Tech Is Giving Telcos a Winning Edge

As telcos expand beyond their traditional network businesses, the most successful tech-enabled companies are focusing on seven winning IT themes:

1. Modern technology operating model. They’re implementing an agile technology operating model that’s aligned with the company’s strategy, enables products to reach the market quickly, and allows for rapid iterations with customers.
2. Mature data analytics and AI foundations. They have well-defined data management and architecture protocols that support implementation and scaling of artificial intelligence applications, including generative AI.
3. New monetization models enabled by “network as a service.” They’re fostering new network-as-a-service business models by decoupling and automating network architecture, as well as making network operations more autonomous.
4. Reinvented core IT stack. They’re investing in open digital architecture with application programming interfaces (APIs) and microservices that fully support the API economy. Legacy apps are getting phased out aggressively; leading companies plan to shift more than 95% of their apps to the new modular architecture.
5. Value-driven cloud strategy. They’re putting in place a cloud-first technology infrastructure—including for the network itself—with adequate controls, and they ensure that the migration path of legacy infrastructure is clear and economically viable.
6. State-of-the-art cybersecurity. They design their systems to be resilient, with a cybersecurity approach that’s proactive, automated where possible, and continuously evolving.
7. Competitive technology costs. They work to make their technology spending (across both operating expenditures and total expenditures) competitive and transparent, while delivering a high return on investment.