Blue Orbit Partner Spotlight: Capgemini tackles radical network transformation
In our Blue Orbit Partner Spotlight blogs series, we highlight innovative solutions from Blue Planet’s partner ecosystem and discuss the market trends that are driving them. In this latest installment of the series, we feature Capgemini.
Paul McCluskey, VP of Partner Engagement at Blue Planet, recently sat down (virtually) with Jacques Assaraf, Head of Global Telco Industry at Capgemini, to discuss their views on 5G, Network-as-a-Service, and radical network transformations.
Capgemini is a global leader in partnering with companies to transform and manage their business by harnessing the power of technology, headquartered in Paris, France. Telecommunications is a top-priority industry for Capgemini, supported by more than 20,000 experts, and augmented by their recent acquisition of Altran which bolstered their network engineering capabilities and reinforces their leadership in the Intelligent Industry.
Capgemini works with leading communications service providers (CSPs), equipment providers, and industrial/enterprise players supporting more than 600 telco clients worldwide. We are delighted to have them join our Blue Orbit partner program and look forward to having a successful relationship together in the future.
To begin their discussion, Jacques highlighted the fact that despite a strong demand for connectivity today, CSPs are faced with peak CAPEX given the investments required in fiber, improved 4G coverage, and now 5G. What’s more, is OPEX is not declining so CSPs are feeling the squeeze. Jacques pointed to Capgemini’s focus on two key areas to help CSPs in this current environment.
A first area of focus is helping CSPs grow their B2B revenue in 5G and the edge by investing in 5G labs and building solutions to transform industry (B2B) verticals. The goal is to help their CSP customers build a new portfolio of B2B services, which is something new for them.
The second focus area is radical network transformation. This comes not only from 5G but also from open networks, which is a huge opportunity to reduce CAPEX and OPEX. However, this transition to open standards can be complex, and analytics-driven network automation is key to managing these complex networks.
Implementing automation in the network, this complex network of today, is absolutely key.
- Jacques Assaraf, Head of Global Telco Industry, Capgemini
Capgemini’s business is to solve end-to-end challenges for their customers, from strategy through to execution. Jacques emphasized the importance of transforming OSS and BSS to cope with the new services that CSPs need to offer, and the key role Blue Planet technology plays in managing and automating complicated disaggregated networks with different technologies.
Paul and Jacques spoke about several areas where Capgemini and Blue Planet are collaborating through the partnership, including a proof-of-concept for a network slicing solution at a major European telco which involves operating the network slices from the cloud. This will ultimately become part of a Network-as-a-Service platform. They also talked about important work happening in the 5G labs that will help reduce the risk in projects by demonstrating that different technologies and components of a solution work together to deliver on the performance, scalability, and interoperability expectations.
Paul and Jacques wrapped up their discussion by underscoring that the bottom line is always about connecting new technologies and the solutions they enable to the business challenges of the customer. Put another way, it’s not enough to have an interesting new technology if it can’t be applied to something useful.
It’s important to Capgemini that there is a strong link between their proposal to the customer and the outcome, whether that is increasing revenue, increasing flexibility, or reducing time-to-market for new and differentiated services. According to Jacques, the industry is entering an important period for networks, and he believes that making it accessible is an important mission for Capgemini.
We are really entering a period of time where networking will be very important, at the heart of lots of things, and making it accessible is really key for us.
- Jacques Assaraf, Head of Global Telco Industry, Capgemini
On behalf of Blue Planet, I’d like to welcome Jacques and his colleagues at Capgemini to Blue Orbit and thank him for sharing his views on the market.
