A report from Infosys has found that telecoms firms will be leaders in cloud adoption if they deliver on their migration plans.
Despite the telecoms industry representing a small subset (4%) of the study, the researchers noted how telcos are leading in cloud adoption—focusing their efforts on deploying AI and automation, developing predictive maintenance capabilities, and expanding 5G offerings.
While the pandemic slowed cloud adoption in many industries, the telecoms industry continued at pace. Cloud technologies helped telcos to continue offering robust connectivity and service when people needed it most.
Anurag Vardhan Sinha, Senior Vice President of Communications, Media & Entertainment at Infosys, said:
“Connecting people and data regardless of distances is fundamental to what telecom companies do.
It’s only natural that telecom companies would see the promise of cloud and move quickly to adopt it.”
In the case of unlocking AI and data benefits from the cloud, telecoms companies were rated the highest (36%) of all the surveyed industries.
Telcos are using AI to process and analyse huge amounts of data to derive actionable customer insights, monitor consumption patterns, and provide better customer experiences. Process automation is also helping to improve back office operations such as billing, data entry, workforce management, and order fulfillment.
“Advances in automation and AI can combine with pervasive cloud adoption in order to anticipate customer needs, answer concerns and deliver delight more rapidly and in many more creative ways,” explains Vardhan Sina.
Of all the industries, telecoms firms were second-highest in hybrid cloud adoption. 18 percent of respondents claim to have 60 percent or more of their IT systems already in the cloud while some 44 percent expect to reach that threshold by 2022.
The telecoms industry has three main concerns about cloud adoption: Security (50%), Ability to measure and track value realisation (39%), and Regulation and compliance (33%)
Security being such a high concern is of little surprise given the increase in the prevalence and scale of cyberattacks in recent years. In 2019, almost 43 percent of telecom companies suffered from DNS-based malware attacks.
However, going by Infosys’ report, telecom companies are unshaken by these concerns and are continuing their legacy of being early adopters of new technologies to deliver improved experiences both in the back office and to the end-user. If they continue with their migration plans, they’ll be among the leaders in cloud adoption.
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