Anand Swamy, HCLTech & Satish Iyer, Dell Technologies | MWC Barcelona 2024

good afternoon fabulous nerds and welcome back to mwc here in Barcelona it's Midway through day two of our four days of live coverage here on the cube my name is Savannah Peterson joined by my fabulous co-host and analyst Dave elante Dave how you feeling afterno day I was just saying we're getting Punchy at day twoo I know I feel like fun we're getting a little zesty I know who knows what's going to happen next folks be sure and stay tuned this panel is going to be absolutely action-packed and I'm super excited we are talking about something we have yet to talk about at the show at all we are talking about open ran and our guest Sati and and on two of the most important people to talk to us about it today thank you both for being here you are Cube Legends and Veterans over many years you're you're on the show almost as much as I am Satish it's just awesome uh why what what is the open ran landscape and I'm going to take this to you first here at the show I mean this has got to be the intersection of all the players yeah uh thanks for having us uh really nice being here um if if you really look at uh the technology landscape especially in the in the Telco space uh we sitting in a important Tipping Point you know the the the technology has not changed as much over the last two three decades as it has you know done uh and and um the whole disaggregation of the stack you know between the antennas and the ru and the and the bbus and the CU and the disaggregation of the software and the hardware piece of it is completely changing the Dynamics right it's it's um it's creating some greater opportunities for Telos and some challenges as well right opportunities such as you know being agile right being flexible you know driving down CS right creating Market uh differentiation all great opportunity right but when you have a disaggregated track it drives complexity as well right and abil you know and therefore the need to integrate better you know and and need to kind of design your networks better uh address security challenges all of that you know is is part of the conversation today right and and we we looking at in the in the adoption curve you know open R is still in the infancy stage very early right going to be one of my questions yeah so actually let's step back just for a second in case the audience isn't aware what is open Ren I feel like everyone's familiar with radio access networks but why open why is that such a big difference well um it is like Anand was saying right it is about picking the Best in Class Technologies and disaggregation so to me this is about cloud and Cloud Transformations finding the Telco domain right and it's been going on for a while uh I know our CEO Michael talked about it yesterday uh you know Dave we were talking to him as as well right I think it's basically transformation coming into Telecom right and when we say open you know the way I think about this is open basically means P pick the Best in Class Tech and to solve a problem and if that means that you have to pick and choose a bunch of things to integrate so be it right and one of the main things and you you know uh I want to point out is a lot of the Technologies are actually coming together right um silicon diversity is here now right we all talk about it now ai is here now right the compu power is here now uh you know the level of way sophistication of data on cloud is here now right so I think in order for some of these transformational things to happen a lot of these things are to come together right so I think this is probably as better a time as any because we can see all this ma massive changes happening in all this I think this is that basically brings you know gives a great opportunity for things like open I mean when you when you hear the word open okay so open you think open distributed API scale collaborative innovation collaborative and and then there's always a little bit of risk so and that's kind of the dynamic here right I mean the other day I go into work I had SOS like hm funny had to restart we all sort of many of us in the east coast are experienced it maybe Across the Nation you know but it still and then you heard well was a glitch um in the system really didn't know it was sort of opaque but the reality is is you really didn't notice it sort of came back right it recovered the thing's never down which is phenomenal yeah so that is something that is part of the dynamic yeah yes it's got to be a no-risk environment but yet all those other things are so alluring the open the scale The Innovation the collaboration the apis the developer all that piece so that's a interesting balance right so when right what do you guys see as that adoption curve is it a is it a decade long more so uh I I I personally think you know it's it's about uh I started saying this and I truly believe we are in the infancy State the first and the most important thing is standardization yeah right uh organizations such as you know the open ran alian or or the the Telco infrastructure project the work that they're doing is going to be fundamental right and and critical so if you ask me I think you know we are we are about yeah uh 8 to 10 years you know of from a adoption complete adoption cycle right if you draw a curve you know it's a journey yeah it's a journey that's a great that's a great business that that tells me it's a wonderful business you're not going to get the the big returns up front we talked about this with Michael playing the long game he he he told a great story he said the Telos came to us and they asked for for for better Hardware better systems y so we or cheaper we said here you go and they said well no we need special systems we need you know they have to we have Telco special needs he said oh you didn't tell us that so we had to go back yeah develop those so that's a long cycle which means maybe initially the returns aren't there it's not a quick hit but long term it could be a really big sustainable business for you yeah I mean the adoption is there right I mean uh you saw um the gentleman from AT&T standing on the stage with my and talking about open R right so we have big big operators dish is another one dish was Wonder of strategic Partners in the US so dish has been working with Dell for the last three plus years uh building up a open run open network from the ground up we also have other big players we have telica we have vone right we have a lot of big players actually now driving this uh again the bigger one you saw in the you know the traditional players is AT&T basically saying that we are committed to open run and we're going to partner with you know ericon we're going to partner with Dell right as a that's big that's that'se because dish you could say Okay dish is trying to disrupt trying to develop applications and they have to because they're coming from a you know not AT&T is at a position of strength they don't have to but they they kind of do have to they have to don't they it's like it's like ethernet you kind of have to you do I'm curious so we talk about building the best in class that's the reason for open which is great not a word we I'm just thinking about open we it's not a word we associate with Toco very often which is an interesting fun game to talk about what are some of the challenges for you guys in in this I mean probably new people collaborating who knows non I see you nodding I'm going to you yeah um it's it's critical to kind of you know identify what are those challenges and in my opinion there are about two or three important things first of all open and therefore you know it it it the disaggregated stack means there is complexity and therefore you know just the whole integration the design of the network you know has has got to be bang on right you know number one that's that's super important the second is you got to you know you got to understand the the security elements of it Dave spoke about it right you know the security is going to become super critical the third is interoperability right you know that's that's going to be uh critical as well and doing all of this you know without impacting the quality of service is what is going to be uh is what's going to be critical to make make this you know go up the adoption Cur so yeah no I agree I mean look fundamentally when you talk about open the you know uh Dave like you pointed out right companies which who are really good at doing what they do will do that really well right so the next question is somebody has to stitch it all together right exactly because you are buying Best in Class of everything right in an open ecosystem right best software best infrastructure best compute best radio right then somebody has to say okay how all the best comes together right that is a challenge right that's an opportunity for some companies like d and n all to work together well so a really smart CEO that I respect I won't say his name said to me one time you really want to understand if a market is attractive look for the SI yeah because when they get in that means there's money there it's big they also said they like to eat at the trough which it's true it's a big market right I I'll never forget that who always said that as a smart guy ever since then I was like hm where when the SI come in it means it's a meaningful Market yeah and you know I I'll give example so and I for instance service now for years the the SI ecosystem was Tiny and then all of a sudden boom it came in and so what role do the SI play in uh um I think SI are in a very um I would say Central position of on this because all the 40 five challenges that I mentioned right are absolutely great areas where we can go in and provide services for our customers to to overcome right ability so what they asking an S you know such as us is ability to kind of take the best-in-class products help them put that together right and drive an outcome right you know run those operations Meeting those slas right and and you know large SI such as us can kind of do that and that's where the true opportunity is you know it is it's a challenge but you know it's a great opportunity I heard something today earlier and I'd never heard it before cuz we talk about outcomes all the time and this individual from a Telco said we were driving for an outcome but we're also trying to make that outcome yeah sustainable and and as experiences yeah that stuck with me as well right i' never heard that before so it's outcome we all want outcomes and then it's it's thinking long the customer demands a different experience now and sustain that point it's that seamless endtoend experience they want it fast they want it now and they want that same quality of ux that they've had in the Asos across systems which is really interesting and actually brings me to my next question what how is the culture of collaboration with the different groups that you're working with um I can go and go for it so I I think one of the critical elements we've not spoken about yet is ecosystem and collaboration right the power of the ecosystem is going to be super important important for uh open ran right you customers want us to have an opinionated point of view of what the who the E how the ecosystem looks like and who in that ecosystem is going to do what right and ability to get that together you know and and clearly drive a program around open ran is going to be critical to is no I I I agree I mean look the the the whole open basically means in the an open ecosystem player right so um you know telecom companies want to solve a lot of problems about the stack right um and you know by bringing in a strong system integrator and a strong infrastructure Telecom Cloud platform provider right then you are actually opening it up for all the application providers to come and validate test and bring those outcomes to the table so I absolutely think concision experience see in the cloud we always talk about you know in the cloud world right when you have the hyperscalers we always talk about how do you bring the cloud experience on Prem right so this is very similar like how do you bring the cloud experience easy button right into a telecom world I think that's that's basically what this is you know it's interesting sorry interrup oh please the the cloud came in yeah and sort of disrupted the the on Prem Legacy businesses with this idea of um how did jasse say it undifferentiated heavy lifting and what happened was you guys got good you know got kind of slapped around in the face and said oh we got to have a better operating model and we can do that and of course that IP leaked out that mindset leaked out and now you talk to it they go well the cloud we have a cloud right here it's the same thing as I mean same experience it's substantially identical and people can debate that but it's it's true pretty much the same that Telos haven't transformed yet right and they're largely on Prem right right so it's the different Dynam iic now y when the versus 2010 when the cloud was really taking off do you agree with that that that assessment I do not that the Cloud's not going to play a role it is but but there's more of a balance I would say uh absolutely I completely agree with that um you know if you really look at um I'm just going to take a step back and to your point we are now seeing that that recalibration of workloads you know all over the Enterprise and Telos right uh uh Gone on the days where you know everybody just said cloud is my only path out now today you know everybody's looking at the workloads and say tell me what's the best place to run it because from commercial model standpoint you know you you can kind of make it work right and we see the same thing you know again from a a open R standpoint cloudification is going to be a super important thing saish no I look I I'll I'll add to what Anand was saying but you know one of the main things we got to think about is we Michael talked about yesterday right the notion of cloud cloud experience on Prem one of the main thing is data is gravity right and now we all talked about AI we've been talking a lot about AI right he talked about AI as gravity right and Telo companies have a very important message because telecommunication companies are at the edge right when the decisions are to be made at the edge those decision are to be smarter that has gravity right so you have to make those decisions there right so I think it's truly multic Cloud world right uh we always like to say that that decisions are made like in a very you know distributed environment but I think in telecommunication world it's it's even more so important that it is going to be a very multicloud world right and I'm glad you use the word I think you said recalibration yeah you know a lot of people use the word repatriation recalibration is a better term because that's really what it is it's not like oh we do from here to here we're going to move back no it's more okay let's balance it out more of an equilibrium true true and and that's that's what we seeing across across the whole um both Enterprise and go where there is a strong point of view on workloads and applications right determining both the network requirements as well as you know where it's going to reside and what's going to run right and especially with generative AI now you know and and because of security concerns because of other things right you know governance now now you know uh truly organizations are saying hybrid is the way to go and and even though if you take the current workload number it might be slightly slightly skewed to the hyperscalers long run that's what we well it's going to be interesting to see because we've we've talked about the power law of geni where there's a long tail you've got a lot of big models that are dominant and then but you have a lot of smaller models that are domain specific many of those we think are going to be on Prem I think you know one of the debates we're having is okay but remember the cloud in the early days everybody said no way not going to go to the cloud it's not secure the debate is is the same same thing going to happen here they initially they want to do stuff on Prem because it's more safe it's more secure it's more trusted it's Sovereign I think it's different this time because of the data Michael's point about you know data gravity we talk about that we throw that term around a lot but it's everybody is right when they say we're going to bring the AI to the data yeah you're probably not going to say okay let's rip the a the data out put it in the cloud and then bring the AI there unless you can't deliver the cheling so that's the challenge you've got to be able to deliver the tooling and that's substantially similar Cloud experience and the tooling capabilities and you what you're doing with the the coher and the llamas and you know all the other yeah I mean the the the processing cleaning and the indexing and the vectoring of the information right unstructured structured there is a lot for for organization to consume that in a very you know meaningful way you within an AI model right so to your point for a lot of the reasons whether you have a general purpose llm but you're going to to make it specific for you you're going to take your data sets which you already have within your Enterprise and leverage it for the most part right and that's where that's where the power of the AI where it belongs comes in right so it's it gets closer and closer to where the enterprices are and that makes it more useful so I would imagine when we hear you know a year from now we're going to have a very similar conversation and then and in one of these years I don't know maybe it's five or six years so now we're going to go yeah we told you it did happen right and it's gonna we're gonna have that momentum that part of the S curve is really going to be see that's sort of inevitable yes you can see it coming you know everybody wants to come they know it's coming and it's just you know that pace is the pace is dictating the pace yeah I agre are I'm curious you see across verticals you talk to a lot of different customers between both of you are you seeing any remarkable trends that you can share with us like who's excited about open Ren or is they really eager to be of these ecosystem partners with you you want to go no go for it okay so uh I think few verticals are definitely uh bleeding in my opinion uh manufacturing is is right up there you know so um number one number two um interestingly we we also seeing um lot of lot of interest in uh life sciences and Healthcare right you know so uh and um we we doing um doing a lot of and this is going back to the whole idea of adoption of open ran we're seeing a lot of requests for doing uh poc's right and ability to have and I spoke about ecosystems as well ability to have that whole stack you know as part of you know testing it out and figuring out the performance optimization so but but then manufacturing is a big thing you know manufacturing is a big thing I would say oh it makes sense I mean throughput and supply chain and everything else is such a huge topic and the ability to do it better and more efficient with all of your Edge locations depending on where your factories are is AB iot you know all of that is kind of in and that is kind of really coming together and making sense from a rown on investment business impact so on and so forth so yeah so just what about you no just to add it's basically around low latency right super or near super high bandw right and really really smart quick intelligent decision making that's it right so all the use cases are going to be centered on those characteristics right it's as simple as that is there anyone that gets you particularly excited as a person not just as a professional uh as a individual you mean yeah yeah yeah uh I like um I I like to find restaurants much faster yes okay oh my gosh we were we I really want to do a segment while we're here in Spain now that I'm saying it maybe it'll happen I want to use AI to help us find the best toas exactly and and and have that be one of our little tasting segments especially for a vegetarian I would really like them to know what I want give me the SM I love that what about you and on anything that gets the the you the little the human inside you not just the brain but um on on what what I like in in terms of what you're most excited about like to your point I love that like I would love to find restaurants faster that's a great example of how all of this complex text we just talked about is going to enable a wonderful user experience ex tell me that's the best place I can get the best being on a being on the road like 4 days a week anything that'll help my travel make it easier you know I think I think you know I'll go with that seriously Aman I feel you after 232 Days on the Road last year I could not agree with you more also when is my suitcase going to pack itself just pack yourself just I don't want to do it anymore so much of my time spent putting clothing in cubes CTI on so much so wonderful to have you on the show it's why we bring you back over and over and over again fantastic questions as always and thank all of you our fabulous Cube Community for tuning in all week here from mwc and Barcelona my name is Savannah Peterson you're watching the cube the leading source for emerging Tech coverage

2024-03-04 06:59

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