Telecom firms explore cloud tech

RITIKA SHARMA / Emirates Business

In an effort to keep up pace with evolving technology, telecom companies in the region are exploring cloud-based technological services. Apart from aiming to empower customers through automation of services and operation, the firms are
also looking at making their businesses more efficient and accessible to trade partners.
In one such move, Etisalat — the Middle East’s leading telecom — has activated its first live Network Function Virtualization telco cloud in Abu Dhabi. The telco cloud platform will help create a one-stop shop app/online portal with fast, intuitive and pleasing user experiences and interfaces. It will also provide service capabilities e.g. self-configuration, self optimisation and self-healing functions, an official statement from the company said.
Esmaeel Alhammadi, Senior Vice President of Network Development in Etisalat and Sahaab programme lead, said in an official statement, “We thought it was a technological step, requiring a mere upgrade of the network and services. But it turns out to be more than that. It’s a shift in mindsets and how things get done. It’s not every year that we have technologies like these that have the potential of adapting to customer wishes faster and opening new avenues for future innovations and collaborations.”
Telecom companies are in fact aiming to virtualize their infrastructure and services across the portfolios of data, communications and mobile services. Experts say that this move is meant to efficiently make telecom resources and services more automatic and open for scope of innovation.
Ravinder Ahuja, senior quality assurance engineer at Techworld, a regional IT solutions provider, told Emirates Business, “Telecom companies in the region are leading by
example and the speed at which
they are embracing virtualisation is really impressive. All that is required now is that the companies should
be sure that customers are the end beneficiaries.”
The virtualisation programmes basically aim to harmonise between the hardware-centric telecom services and the software-centric cloud services. “Cloud services have entered almost all fields now and it has completely changed the way we looked at connectivity. Telecom is one sector that needs this transformation soon, not just for the sake of customers but also for the fact that this can improve business prospects immensely,” he added.