Around the globe in four days at MWC 2024:

Sure. For sure. So my next guest today on the great indoors here at MWC Barcelona is mister Ilya Polshakov, the chief new business streams officer from Kyiv Star in the Ukraine. So That's right. Hello. Welcome. Hello, everyone. Yeah. Hello. And and thank you for taking the journey, the time to come and see us today. How's how's your day been so far? Quite intensive. Thank you for your invitation. No problem. This is, you know, amazing opportunity to to be here, to see a lot of innovations, a lot of companies who's trying to present the cutting edge technologies, which is already here. And definitely, I'm really impressed how, you know, like a full industry growing up. Yeah. And accelerating implementation because from talks to real implementation. Now we see a lot of progresses, but I believe it will be like a more more and more issue. Yeah. It's like a trends. It's already settled, and we need just to see real practices implementation. Now it's some kind of, you know, food for sorts for all of us. I'm really impressed from different companies, but now we will today discuss, right? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And for our listeners, Ilya, just give a little bit of your journey, your background, and your role at Kivestar. Yeah. I'm already ten years with Kyftar. Kyftar is number one telecom operator in Ukraine. So we're sourcing fifty percent of the whole market and definitely b to c and b to b, and we are working all all over the country. We are part of Vilm Group. And my journey started I came as a transformation director. And now I'm responsible for new businesses, but some kind of new transformation role for myself because, you know, it's like as a whole journey, you are changing company for good, right? And you are delivering new services, new products. Before it was like a more operational transformation, now it's like a more about business. New development, new partnerships, new technologies. It's some kind of, you you energize the whole company to be innovative. And this is the biggest challenge for the company. So just not to buy something, but to deliver and to create this value. Yeah. My background, telecom, not like my one industry while I work in. I'm a banker. It was before, it was the same, like a lot of transformations and M and A's in my life. Insurance business, it was the same, a lot a lot of transformations. And of course, IT, so I'm PhD. So I'm also like a guy who who likes a lot of researchers and development, but in some kind of regard, you know. Now business development, it's more about how you're entrepreneur in your company. Because Yeah. You can imagine, for example, you have an enterprise where you have very solid, robust processes. And all these solid, processes should be somehow fulfilled with business development. And definitely you are trying to accelerate all these processes, like to push business cases, to find right new partnerships, and to convince in terms of big company, like new developers. And this is amazing transformation from different telcos, but for Kyiv, starts for Ukraine, which was started developing three years ago. Okay, excellent, excellent. Now, let's talk a little bit. We'll we'll start technical and we'll start and then we'll we'll go wherever we we we need to go. Yep. But tell us about the AWS migration and the rationale and thought process to embark on this Yeah. Pretty ambitious project? That's very good question. Thank you very much. You know, it's like a long story before when when you come just to make such a decision. Right? Because cloud technology, it's more than like you are buying servers, you are buying, I would say, right engineers. You should find from cloud extra benefits, time to market, elasticity, new platforms, which is should be more than. Right? For Kiyosoto, we developed many, many years ago on open stack open platforms, our data platform. Right? And it's every year tried to be developed and upgraded. And one day, you are just discovering that it should be not only a model one. Right? But it should be new product for further developments, like, and we are searching new business development based on our experience. It's like some kind of, you know, dog food. Yeah. What you are eating, you should like promote. And that's the case. And for us, it was a journey with Amazon. Yes, when we start analyzing what can be mutual integration between business development and our internal developers. Because we're experts in what we're doing, but definitely it would be great just to bundle as a product and so services to to go to the broad market and to provide as a service for another telcos and other companies who really can rely on our experience. Right? Because you you can imagine, you are thirty years of experienced guys who who have a big data scientists and engineers and so so so on. Yeah. And how to to attract for other customers such easy to go solutions. With Amazon it was not easy approach, because you know, for enterprise to make such a solution, was definitely business case. Business conversation, what will be the product, how will it go, and definitely for Amazon, thank you very much. Guys was quite in advance with, they're also in vision. But would say, I need to thank them that definitely was triggered by very big cyber security attack, was definitely a little painful. But based on our experience, we deployed, we deployed everything from the cloud and it was not harmed at all. That's, I would say from resilience, from catastrophe, disaster catastrophe, resilience, you can be very, very much faster than to be on, or to deploy it on typical servers. Yes. That's how we say cloud adoption and cloud first, it really works. And even for professional ones who's working with data platform, you know, it's some kind of extra advantage, because you can develop your experience on latest technologies. You're not watching on different platforms outside because you are getting it from one hyperscaler. I think what's really interesting with what you said there, when you talk about your ability to recover from Yeah. A cataclysmic cyber attack was the fact that you would migrate it to the cloud. Yep. Without that, it would have been and that was something you never anticipated when you got into that project. So the benefits realized themselves way after and unexpectedly. But but it is incredible. And and when you talk about data, how important is data for you to harness the data? And how does it help Kevstar as an organization create new business models, move move into different verticals? Yeah. Very complex question, to be honest, know, because every single digit related to data, it means, you know, different areas. For example, you can have your as a telco data. You can buy extra data for different source providers. Right? But you need to understand what what product and services you are going to provide to your customers. Right? And that's why you should have data scientists, product owners, the full stack of the people who who are developing such services. Right? And definitely based on on this data, you are for entities who is ready to pay for it. Right? For example, for financial institutions. Right? It can be different services which is related to security. Like services which can predict some kind of, you know, situations just to avoid money loss for the end customers. Or it can be lead generation services. A lot of APIs based on data analytics, you know, like changing SIM cards online, trigger or turn, this is real time notifications based on customer behavior. Yeah. And you have developed all these services based on your knowledge. Yeah. And you are showing your partners how they can use in their industries. Yeah. It can be, as I said, banks for their credit cards. Yeah. Definitely, they can buy from our our side like a look alike models. Right? Just to understand, for example, where's their customers. Right? Yeah. In terms of behavior. And definitely for retailers, it can be the same. So it can be like lead generation based on data analytics of DPI. This is Internet traffic analyzer. Right? Yeah. And what is customer searching, what they would like, but you are not touching personal data. You are giving like a scoring, you know? Yeah. It's more a behavior, is this like, looks like that you are going to buy your car, or you are trying to to find, for example, something new good for you. Yeah. Because you're before a lot of try to find out. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why we're we're developing all these automized APIs and services. And definitely, we are working with domain expertise. As I said, it can be financial institutions like the bank, insurance companies, and it definitely can be for retailers. And also for companies who is trying to sell in the Internet, e commerce. Right? It's more like a relevant area. But I would say security, it's more next step, people still don't care about security. Until something bad happens. Exactly. It should be like a maturity of growth mentality of understanding what type of risk you are ready to pay. That's why I would say it's the next step of understanding and just to predict in such situations. Yeah. And, obviously, in the last two years, Ukraine has been in an extremely unfortunate position with with the war. The systems that you deploy, and we talked about resiliency and the cloud based native, how have they benefited the enterprises you serve? That resilience, that flexibility, that, know, in the face of catastrophic situation? You have very good questions. I like all of that. We can speak a lot of time about it. But to be short, I would start, first of all, you should like to look from different dimensions. For example, if you're enterprise, definitely you will care about what? About what type of risk you are ready to take, for example. You know, you should evaluate your risks. Yeah. Right? Second one, definitely each enterprise working on the business case study, you know, just to understand what is the benefits of this implementation, etcetera. But I still believe it's like a complex solution of making decision. Right? And my answer will be the following. So which this is not only about Kyiv Star, but it's definitely about balancing that you are doing, first of all, to support continuous improvement and continuous business development of the existing company. Right? Yeah. And based on this, you are making the decision. Right? Because you are trying to balance value creation of existing customer of existing company's business, right, like a telecom, for example, from b to c or for b to b. And definitely we are trying to understand the size of their investment in this such a technology. Because as I said, for example, a lot of IT guys today, professionals in a public cloud, like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and definitely they don't want to be like administrators of servers, which was like fifteen years ago. This is like is also professional skill. But for enterprise, it's first of all, focused on what? Time to market. Right? To have more cost efficient solution. And definitely to have proved future, I would say, in three, five years technology, will be cutting edge. Definitely, everything can be changed in three years. Yeah. That's why you should be ready just to to to be sure that three in three years, you will change your strategy in terms of, for example, cloud solutions implementation. But each enterprise definitely chosen not only one hyperscaler, multi cloud because not only one provider can be strong in everything, right? That's why you are balancing your cloud infrastructure in in in different technologies. So that's why I would say it's this is relevant for enterprises. But for smaller companies, SMBs, for example, like from five to, I would say, five hundred seats. Right? Well, working seats. It's very important like a time to market just pays you grow. Just, you shouldn't be expert in cyber security, in cloud security, in cloud technologies. They will not outsource, but they will buy from your professional services like it, who's professional ones Who can combine cloud, security, all, for example, stuff which is related to Amazon or Microsoft just to bundle all this stuff and to get it like everything from one hand. This is the main issue. And for what is more important for smaller companies, they are not so advanced in in modern technologies at all. And I I just can't imagine how much money should be invested from each CEO. From enterprises, it's more relevant because we are focusing on maturity of technologies. We should be like a technological leaderships in our industries. Now, in a similar way that the rest of the world during COVID went through a digital vault, right? A disproportional increase in digitalization that we didn't expect driven by the crisis and the need. Has the war had a similar effect on modernization, on digitalization, on the adoption of new technologies? I mean It's an amazing question. So I love your question. Yeah. Yeah. And reaching the age stuff like a step. Yes. If we start like a history from COVID, It was like a big trigger for all of us about distant workplace, about modern workspace, how you would like, and the teams collaboration technology. And thanks for example, for Microsoft, who has Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Office three sixty five, where you just get Teams collaboration tools for enterprises definitely. And our B2B customers accelerates in migration from typical collaboration tools to the modern workspace. Yeah. Why does it have, a bundle solutions from telco and non telco bundle service from Kirstar? And mostly SMBs did this because enterprises more or less was adopted. But for a smaller one, it was a huge motion of penetration. Even now, I would say like fifteen percent of SMBs penetrated by modern technologies. It's like blue ocean definitely. Yeah. But what is very important, in when war starts, definitely it was big question mark for business continuity for many for many industries and for many companies. Not in terms of price, how how much does it cost? Yes. It's more about we should migrate a lot of customers to the cloud because existing data centers where, for example, our customers deployed is not relevant already, right? Because business continue to create another request, because it more they can't ready to pay for stopping business. They are ready to migrate and to just to have non stop approach. And during the war, we migrated more than four hundred new customers. It was amazing motion, B2B customers. Yeah. And it was amazing motion of customers' needs about backups, migrating productive areas, and it was a lot of banks who really came and just asked a lot of workloads to migrate to the cloud. And I would say today it will be, this trend will keep continuing. Because you can imagine, because you shouldn't have your own data centers. Yeah. You should keep your IT staff for new products development, but not just to care about data center and infrastructure. Of course, it will remains for data regulation, right? Yeah. But for modern companies, it will become like a new standards of operating. And I believe from cost perspective, it's still question mark, because everybody cares about how much does it cost, right? Yeah. It will be challenging time just to be more smart of what way you're using and how we are using, because it was before like a more relief, financial relief for Microsoft and Amazon, and now it becomes like a time, time is slice and definitely a reliefs it. Yeah. And it will be question mark, how we you know, on the market more mature just to manage our costs. And it's more and I I believe this is a reference, you know, for many countries. Yeah. Because our customers become more mature in what they're using. Because, you know, it's like, you have become more advanced than another. And now it's a common new area of generative AI. Because it's still like, you know, question how to optimize a lot of standardized processes. Yeah. So it's really interesting. And, you know, we talk about the extra resilience that you put in. One of the things around COVID as well was there was a new found appreciation for technology. So technology almost had a rebrand, during COVID. Could the same thing be said about the situation that your customers, know, do they look at you differently in the current scenario as someone who's helping them survive and thrive? Yeah. Is there an appreciation that probably makes you feel good inside about what you do at Keystar in in in the current circumstances? No. You know, it's it's very, very hard and difficult question, you know, because for me, we are trying to be trustable support of our customers, you know, we're not just trying to them. Sell them, them, oversell them, you know. We are developed ourselves like to be a complex solution provider who cares about our customers, B2B customers, you know. And we are not like getting margin from all this cloud area. We attract customers into support just to keep them with us. You know, this is the general approach that you are becoming a company who is who is servicing and you can rely on. Right? And we found out this this is the way how you can attract new customers. Because in twenty twenty three, every second new customer that was not telco customer, they came for us as very trusted cloud solution provider. And we found new value creation. Every sort of this new second customer become telco customer, you know. And this is some kind new value thinking that you shouldn't be like, you know, over selling partner who's just trying to provide all the stuff. Particularly in in in this situation. Yeah. Yeah. As this is our, like, philosophy that we should be a partner or for whom you can rely. And definitely, we are we are trying to listen to the customer and just to help them. And this is attractive approach and trusted voice approach. Create extra value, you know. You you can you can calculate it, you know, like, on on a daily basis. But at the end, you can see hundreds of new customers, and you definitely can rely on this database because you don't have churn of this customer. Yeah. You have grown of them like fifty percent year over year. This is significant one trend. You know, this is more about how you build your strong and soft negotiations on the market. Because if you want to be like a one year player, this is one story. We to be We came here thirty years ago and we want to be there life. Yeah. And scale player. This is part part of our ecosystem and and our vision. Yeah. How we go. Now, what has generate I mean, this show is all generative AI. Yeah. What does it mean to your business? Yeah. How are you deploying it? And and this is a question I've asked everybody else, Dave, it was unscripted. How are you as an individual using generative AI? Let me see what Look, I like generative AR. Yeah. Right? It was like a first trials with when it was like even test mode. But definitely, I would say it's more still entertainment for me. Yeah. Right. But I I believe in future, it will be a big motion of AI, generative AI transformation of our company, and we're already working on it. But before it was like a fun, you know, yeah, just start start and type in some questions, you are getting like some food for thoughts and answers. Just realizing that it can be real big future. And now I I still, you know, like, see this strong trend of real adoption. Because before it was like, you know, first step that it's it can be like a indicator that we become step ahead with new motion of Microsoft and other players. Now, it creates some kind of reasonable why. It's like a one now. It can increase productivity for different, I would say, type of faults. Right? In contact center, in software development depends on, of course, you know. In in in typical operations, can optimize in customer experience and customer service and operations also. And definitely, I believe that this implementation will be next five years, like boost of penetration of all these technologies. Based on two things, can you get extra revenues? If no, you should save your costs on operations. Only two drivers will trigger this boost. Because you can't invest and do not get one or second. Yeah. I know. But I I I believe in Kyiv Star, our big data also focus on implementation in different areas. But it's still like a, you know, discover mode. Yeah. But I think this year we will start such a big program for the company. And how is one of the question I ask all the service providers, what are you doing as far as society, corporate responsibility? And obviously, you're in a very different environment now in the Ukraine. But what are some of the initiatives that KEVSTAR have done to help the communities, help people that have been displaced or people that have suffered directly from what is happening? Yeah. You know, we do a lot of CSR programs. But from business perspective, I would comment a couple of them, because we have a lot of PRs based on this. But I would say the most sensitive can come from humanitarian demining. Right. Yeah. Because I believe humanitarian demining, it's like a big program for next fifteen years, or fifty years. Because size of the problem you can imagine. And we as a business developed new service for Ukraine, real time kinematics with a Trimble company, with American Trimble company. And for us as a telecom operator, this is two stories. We want to help our farmers to be advanced in precision farming. Right? Because they should be quite in there, for example, with other farmers with whom they can compete. Right? And second one, F2K technology or real time kinematics, yeah, can be used for controlling how humanitarian demining proved. For example, we we have based on government general approach of humanitarian demining operators who should identify and just to eliminate all these exposure things. And based on FTK, you can control area and you can collect the data on on on real, know, on air. Right? And just directly put all this data through APIs to the global map, where is all the stuff, and it should be marked very accurately. Because ActiveKey provides like a accuracy of up to five centimeters. And you can imagine that you can control all these logistics of all the guys. And Kievstar is providing such a service for the humanitarian and mining companies who support and we are providing equipment and tools as a part of our CSR program. So I would say how to combine new technologies with such sensitive and very important areas because we would like to save and we hope to save lives of our people who are living and working on plants. Yeah. I know. Also. Yeah. Now, we're almost out of time. I really enjoyed the conversation. Yeah. Well, thank gone really quick. But we finish Yeah. With the TGI to go quick fire round. So it helps our listeners understand a little bit more about you, what makes you tick and what things you like. So you're ready for TGI to go? Yes. Yes. Always. Okay. Here we go. So you could visit one of these two places for a weekend break after Seven PM. After the show. Would you go to Rome or Paris? No. To Paris. To Paris. Have you been before? Yep. You like Paris? Yep. Okay. Would you take your wife? Yes, of course. Yes. My loves Paris. My wife loves Paris? Yep. Here's an interesting question I've been asking everybody today, and it's a football question. Okay. I'm not a football man, but I will try. Who's the greatest of all time? Messi or Ronaldo? Ronaldo. Ronaldo? I think. Yeah? Interesting. Because I have heard about him much more of it, but I'm not sure, but I still believe that I have heard much more of it. Okay. If you had to watch Star Wars or Star Trek, which one would you First one, which one? Star Wars or Star Wars or Star Trek? Star Wars. Yeah. Now, you're going out for a drink tonight and for dinner. Okay. Would you have a beer or would you have a nice Spanish riocha? Nice Spanish roll. Yeah. Have you have you had any nice dinners so far since you've arrived? No. No. I arrived very late. And my final question today. Yeah. I've asked everybody this. You know, I've had mine. And and it's interesting. Nobody has a clear position on it. Okay. But what is your which generative AI tool would you rather use? Chat GPT four or the new Google Gemini Advanced? If you've had a chance to. I just tried and used ChatGPT four, Pay As You Go subscription. Okay. And Karla now I'm using it. Are you using it? It's good. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. That's good. Well, I want to thank you for joining us Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. The time has flown by. I think you have some incredibly unique insights and you know, my heart goes out to everybody in Ukraine, and hopefully this situation will will come to an end soon, and you can get back to business. And and I I think what you guys are doing at Kevstar is is inspirational. It's fantastic. I'm really glad that you're an Amdocs customer. Yeah. And I wanna wish you the best for the for the rest of the week in Barcelona. Thank you very much. Appreciate meeting with you and it's great time to spend with you. Perfect. You are a very good partner for all conversation. Awesome. Take care. Thank you.