The next step in CSPs’ cloud adoption: Moving core to the cloud

Hi. My name is Kevin Gray, publisher over at Fierce Wireless. I'm excited to be here today with Shumini Hortig, president of Americas over at Amdocs. Today, we're gonna be talking a lot about the status of CSPs and the cloud, including where the industry is today, what we can expect in the year ahead, and, of course, the role that, Amdocs plays in all of this. So so, Sumeet, thanks again for joining us here today. Let's go ahead and just get right into it. If you could, please tell us briefly a little bit about yourself, about Amdocs, and, of course, Amdocs' involvement in the cloud. Yes. Thank you, and, good morning. So as you mentioned, I'm leading the Amdocs business in the Americas, supporting customers in Canada, US, and Latin America. I've been in this role for more than five years. In addition to that, I'm also leading the mDocs global cloud practice. So which finds me in a in a position that I can talk to most of our customers globally and discuss with them the cloud journey and cloud transformation. I don't know how much you know, but Amdocs has a very unique business model. So Amdocs is a technology company and a services company. So as a technology company, we ourselves went through the process of migrating and moving all the portfolio of Amdocs to be cloud native. So as a technology engineering company, we had to go through this process, and I think we have the know how of what does it mean, what does it take, you know, to move your technology to the cloud native cloud computing technology of Amdocs today. On the same time, we're also a services company. So we provide a lot of services. So over the last few years, we spend a lot of time and energy and investment including acquiring companies to build the mDocs cloud practice. So we can provide services and help our customers to transform and to become their partner for this for this journey. So so let's go to the next question here then. So from what you see in the market right now, I know you're talking to all sorts of operators across the Americas. What are you seeing as the key motivations driving CSPs to to adopt the cloud? So first, I think we can say today that all our customers understand the value of the cloud. So if we were, you know, you took asked me the same question maybe two, three years ago, maybe it was a little bit more debatable. But today, I think everyone understand that the value and why they're pushing and moving forward to to the cloud. I think from the from the CSP perspective, their goals was always one of the following objectives. So first objective is always to be able to launch new services and to drive new revenue growth and to push forward in terms of the of the growth as a as a company. The second goal was always let's look for efficiencies. Let's look at what we do things better and reduce costs from everything that they do. And the third goal is to better serve the customers. So to provide better customer experience and to continue this digital transformation that they were going through. So I think from their perspective, cloud is another way how they can meet those those goals. And that's why you see all of them embarking on on the journey to the cloud. Now in terms of specific focus, what we see from from all over the world, so obviously cloud, cloudification of the network, that's an important area of focus for our customers. Investing a lot in five g and obviously trying to get the benefit of this investment. We see many of them closing data centers. So they're looking for ways to move the data centers to the cloud and by that saving a lot of facilities, labor cost, energy, and that's a cosplay for our customers. The third area of focus is velocity and the agility of their IT infrastructure. I think they're looking to push forward with their cloud transformations and to to provide a better experience for the customers. So definitely another reason. And throughout all of it, it's over security. So they wanna make sure that they have the secured systems and they're meeting all the regulation and the compliance that is needed. So security is definitely embedded in all in all the other goals that they're trying to achieve. Okay. So I'd imagine that some operators are certainly more advanced than others. But in general, like, how mature would you say CSPs are on their on their cloud journey today? So from CSPs perspective, you can understand that they have a very complicated ecosystem. It's a combination of, on one hand, many system that have been there for decades and were customized and evolved over the years. And together with that, they have the new platforms, the one that are already cloud native, digital platforms. Obviously, the five g network and other things that are already done in cloud native infrastructure. And the complexity is coming from the fact that they need to manage this hybrid. So how do you manage this hybrid and complexity environment and how you move to the cloud when you're not just on legacy or just on new cloud native infrastructure. So I think all our customers today, if I look at them globally, all of them have some cloud strategy. All of them defined it already. They know what is their aspiration, what they are trying to do, and they already started on the journey and started to execute upon this this strategy. I think that all of them, if you look globally, all of them have partnered with the hyperscalers, at least one of them. In most cases, it's it's it's more than one, and they have a strategic partnership with one of the hyperscalers. Now some of the customers are more advanced in the journey in terms of implementation. I can tell you that, for example, in in the US, AT and T is working very close with us on pushing forward a lot of cloud activities in partnership with Microsoft. So they're deploying on one hand cloud native infrastructure, on the other hand, migrating existing application to the cloud. So I think they are probably on the more advanced side. I think the T Mobile in the US are also quite advanced in in this journey. But all in all, if you look at it globally, I think most of our customers are already in this journey and are pushing forward this this transformation. Okay. Great. So that's a little bit about where we are today. What is the next big step or Yeah. Or challenge, I guess, CSPs are facing on this journey, would you say? So I think like any journey, and it was the right thing to do. Each customer started this journey in in the areas that were more easy for them to implement. Everyone was trying to gain some knowledge, some experience. You can call it, they started with the low hanging fruit or or the application that it was more easy to move them and to modernize them and move them to the cloud. I think that right now, in the next wave, and and we see it also happening in the last six months, They're coming and getting right now to the core system, the more complicated systems, the mission critical systems that they need to to move to the cloud, and that's a much more complicated discussion. MDocs is one of those core mission critical systems. So we're having a lot of discussion with our customers right now. What is the best way to move and to do it in the right way? You have to balance between, you know, trying to get the benefit and the all all the all all the good benefit that the cloud can give you. But on the other hand, you have to do it in the best way and to do it slowly and smartly. No one can allow any outage. No one can allow any interruption to the business. So how do you find a way to touch core systems, which are much more complicated and move them to the cloud? And those system, just to remind us, you know, they are supporting today billions of transactions every day. They're touching every user around the globe. So, the art of moving core systems to the cloud, I think that's the next challenge that, we and the industry, we need to, try to overcome in the next few years. Great. Okay. So only got time for one more question, and I have to tie this in for this for this interview, of course. Right? So what is the role Amdocs can play in Yeah. All of this in terms of CSPs cloud adoption? Yeah. So, you know, Amdocs has been a partner for the industry for many, many years, for several decades. And every decade, I can tell you that there's a different challenge that we are embarking together with our customers and and trying to help them move forward. With the cloud transformation, I think we have two roles. The first one, since we are working globally and we are exposed and partnering with all our customers all over the world, we accumulate a lot of knowledge on the cloud transformation and what is working well and and what is not working well and what can be done better. So we are trying to bring this global industry knowledge and to bring it back to our customers and help them define the cloud strategy and help them execute the cloud strategy, leveraging all the knowledge that we see right now all over all over the world. And the second goal, which I think it's our role, and I mentioned it before because I think this is the next big challenge of the industry in terms of moving to the cloud, how to move the core Amdoc systems to the cloud. And again, each and every one of our customers is working today. They're working today on on a different Amdocs platform. Some of them are twenty, thirty years old. Some of them are ten years old. Some of them are five years old. But for each customer, we were working diligently to find the right technological path, and how we can move them, and what are the best practices to move you from whatever system you're working today to your cloud environment, and how to partner with you and help you do that. And I think our customers right now are relying on us and working very close on us, how we can help them in this transformation of the core systems. And here, I think it's our opportunity to to help the industry move it to the next level. Alright. That's all the time we have for today. Shamir, thank you so much for joining us, and hopefully, we can do this again sometime. Thank you. Have a good day.