Telecom Review, the world’s leading telecoms news platform, held a virtual panel, entitled ‘Role of cloud in accelerating business’ which was attended by hundreds of virtual participants, featuring industry leaders from across the world, to discuss the need for digital transformation in this space.
Telecom Review, yet again, managed to mobilize some of the global telecom industry’s top figures for the panel discussion. The panel was moderated by Founder of Telecom Review and CEO of Trace Media, Toni Eid and the panelists included: Haithem Al Faraj, SVP of Technology and Operations, stc; Hatem Bamatraf, CTO, Etisalat; Omar Akar, VP and Managing Director of Cloud and AI Business Group in the Middle East, Huawei; George Jaber, VP Wholesale Business Development and Bid management, at ITC KSA; and Annette L. Geuther, VP Market Development at Colt Technology Services.
The panelists shed light on the role that cloud technologies played in today’s post-COVID world. With the rise of remote work, e-health and distance learning, it is no doubt that business will need to adjust accordingly in order to survive in this reformed ecosystem.
The panelists shared their insights on some other pertinent topics, including the ways in which cloud could boost business growth, its role in aiding the success of digital transformation, as well as network and business readiness for cloud adoption- among many others.
Haithem Al Faraj, SVP of Technology and Operations, stc, commented: “When we look at what 5G is promising in the future, there are a lot of potential use cases. We have to deal with 5G differently- there will be much more collaboration with the customers and there's no predefined services we can estimate in the future.
“We are now witnessing a new industrial revolution which is a combination of different technologies. We will be an enabler and an accelerator of the digital transformation.”, said Hatem Bamatraf, CTO, Etisalat.
Omar Akar, VP and Managing Director of Cloud and AI Business Group in the Middle East at Huawei, said, “Digital technologies, especially 5G, AI and big data analytics are key cornerstones of any digital transformation. At Huawei, we have geared a lot of our R&D spending towards these technologies. Together, they can enable the organizational plasticity to guide organizations for many years to come.”
“We are currently analyzing use cases for private 5G network deployments and we look at AI as an enabler to enhance the performance of our own network and to enhance user experiences. We also collect a lot of data. We need to think about how to collect data, analyze it in a secure way and monetize it,” said Annette L. Geuther, VP Market Development at Colt Technology Services.
George Jaber, VP Wholesale Business Development and Bid management, at ITC KSA, stated: “The most important technologies right now are 5G and cloud computing. As an operator, we are now investing more and more in cloud computing capabilities.”