Ep 14 – The Software Series: PortaOne

This week’s guest

This is a crazy time for telco software vendors. Their customers are coming around to the fact that the shift to public cloud is inevitable, while also realizing that moving on-prem solutions to the cloud is like swapping out an airplane engine mid-flight. What to do?

In this latest installment of our Software Series, we talk with Andriy Zhylenko, CEO of PortaOne. The company sits in the crosshairs of this telecom dilemma. The industry needs a flight plan and PortaOne wants to get them to their destination.

Hit the play button to hear our conversation about:

• The balancing act of seeing the future and knowing how to get there, and trying to help customers come along on the journey [3:04];
• Why PortaOne chose Oracle to be its hyperscaler [5:37];
• The challenge of making big bet technical decisions as a software vendor while straddling two worlds [9:27]; and
• The risk and benefits of lowest common denominator solutions [11:38].

Listen to the end to get my thoughts on what people get wrong when they make big technical decisions [21:11].

Links and Resources

You can find the transcript for this episode here.

• Follow PortaOne on Twitter @PortaOne
• Check out the PortaOne website
• See how hard it is to switch airplane parts in mid-air when you watch this video from 1926 of Gladys Ingle replacing a tire – what PLUCK! When you’re done, head over to Twitter and add your dialogue to the silent clip in my Twitter thread.
• Check out Temporal, open source workflow builder
• Read the article from Spain’s El Espanol that suggests MWC21 is moved to the third trimester
• See my own informal Twitter poll about MWC  – 2/3rds think it’s not going to happen!
• Stay up to date on the latest from GSMA about MWC 2021

Guest bio

Andriy Zhylenko is CEO of PortaOne, Inc., and was the company’s CTO for 17 years. He oversees development and support of the telco BSS product and leads the engineering team that works on the company’s “gradual software updates for telecom” framework. He guided PortaOne from start-up to becoming a telecom BSS vendor renowned for its “radical transparency” in providing its source code and unlimited licenses to customers. Before joining PortaOne, Andriy was a software development manager for Telenor (Czechia), giving him firsthand knowledge of the challenges of telco operations.

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The Telco in 20 podcast won a 2022 Gold Hermes Award and was recognized on Forrester’s 2021 list of the Top 100 Channel Podcasts and Feedspot’s Top 10 Telecom Podcasts list.

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Podcast Credits

• Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios Royston, TelcoDR
• Executive Producer: Kristin Donelson, OneLouder Marketing
• Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
• Editor/Producer: Alisa Jenkins Wilson, Springboard Marketing
• Audio Editing: Andrew Condell
• Music: Dyami Wilson

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