Category: IT Leader

IT Leader provides insight and guidance on issues impacting information technology and telecommunications professionals, focusing on overall market trends, strategic issues, and advice on supplier activities.

US Federal Government Demands IT Consulting Firm “Defends the Spend” in a Bid to Take Back Some of the $65 Billion Committed to Contracts

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in IT Leader
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets:

• The US administration is making clear its aim to improve government efficacy and slash expenses across the board.

• In IT, the General Services Administration (GSA) singled out its 10 largest consulting partners, demanding they justify their contracting value to reduce the current $65 billion public sector spend.

Change is inevitable with administration transitions, but the sharp pendulum swings the Trump US presidency brought with it have been swift and dramatic. There is no surprise that cuts were coming, but the shock is the speed and scale at which it is happening, and the profound impact these moves are having on IT specifically.

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Alibaba Cloud AI Tech Day Malaysia – Closing the Competitive Gap with Global Hyperscalers

by Alfie Amir, posted in IT Leader
A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• Alibaba Cloud is expanding its presence in Malaysia with a new data center and wider ecosystem.

• It is closing the competitive gap in cloud and AI, but still lacks local references.

Local Expansion

At the recent Alibaba Cloud AI Tech Day 2025 in Malaysia, Alibaba Cloud shared its latest initiatives in the country including the development of its third facility there (the first opened in 2017). This is part of its $53 billion investment in global AI and cloud within the next three years. The Chinese hyperscaler is also expanding its ecosystem in the country to strengthen its presence and further penetrate the market. For example, it has groomed over 50 ISVs with AI and expanded its partner network with key players such as YTL, Agmo, PIKOM, and National AI Consortium (KAIN). At the event, the hyperscaler announced two MoUs: with Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), a local investment firm, and with HiSEVEN, a regional digital marketing provider headquartered in Malaysia. Alibaba Cloud is also actively driving programs to build skillsets especially in new technologies such as AI and cloud. It has trained over 21,000 talents in the country and announced Alibaba Cloud AI Hackathon this year – the first in Malaysia.

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AWS Offers Deepseek-R1 on Amazon Bedrock as US Companies Embrace the Chinese Startup

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, IT Leader
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

  • DeepSeek-R1 Distill Llama and Qwen models became available in Amazon Bedrock Marketplace and Amazon SageMaker JumpStart in February 2025.
  • DeepSeek-R1 became available as a fully managed, generally available, serverless model in Amazon Bedrock on March 10, 2025.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) just became the first cloud computing provider to offer DeepSeek-R1 as a fully managed, serverless large language model (LLM) in general availability on Amazon Bedrock, a service that provides access to third-party foundation models. The publicly available DeepSeek-R1 series has taken the generative AI (GenAI) market by storm, with its advanced reasoning capabilities and reduced computing costs, made possible thanks to an innovative architecture based on mixture of experts technologies.

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MWC 2025: Orange Wholesale to Enable Mobile Operators with 5G Core NaaS

by Brendan Swan, posted in Communicate, Internet of Things, IT Leader
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

  • Orange Wholesale launched a 5G core network-as-a-service (CNaaS) solution. The service enables mobile operators to deploy 5G standalone from cloud infrastructure, redefining mobile connectivity.
  • Orange Wholesale provides operators with end-to-end support, including network and infrastructure management as well as software developments taking care of all the updates, security, and compliance issues.

Orange Wholesale launches its 5G CNaaS solution as the carrier looks to redefine next-generation mobile connectivity. The new 5G core solution is fully hosted and managed, allowing mobile operators the ability to deploy their own 5G standalone infrastructure within minutes using a cloud-based architecture without the need to invest in or maintain their own core network infrastructure. Orange Wholesale has also added a range of in-built features that include IPX connectivity, secure roaming, real-time SS7/LTE/5G standalone (5G SA) signaling, traffic visibility, and big data analytics for network optimization. Aligning with industry trends toward digitalization, Orange has integrated the solution into its digital service platform, Orange Click, making it easier for wholesale customers to order, monitor, and manage their connectivity solutions. While 5G standalone is in its infancy and has yet to bring many of these benefits, carriers should adopt this “as-a-service” model to capitalize on their 5G investment.

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European Telco Consolidation – Would It Work?

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

Summary Bullets:

  • There are increasing noises from European telco leaders and politicians that the market is too fragmented to succeed and needs consolidation. But consolidation won’t transform European tech.
  • Telefónica, BT, and others have divested non-core international operations as they refocus on the European market and look to grow regional strength and depth.

Marc Murtra, the new chairman at Telefónica, has been reported as wanting to pursue deals across Europe following the Spanish telco’s sale of its business in Argentina for EUR1.2 billion. Telefónica is also selling its stake in Telefónica Colombia to Millicom and has been reported to be planning to sell its Mexican operations.

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The AI Act: Landmark Regulation Comes into Force

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, IT Leader

Summary Bullets:

B. Valle

• On February 4, 2025, the European Commission published the Guidelines on prohibited AI practices, as defined by the AI Act, which came into force on August 1, 2024.

• The AI Action Summit took place in Paris (France) on February 10/11, 2025, with heads of state and government, leaders of international organizations, and CEOs in attendance.

It has been a busy few weeks for observers of AI in the European continent: firstly, the issuance of new guidance around the AI Act, the most comprehensive regulatory framework for AI to date; secondly, the AI Action Summit, hosted by France and co-chaired by India. The stakes were high, with almost 100 countries and over 1,000 private sector and civil society representatives in attendance, and the ensuing debate delivered in spades. With the summit following the latest issuance of the AI Act by a matter of days, part of the event concentrated on issues around regulation vs innovation.

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Sale of BT’s Irish Business Unit Underlines End of 20th Century Telco Global Domination Aspirations

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

Summary Bullets:

  • BT is selling Irish wholesale and enterprise operations, including about 3,400 km of managed fiber, 400 customers, and revenues of EUR57.6 million to challenger Speed Fibre Group.
  • BT’s move typifies many telcos as they scale back and restructure their global ambitions to refocus on fewer markets, presenting opportunities for challenger service providers.

BT has entered an agreement with Speed Fibre Group for the sale of its wholesale and enterprise business unit in Ireland. BT states it will “retain a strong presence to deliver connectivity, cloud, and security services to MNCs and large organizations.” The transaction is expected to be completed in 2025.

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DeepSeek, Deep Irony: How an Unknown Chinese Startup Stole the Limelight from the Stargate Project

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, IT Leader
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Chinese startup DeepSeek had released an open-weight model, DeepSeek-R1, with similar capabilities to many of the leading generative AI (GenAI) models available in the market, at a fraction of the cost.

• Like OpenAI o1, R1 is a “reasoning” model. These models produce responses incrementally, simulating a process similar to the way humans reason through problems.

Another week, another AI revelation. The news that Chinese startup DeepSeek had released an open-weight model, DeepSeek-R1, with similar capabilities to OpenAI o1, sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley (and Wall Street) just as the new US administration was inaugurated, with a display of big tech billionaires in attendance. A delicious irony, then, that while inauguration week was capped off with headlines surrounding the muscular Stargate project, a $500 billion initiative to fund AI infrastructure, the quiet (initially) release of DeepSeek-R1 would eventually steal that thunder.

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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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