Digital transformation 360 vision magazine

360 VISION

06 2018

DIGITAL JOURNEY A LOOK AT HOW TO TRANSFORM INTO A FULLY DIGITALIZED ORGANIZATION

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Digital Transformation So what?

Haven’t we always been doing digital transformation in the telecom industry? Surely all the effort and investment that has gone into the move towards all IP network in the last decade have all been about the move to digital?

We have all heard that comment before, but with the speed of change in the world these days, digital transformation has become a do or die activity.

But a question that is rarely asked and answered is: What does digital transformation actually mean? In truth, it is far more than anything to do with the word ‘digital’, or technology itself. It is all about reinventing ourselves, our businesses and even our societies and to fully accept that change should be designed into everything we do. As George Bernard Shaw said:

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

A very appropriate reminder, and as a later article in this series will explain, digital transformation starts with ourselves. If we cannot change our mindset, we are highly unlikely to be able to change our approach, our teams, our services and our businesses.

THE FUNGIBILITY FACTOR Let’s start with a word that is rarely used in polite society - fungibility. From my point of view, this word describes perfectly what digital transformation is all about. It means that everything we do should have the intrinsic ability

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to be substantially changed.

To some extent, the telecom industry has striven for years to achieve the opposite. We have designed networks, systems and sales approaches to standardize everything.

Furthermore, we have frozen changes around major holidays and implemented approaches where any contract, especially for transmission and connectivity services, must last for at least 12 months, otherwise termination charges will be applied.

You want to increase your capacity? Sure, we need to cancel that order, waive those charges if the new order is of greater value, provision a new circuit, changeover the service to that circuit and then cancel the old one. Yes, this is somewhat old school, but I’m sure many readers will recognize the approach.

But what today’s customers want now is what they experience in their day to day lives complete flexibility in approach, in commercial terms and the technology they choose to use.

And what’s more, they want to be able to control it themselves, to see how well it is performing and to tie the service they are getting directly to their own processes, so that they don’t even need to contact us to improve their service.

EMBRACING THE CLOUD MENTALITY IS NOT AN OPTION The unicorns of today are dominating the world and driving customer expectations towards the instant gratification of mobile app-based

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service that we now take for granted. A Unicorn is defined as a start-up company with a stock market valuation of $1.0 billion or more and they have become so dominant such that, in late 2017, CB Insights has tallied 220 unicorns with a cumulative value of $763 billion.

Some familiar U.S. based unicorns include Uber, Airbnb, Palantir Technologies, WeWork and Pinterest. China claims a number of unicorns as well, including Didi Chuxing, Xiaomi, China Internet Plus Holding and Lu.com. Their key common denominator is that they have not just accepted change - they have embraced and welcomed it. They have designed everything about their services and products to be totally fungible - changeable at will.

It is no longer a question of whether you should accept that new reality - you must! Ever wonder what is happening to the once vibrant industry of licensed private hire operators - the people you used to call when you needed to get from A to B in a city? In London alone, the rise of Uber and similar app based services has resulted in at least 10 private-hire companies closing per month.

And Uber isn’t really in the business of providing that service - it is in the business of matching a customer need instantly and smoothly with someone willing to provide that need. Yes, it is currently a taxi, but it could equally be any other type of service.

So there is no way around it, service providers everywhere and at every level need to rethink their business and the way they operate to incorporate the cloud mentality at every level of their business.

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING… So now that it has been established that digital transformation is not an option and it needs to

be initiated yesterday. The obvious question that comes to mind next is: What should I do now?

The number one focus should be the design of change into every business and technology component and system. We should also encourage the desire to make things work automatically, not just by following rules to achieve a certain service level, but by using software defined intelligence to anticipate issues and resolve them before they become visible.

More importantly maybe, we need to come to terms with the fact that each carrier will not be able to function independently and will not be able to meet all customer needs on its own.

So, we must design partnerships to enable the desired capability to be threaded automatically to deliver end to end service at the instant it is required and to smoothly evolve it as that need progresses. We must adopt the “do it fast and flexibly” mentality of the unicorns and their larger partners in the cloud space, while still achieving the quality and reliability that is expected of global telecom networks.

And that is only the beginning…. The rest of this series of articles will explore in more detail what network service providers should be doing ideally what they should have already started.

Looking at network transformation, service transformation and finally organizational transformation, we will explore the mindset and approach to move away from an industry focused internally on itself into one focused entirely on the customer and their needs and desires.

This is not easy, it is risky and potentially expensive, but in reality, there is no choice.

Steve Heap CTO, HOT TELECOM

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table of ContentS network transformation

service transformation

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organization transformation

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digital organizations

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about HOT TELECOM about epsilon

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Leading the telecom transformation with Strategy & transformation Marketing & creative thinking Market insights C-Level workshops Thought provoking events

HOT TELECOM

Daring to dance to a different beat

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION The end goal is to give customers control

network transformation

it starts with the heart

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e all agree that digital transformation is a “must do” activity for all telecom companies, but what does that actually mean when it comes to the network?

From our point of view, digital network transformation starts with the heart.

The network is arguably the heart of most network service providers, and we could be referring to that. But in reality, what we really mean here, is the people. If the hearts and minds of the people in the company are not aligned with its vision to design change into everything they do, then no amount of strategizing will make much difference. So, the key to digital network transformation is actually to make the first change one of mindset rather than technology.

It also means placing your customers at the center of this transformation. Transform your network to support their current and future needs, not yours. This means putting yourself in the mind of your customers - current and future - and asking yourself “what would I want if I was in my customers’ shoes?”

In effect, you need to think like your customer and complete this sentence for them: “I want to…” With a range of answers, you can start to work out how that could be delivered in your network. Not only that, think about how to design the solution such that variations of future answers, that you probably can’t anticipate yet, could be delivered. Ask yourself how the network and its surrounding systems and processes can be designed such that as yet unspecified needs could be delivered quickly and smoothly.

The clearest approach comes from separating the network functions from its physical and service layers, to give it more flexibility, make it more fluid and malleable. From there, the physical will restrain the services no more, but rather it will become the foundation of what you put on top: programmable, scalable and orchestrated functionalities.

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REAL-TIME, TRANSPARENT CONTROL The end goal of a successful network transformation is to give customers control of how they can manage and control your capabilities to meet their needs.

Network services, especially transmission based, used to be deliberately hidden from the customer.

Yes, they could see the interface we provided to them, they could certainly see the complex order forms and contracts we put in front of them, but that was the limit to our transparency.

How our network was routed, configured, managed, maintained, repaired and what performance it provided was hidden inside our systems and processes. If it failed, they could always report the fault and we would fix it, but we essentially designed our networks for ourselves and let the customers use them.

A transformed programmable network is the complete opposite. Connectivity should be a capability that we offer, one that is easy to establish, easy to change, transparent in its operation and billed as it is used, in real-time.

Although our vendors are keen to support the move to software defined networks, and some provide APIs to enable their control via an orchestration layer, they are always interested in selling their components and systems if possible.

Having control of that orchestration layer, and being able to establish services as required across both new equipment and the legacy infrastructure components, is a key step towards an efficient and cost effective approach.

In reality, we must start with what we have in place and put our focus into creating an orchestration layer, APIs and portals that we design ourselves in many cases, to make all these disparate components work as one, transparently and in real-time.

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When we achieve this, the customers will be able to take their rightful place at the center of our network evolution.

CREATING FLEXIBILITY AND EFFICIENCY THROUGH PARTNERSHIPS With this in place we can give customers flexibility and efficiency. To deliver this, we need to enable capacity increases on-demand (and via a portal or API) and billing that matches that usage so it ties their operating cost to their revenue. With that approach, we can migrate them to pay for usage services that fully meet their needs.

With a portal like the one designed by Epsilon, known as Infiny, the provisioning of services in real-time is the core to the solution, and is the future of networking.

This opens up a wider opportunity: The creation of global solutions via partners rather than on your own. As the world is getting more complex, no-one can build networks to every conceivable place that a customer may need or include every function it may require.

Often, carriers have built deeply into certain regions and so end to end services based on automated network interoperability through APIs can expand the reach of those solutions in a very cost effective way.

This is made possible by utilizing the capabilities of partners to reach areas of the world that currently, perhaps, don’t justify a network build.

In effect, this could enable a capex light way to serve customer needs, which allows the solution to scale until it becomes financially justifiable to expand the footprint with a new network build.

The key is enabling the overall platform to provide the services on-demand and flexibly to meet those end customer needs. This means partnering both at the network and service level when it makes sense.

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TRANSFORM THE NETWORK TRANSFORM THE PEOPLE The next step towards achieving business and service transformation is to capitalize on what you already have in place to rapidly benefit a new way to approach network connectivity. This is not only about transforming equipment, technology, systems and services, but also people.

We started this article with the statement that mindset is key, and it should be recognized right from the start that not all your current team members will evolve to this new world. The new skills of agile software development to provide the required portals, APIs and orchestration layers almost certainly will require new recruits.

development and analytics. In general, skills will have to evolve from straightforward configuration work into more complex tasks such as solution architecture and analysis. Although more challenging, this also provides engineers with a new skill set that will be key to software driven and controlled networks.

TRANSFORMING YOUR NETWORK IS ONLY THE BEGINNING Of course, transforming a network is just one small step in your overall digital transformation journey. Therefore, our next article will dig deeper into service transformation and what it will mean for you and your customers. Watch this space!

You will also probably have to seek people with skills such as project management and software

The 3 pillars of network transformation

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Orchestration and Partnerships should be at the core of your transformation

Service transformation it starts with the customer

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etwork transformation, towards the sort of agile platform that customers are looking for, is only the beginning of the digital transformation journey, and in some way, the enabler of what else needs to take place. You could see this as a chicken and egg scenario, where networks need to evolve because services do while services cannot evolve without the network enabling them to.

But having discussed what needs to take place for digital networks to take shape in our prior article, we will now focus on the digital service transformation journey.

THE WORLD IS CHANGING AND FASTER THAN YOU THINK We are living in a rapidly changing world. Everywhere we look, the things we consume are changing from a “purchase” to a “lease”. Instead of owning a product, and paying a lump sum to acquire it, we are increasingly just consuming that product as a service, when and where we need it, paying monthly or even per event, perhaps paying a variable amount depending on what we need. Even one of our biggest purchases - a car - is rapidly being re-thought such that we get a vehicle that is available just when we need it, rather than spending a lot of its life parked and depreciating.

In telecom, up to now the world has been (and still is) very static and traditional. Long term contracts are demanded, rigid terms are enforced. The largest network service providers have significant legacy networks and systems with billions invested in that structure. As public companies, the guaranteed revenue from long term contracts is seen as a strength - the shareholders can rely on that revenue and profit year by year. Or at least they could!

Unfortunately, customers no longer see this as an acceptable way of doing business. The rapid rise in cloud computing is totally changing the way customers think about their costs. Synergy Research

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puts the global revenue from cloud computing at US$180 billion and growing by 24% annually.

Companies now take for granted that they no longer invest big dollars in large static data centers to manage their systems and IT load.

They sign up for computing and storage on demand and tie their costs to their needs.

In that environment, who then wants a long term contract to connect their offices and facilities to the cloud using the rigid approaches we have used for so long? They want to access their computing capabilities securely and with high quality, certainly. But they also want to be able to turn up that capacity smoothly, automatically and with a cost that varies with their needs.

In effect, companies large and small are looking for connectivity made simple and global network operators, such as Epsilon, are enabling service platforms that give their partners just what they want – flexible, on demand, high quality connectivity that they can consume rather than own.

IS IT REALLY ONLY ALL ABOUT TECHNOLOGY? Technology is a big part of this. Not just the transport layer, but more importantly in the systems, portals and APIs that enable network services to be rapidly provisioned and controlled by customers as their needs change. But more than that, the service organization needs to transform in significant ways as well.

As we all know, people in our organizations have skills that they have honed over the years, but sometimes that can make us comfortable in the way things have always been done. Sales teams in telecom companies can know their processes backwards, can turn out the solid contracts that have underpinned provisioning of new services, accept the orders, chase those orders through

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the engineering teams to ensure provisioning meets the (relatively) rapid ready for service dates. All of that needed skills and expertise and a certain mindset.

In the new world, the mindset needed is very different. The contract is more of an overall service agreement to be established once, and then the order forms, provisioning delays and chasing of engineers is a thing of the past as services are activated and de-activated or upgraded by the customers themselves as their needs fluctuates.

Consequently, the relationship management function role must change to enable the concept of true managed services and the benefits that come with flexible on-demand services that are self-managed and controlled. Rather than reactively servicing orders for network services, people will increasingly be working with their customers on strategic planning for their service evolution.

However, it is likely that not everyone will be comfortable moving to that new environment and so the core of any digital transformation journey starts with the re-invention of the organization.

REACHING A NEW BREED OF CUSTOMERS Epsilon has been a key player in the world of global connectivity for many years, bridging carriers, cloud and application service providers together to make their connectivity simple. As an agile provider, they realized early that not only were customers’ needs evolving, but that customers themselves were also changing.

For example, the unicorns have grown almost from nowhere, to be major users of global connectivity, as they develop and deploy their services to meet the needs of their global customer base. So, the ability to reach beyond

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the traditional operator or carrier market, to address these new rapidly emerging potential customers, is crucial to continue to thrive in the new digital world.

This of course means expanding your portfolio, features and capabilities to address them in a tailored fashion. But more importantly maybe, it means redefining how you reach and serve them.

Consequently, a future proof service environment needs to involve partnerships that not only help you manage those services, but that also play a key role in extending them to new geographies and new customer segments.

As a result, providing API and Portal based solutions, that themselves can be whitelabelled for partners, is a key part of that.

You need to add to this the flexibility to extend the portal vertically to handle as yet undeveloped services. Industry specific portals - perhaps finance-oriented or health-oriented environments, for instance - will in our view be essential going forward.

In essence, the combination of Orchestration and Partnerships should be at the core of your transformation, so you can reinvent the way that connectivity services will be consumed in the future.

The 3 pillars of service transformation

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Be bold and don't delay

Organization transformation

it starts at the top

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Organizational transformation, as part of an overall strategy to reinvent yourself into a digitally enabled company, starts with the realization that the world has changed enormously in just a few years. The rise of cloud computing and ondemand resources has not only changed the way that customers look at their vendors and suppliers, it has changed the customer itself.

Customers now want instant access to services that meet their specific needs, that they can control in real time and are judging suppliers not by the piece parts they can provide, but by the overall experience.

Telecom is in the middle of all this, and to reap the benefits of these changes or even to stay in business, we need to reimagine just what it means to put the customer at the heart of everything we do. To achieve this, we need to use our imagination and innovative skills to move our networks, systems and most importantly our organizations into truly customer focused units.

BIG CHANGE DOESN’T COME EASILY Making as big a change as is required to become fully digitalized organizations is an arduous and overwhelming task to many. Not only because of the major legacy revenue, systems and investments of the old world, that we cannot just let go, but also because of all the uncertainty that it implies. There is an unknown in most of the people’s minds on how companies will operate and flourish in a way that has never been done before.

In our opinion, the starting point of a successful organization shift is undoubtedly a brave and bold leadership, as everything starts at the top. As the journey will be a difficult and lengthy one, without a strong and unwavering support and message coming from the top, the rest of the organization will struggle in getting the focus and momentum it requires to reinvent itself.

From there, to succeed in this new digital environment, new talents need to be placed in strategic roles to trigger a new vision, culture shift and direction throughout the whole organization.

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The next step is then to question who we are as a company, how we can remain relevant and what services we should offer. We need to review most aspects of a business’ operations from top to bottom. From the talent, to the organizational structure, the operating model, products, services, all the way down to the language we use in our day to day business.

Actually, changing the language used by the organization, not only to interact internally, but more importantly to interact with customers, could be the first step towards an all-encompassing ‘can do’ culture shift.

We also need to look towards the future, to define how customers are evolving, the type of services they will require, the type of interaction they will expect, which will guide us in determining how we must evolve as an organization to remain relevant.

The transformation also needs to be driven with full transparency and openness internally.

Exposing the issues that are troubling the company, how the competition is evolving, how we are performing and how we need to improve are all key to the transition. In most cases, the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are driving each manager need to be re-assessed.

We must make sure that managers are not just paying lip service to this new direction, perhaps assuming that it is just the latest fad. Such people will hinder the transition. The implications of this should not be underestimated, as KPIs which are not structured to encourage the organization to implement the types of behavior necessary for the transformation, are often the origin of a failed organization transformation.

Not only that, but rewarding customer delivery and satisfaction must apply at all level of the organization, from the sales team to the operational and engineering groups.

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AN ORGANIZATIONAL NEW WORLD Many network service providers have been comfortable in their world and digital transformation is changing everything about their organization from top to bottom. For example, sales teams will no longer sell components offthe-shelf - instead they will sell solutions and customer-managed services.

Engineering staff will no longer assign individual circuits and services across the networks to meet a customer demand – instead they will shift into higher level capacity management and analytic tasks that are aimed at keeping the network running smoothly as the individual services are directly established by the customers themselves.

Many smaller telecom companies have perhaps, in the past, outsourced software development.

Now, the systems are under constant evolution and are at the core of service providers’ business.

Consequently, instead of a new release once a month, two to three new software drops may be implemented each day, as new features and capabilities are launched. Software development will therefore permeate throughout the organization and become a key in-house activity, as coding is becoming a new business language of sorts.

Finally, product management teams must learn to launch services fluidly with a DevOps mindset, they must learn to take risk and launch services that are good enough to test the market – implementing a try fast, fail fast type of mentality.

Additionally, this culture shift should extend outside of the organization and should also impact the type of partners and suppliers service providers choose to do business with. Joint business initiatives should be conducted with like-minded organizations, who themselves are embracing the digital transformation journey

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and all that it encompasses. Then and only then can you ensure that you deliver to customers’ end-to-end expectations at all time.

PEOPLE ARE AT THE HEART OF THE TRANSFORMATION The successful digital organization transformation therefore requires a complete review of the skills, culture and type people at the heart of the organization to instill an aura of creativity, boldness and entrepreneurship.

As for all the technical complexity in modern networks, at the end of the day, the innovation and creative risk taking of the people in a company are what drives its success. Through the course of this transformation, failure will need to be seen as a good thing sometimes, as risk taking and trial and error will become part of the day to day reality of any successful dynamic, disruptive organization.

In today’s complex world, all organization transformation journeys will be different.

However, if you want to increase your chances of success, you should: • Make sure you have the right leadership for the job • Protect the bottom line through the transition • Encourage transparency throughout the organization at all phases of the transformation • Enable for creative risk taking to move forward as fast and flexibly as possible • Never stop re-evaluating your organization, as we are entering a world of constant change But more importantly, be bold and don’t delay, as the digital storm is already here!

The 3 pillars of organization transformation

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SUCCESS Move away from a culture of ‘me’ to a culture of ‘we’

digital organizations leadership, culture, skills George Szlosarek CEO, Epsilon

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eorge Szlosarek, CEO at Epsilon, is one of the driving forces behind Epsilon’s digital transformation. Having co-founded one of the industry’s most nimble and disruptive network service providers 15 years ago, he is now leading his organization through the uncharted territories of the digital world.

During the course of this interview, he shares his view on what is required to successfully transform service providers’ organizations into a lean and agile operation, which not only masters innovation, and business insight, but more importantly, which is obsessed with customer satisfaction. Prepare for the digital storm, as it is already here!

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RE-IMAGINING OUR ORGANIZATION

Why do you think organizational transformation is so important in our industry at the moment?

In the last 5 years, our society has changed considerably, partly due to the introduction of IP, mobile, OTTs, cloud and applications. As a result, our customers’ expectations are now all about on-demand, real-time consumable networks.

The cloud has changed the way they view infrastructure spending and deployments, and they now want instant access to connectivity.

Customers are also looking for new consumption models, which mirror scalability and agility of the cloud services they support.

For example, they seek application and integrated usage models, which give them a seamless, automated and highly adaptable experience.

To deliver this type of agile experience, we must re-imagine the way we not only interact with our customers, but more importantly, how we can deliver it. We must therefore re-invent the way we develop new ideas, innovate and create solutions.

Additionally, the need to integrate the application and the network, into a common experience, creates the necessity for a very different type of organization. One that works more collaboratively and much more closely together. As a result, organization transformation is at the heart of our future success.

What does a successful organization

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transformation journey look like?

There is no magic formula for success. A company’s transformation program is a time intensive investment, as it entails the reeducation of all involved in the organization. It requires a complete re-rethink of the way we do business.

To achieve this, the transformation must start at the top. Companies must be spearheaded by a focused and aligned leadership team that can drive innovation and foster a culture that allows failure. They must foster people to try new ideas that may not always succeed.

Then, we must recognize that the customer is at the heart of our transformation. We must understand that the transformation we are going through and the innovative solutions we are launching are only there to enable us to better serve them. Consequently, each and every individual in the organization must own the customer and be assessed as such.

In addition, to create a seamless end-to-end solution, many inter-dependencies must now exist across multiple teams, and this needs to be coordinated more tightly and smoothly than ever before.

We must therefore move away from a culture of ‘me’ to a culture of ‘we’. Which means changing the culture of the organization towards collaboration and team success.

Finally, the vision and plan needs to be communicated clearly across the organization and we must have the full commitment of all the employees towards this transformation journey. As all need to work towards the same direction, as such an all-encompassing

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transformation cannot be achieved in isolation by a small group of individuals. It requires the buy-in of the whole company.

NEW SKILLS, NEW MENTALITY

Do you think it is realistic to achieve a successful digital transformation with the current skill and types of people we find in our industry?

Of course, we will need to hire bright talents and get people in from new markets, with software and DevOps background from adjacent segments. So, yes we definitely need to grow our talent pool. Obviously, these people will not want or be able to work on our traditional business. They will want to focus on the more creative and innovative solutions.

In addition, as we start selling solutions and less telecom circuits in a traditional way, the sales team will have to evolve considerably.

It will be more a consultative sale, which will involve educating our customers in some instances.

Not all sales people will feel comfortable to embrace this new type of selling, but it is an important shift that must happen to drive up the level of the overall service experience.

Something similar applies to the engineering team. The engineers of tomorrow will need to configure APIs, deliver service orchestration and dive deeper into the analytics of the network.

At Epsilon, we are in the midst of providing the necessary skills to our people to empower them to deal with this new virtualized, cloud, software environment.

Naturally, some will be outside of their comfort zone and will themselves move on to other companies who suite their capabilities better.

That is a natural and necessary evolution. Not an easy one, but one that cannot be prevented, as the clock is ticking.

THE EPSILON ORGANIZATION TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY

What have you achieved so far at Epsilon when it comes to organization transformation?

We are in the execution phase at the moment.

Three years ago, we were an interconnect company, with 100% of our revenue coming from wholesalers. A lot of our business was based on legacy services.

We therefore spent the bulk of 2016 planning our transformation and that was very tough, but we are now in the second phase of our journey.

We started by asking hard questions about not only what we were really good at, but more importantly, about what we needed to change.

We had to be critical of ourselves and in some way, transparent, to really understand what had to be transformed.

Then we considered the evolution of our customers, both in terms of their current and future needs. We also spent time on the road to determine the new breed of customers the company should seek in the longer term – who the future market will be, what they will require and how they will grow.

To address these opportunities, while solving our issues, we had all sorts of challenges to

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deal with, from product portfolio, to processes and roadmap.

We then spent most of 2017 developing the Infiny platform, which will empower us to address not only our current customers’ evolving needs, but also to address new markets.

As the plan evolved, it also became clear that not all the right skills were in place in the company and so new recruits, in the network, systems

and sales teams became a key success factor.

We also had to educate our channels to make sure our culture and processes were aligned.

It is a huge challenge, as it involves the entire organization. It will also mean that we will often have to be strong and stay committed to our plan to ensure that we keep on track to move our business towards a digital, self-serve, realtime connectivity provider model. Not a small feat!

Watch the video HotShoT>>

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ABOUT HOT TELECOM HOT TELECOM is one of the most innovative and creative research and consulting companies, which has been providing International operators and carriers with specialized intelligence and advice for the past 15 years.

We understand the challenges faced by international carriers better than anyone, and have therefore developed a number of research and advisory tools and expertise to mirror these needs, and provide the support any wholesaler requires to survive and thrive in the current environment.

To find out more about what we can do for you and how we can make the difference in your success, contact us and it will be our pleasure to provide you with tailored, real-life solutions that will meet your needs, challenges and objectives.

For more information, please visit www.hottelecom.com

ABOUT EPSILON Epsilon offers a smart network utility that combines on-demand infrastructure, automation, web-based portals and APIs to give our partners friction-free access to global connectivity for resolving complex networking demands. Our communications services range from network connectivity, co-location through to system integration and support to providers globally.

We offer a diverse group of industry service providers the ability to outsource critical and complex aspects of their business to an industry-leading partner who has the right depth of experience in deploying and operating critical network infrastructure and resources.

For more information, please visit www.epsilontel.com

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Isabelle Paradis President, HOT TELECOM Isabelle has spent the last 24 years working with over 100 Tier-1, Tier-2 operators and wholesalers on all continents, looking at how to improve and launch innovative services. She has written many reports, white papers and articles on the wholesale transformation and has spent time looking at how telecom services are evolving, and what the future holds for the increasingly customer centric society.

Steve Heap CTO, HOT TELECOM Steve has a lifetime of experience in designing, engineering and operating networks, both domestic and international. With leadership experience in small technology start-ups through to global service providers, he has deep experience in a wide range of products, technologies and geographies. He has the rare skill of being able to explain complex technical issues in easily understood concepts and uses that extensively in his consulting work with HOT TELECOM.

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Contacts us Email: info@hottelecom.com Web: www.hottelecom.com

HOT TELECOM