Ep 54 – Bye-bye, private cloud; hello, public cloud

Every telco leader, consultant, and analyst I talk to these days says the telecom industry’s move to the public cloud is in full swing.

Today’s guest, Davide Bellini, agrees. As Accenture Applied Intelligence lead for the communications and media industry, he has his finger on the pulse of telcos around the world—what they’re thinking about, how they’re navigating challenges, and their vision for a future powered by the public cloud. Click play to hear Davide’s thoughts on:

• Public cloud adoption trends around the globe [03:40];
• What’s changed to make telcos more open to cloud transformation [11:28]; 
• Their greatest hurdles to migration success [13:56]; and 
• Why freeing data from siloed databases has become a business imperative [19:29].

Listen to our conversation by clicking play above or subscribe through your favorite podcast platform—see the links in the right column above. You can find the transcript for this episode here.

Links and Resources

• Read the TelcoDR blog “Think twice before building your own public cloud“.
• Listen to an early Telco in 20 podcast episode featuring Forrest Brazeal, Lift Off: Telcos moving to the public cloud – beware of lift and shift. (This is the one I rap in – seriously!)
• Want to know if there’s a hyperscaler region available in your neighborhood? Check out our handy spreadsheet of hyperscaler data centers (it changes by the week!)
• Which hyperscaler is winning? This Light Reading article quotes TelcoDR as saying that it’s probably AWS, followed by Azure, and then Google Cloud. For a more in depth look, read the Informa report (subscription required).
• Davide and his team recently released two reports on growth opportunities that small- and medium-size businesses are bringing to CSPs
  • The SMB Opportunity for CSPs: A New Path for Growth (Part 1)
  • The SMB Opportunity for CSPs: A New Path for Growth (Part 2)
• The Great Telco Public Cloud Migration is on! Watch this video of the world’s great animal migration—the Wildebeest migration—that happens each year in East Africa. 
• Davide lives in Italy and shares his last name with the drink made famous by Harry’s bar in Venice, the Bellini. Learn the history behind the drink and how to make it in this video.

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

Davide Bellini
Davide is an Accenture Managing Director with more than 23 years of consulting experience with Tier 1 Communications and Media industry clients across the world. He is the Global Lead for Communications, Media and Entertainment Industry in Applied Intelligence, Accenture’s division focused on transforming clients business with Data and AI at the core. Davide is also leading the Accenture SMB Growth offering for the Comms Industry globally, a transformational portfolio of end-to-end services to help CSPs generate value for the small- and medium-business segment with industry-specific, highly personalized and sustainable communication and technology services.

Episode 53
I scream, you scream, we all scream for MVNOs

The MVNO segment of telco is gaining momentum, which makes it the perfect time to explore the ins and outs of launching an MVNO and ensuring its success.

Episode 52
Born to run (in the cloud) with Nathan Bell

A few years ago, former M1 Chief Digital Officer Nathan Bell helped the MNO go all-in on the public cloud, making it the most cloud-forward telco in the world at the time. He shares the details of M1’s transformation journey.