collaboration on enterprise 5G to keep pace with innovations in the Australian market, using solutions and intellectual property (IP) developed by the parent in Singapore.

Australia’s number two telco Optus is fully owned by parent Singtel, one of Asia’s leading carriers in terms of network carriage as well as mobile network innovations. Both Optus and Singtel have been investing in 5G from the outset of when the technology became commercially available, and both have done well in rapidly expanding 5G coverage in their respective markets. Both have also switched on 5G standalone services in their commercial network, which enables more advanced capabilities like network slicing and edge compute. However, in terms of commercial development of 5G solutions and services, Singtel has far outpaced its Australian child company. Since the beginning of 2022, Singtel has wracked up a laundry list of 5G service innovations, trials, and launches.

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