Operators have under-invested in IT and need to ramp up spending over the next couple of years to get their systems up-to-date to survive in the new telco landscape, where the network and IT worlds are converging. But it's too early for the roles of the CTO and CIO to be combined, Axiata Group CTO Don Price said during a discussion at Management World Asia in Singapore earlier in the month.
The event has grown significantly since the TM Forum held the first MW Asia four years ago. A spokesperson said more than 400 people attended, with almost 40% service providers.
In a panel session entitled "Migrating from being a communications technology provider to an ICT provider", Price argued that telcos have under-spent on IT in the past - investing just 4-6% of revenue. He said operators need to boost spending to the 10-12% level over the next couple of years.
With talk of combining the role of the CTO and CIO as the network and IT converge, he said, "we're taking a different view with a netco approach, where we have a netco umbrella with IT and network assets and the CIO and CTO defining broad netco initiatives."
Price said there is a renewed focus on trying to get this piece right, but noted that for the time being he thinks they need an exclusive focus on each.
Gene Reznik, Accenture's MD for communications, media and technology in Asia, said that the network and IT sides are still two separate worlds, but he's seeing them starting to come together with "IT and product becoming one and the same".
He said a lot of operators are talking about taking their existing data center, spinning it off as a new company and commercializing it with the same IT people and making it a product.
The question is: how does this work if you're outsourcing your IT?
On the IT side, Price said it's about "your data center, your billing capability, your analytics and getting customer segmentation down to units of one in as near to real time as possible, not in units of ten thousand two days later."
At the same time, "what we see now is an unprecedented technology migration on the network side. So there are different pulls and each needs dedicated resources," he said.