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>> Well, welcome to theCUBE's coverage
from Mobile World Congress, 2021.
I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE.
We're here in person, as well as remote.
It's a hybrid event.
We're on the ground at Mobile World Congress
bringing you all the action, here.
We're remote with Amol Phadke, Managing Director
at the Telecom Industry Solutions team at Google Cloud,
a big leader and driving a lot of the change.
Amol, thank you for coming on theCUBE here,
in the hybrid event from Mobile World Congress.
>> Thank you, John.
Thank you, John, thank you for having me.
>> So hybrid event which means it's in-person.
We're on the floor as well as doing remote interviews
and people are virtual.
This is the new normal.
Kind of highlights where we are in this Telecom world
because last time Mobile World Congress actually had
a physical event was winter of 2019.
A ton has changed in the industry.
Look at the momentum at the Edge,
hybrid cloud is now standard, multicloud is being set,
it's being set up as we speak.
This is all now the new normal.
What is your take? (chuckling)
And so, it's pretty active in your, in your industry.
Tell us your opinion.
>> Yes, John, I mean the last two years have been seismic
to say the least, right?
I mean, in terms of the change that
the CSP industries had had to do.
You know, John, in the last two years,
the importance of a CSP infrastructure
has never become so important, right?
The infrastructure is paramount.
I'm talking to you remotely over a CSP infrastructure
right now, and everything that we are doing
in the last two years, whether it's working or studying
or entertaining ourselves, all on that CSP infrastructure.
So from that perspective, they are really becoming
a critical national global information fabric
on which the society is actually depending on.
And that we see at Google as well, in the sense that
we have seen up to 60% increase in demand, John,
in the last two years for that infrastructure.
And then when I look at the industry itself,
unfortunately, all of that huge demand is not translating
into revenue because as an industry,
the revenue is still flat-lining.
In fact, the forecasted revenue for globally
for all the industry over the next 12 months is
three to 5% negative on revenue, right?
So one starts to think how come there is so much demand
over the last two years, post-pandemic,
and that's not translating to revenue?
Having said that, the other thing that's happening is
this demand is driving significant CapEx
and OpEx investments in the infrastructure.
As much as eight to $900 billion over the next decade is
going to get spent in this infrastructure from our perspective,
which means it's really a perfect storm, John,
that we have massive demand, massive need to invest
to meet that demand, yet not translating to revenue.
And the crux of all this is customer experience
because ultimately, all of that translates
into not having that kind of radically disruptive
or transformational customer experience, right?
So that's a backdrop that we find ourselves in the industry
and that really sets the stage for us to look
at these challenges in terms of how does the CSP industry,
as a whole, grow top-line, radically transform PS TCO,
at the same time, reinventing the customer experience
and finding those capital efficiencies.
It's almost an impossible problem to solve, John.
>> Yeah, it's a perfect storm.
The waves are kind of coming together to form one big wave.
You mentioned CapEx and OpEx.
That's obviously changing.
The investments are there.
Post-pandemic growth and change
in user behavior and expectations.
The modern applications are being built
on top of the infrastructure, that's changing.
All of this is being driven by Cloud Native.
And that's clear.
And you're seeing a lot more open kind of approaches,
IT and OT coming together.
Whatever you want to do, this is just,
it's a collision, right?
It's a collision of many things,
and this positive innovation coming out of.
So I have to ask you what are you seeing
on the solutions that are showing the most promise
for these Telco industry leaders?
Because they're digitally transforming
so they got to re-factor their platforms
while enabling innovation,
which is a key growth for the revenue.
>> Yes.
So John, from a solution standpoint, what we actually did
first and foremost as Google Cloud was look at ourselves.
So just like the transformation we just talked about
in the CSP industry, we are seeing Google being transformed
over the last two decades or so.
And it's important to understand that
there's a lot Google did over the last two decades that
we can actually now externalize.
All of that innovation, all of that open source,
all of that multicloud was originally built
for all the Google applications that all of us use daily,
whether it's YouTube, or mail, or maps, you know?
Same infrastructure, same open source, same multicloud.
And we decided to sort of use the same paradigms
to build the Telecom solutions that
I'm going to talk about, next.
So that's important to bear in mind that
those assets were there and we wanted
to externalize those assets, right?
There are really four big solutions that
are resonating really well with our CSP partners, John.
You know, number one, to your point is
how can they monetize the Edge?
All of this happens at the Edge, all of this
gets converged at the Edge.
We believe with 5G acting as the brilliant catalyst
to really drive this Edge deployment,
CSPs would be in a very strong position
partnering with cloud players like ourselves
to drive growth, not just for their compliance,
but also to add value to the actual end enterprises that
are seeking to use that Edge.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
We have been working with industries like retail
and manufacturing to create Edge solutions
in a post-pandemic world, solutions like
contactless shopping or visual inspection
of an assembly line in a manufacturing plant
without the need for having a human there
because of the digitization of workforce.
Which meant these of solutions can actually work well
at the Edge driven by 5G.
But of course, they can't be done in isolation
so what we do is we partner with CSPs.
We bring our set of solutions and we actually launch
in December 30 partners that are already
on our Google Cloud solutions.
And then we partnered with the CSPs based
on our infrastructure and their infrastructure
to ultimately bring this all to life
at the end customer, which often tends to be an enterprise,
whether it's a manufacturing plant or a retail chain.
>> Yeah, you guys got some great examples, there.
I love that Edge story.
I think it's huge.
I think it's only going to get bigger.
I got to ask you while I got you here, because again,
you're in the industry, you're the managing director,
so you have to oversee this whole Telecom industry.
But it's bigger, it's beyond Telecom, right?
It's now, Telecom's just one other Edge network,
piece of the pie of the shoe to computing, as we say.
So I have to ask you, one of the big things that
Google brings to the table is
the developer mojo and opensource, and scale.
Obviously, the scale's unprecedented, as everyone knows.
Everyone knows that.
But ecosystems are super important
and Telcos kind of really aren't good at that, right?
So, you know, the Telco ecosystem was,
I mean, I'd say, okay, but mostly driven by carriers
and movin' bits from point A to point B.
But now you've got a developer mindset.
Public cloud, developer ecosystem,
how is this changing the landscape
of the CSPs and how are they changing,
how's it changing this cloud service provider's
ability to execute?
'Cause that's the key in this new world.
What's your opinion?
>> Absolutely, John.
So there are two things there,
two dimensions to look at.
One is when we came to market a couple of years ago
with Anthos, we recognized exactly what you said, John,
which is the world is moving to multicloud hybrid cloud.
We needed to provide a common platform that
the developer community can utilize
through microservices and API.
And that platform had to, by definition,
work not just from Google Cloud, but any cloud.
It could work on any public cloud,
it can work on CSP's private cloud,
and of course, on Google Cloud, right?
The reason was once you deploy Anthos once
as a seamless application development platform,
you could put all kinds of developer apps on top.
So I just talked about 5G Edge, John, a minute ago,
those apps can sit on Anthos.
But at the same time, IT to your point, John,
IT apps could also sit on the same
Anthos paradigm, and network apps.
So as networks start becoming cloud-native,
whether it's RAM, or whether it's all O-RAM,
whether it's 5G core, same principle.
And that's why we believe when we partner with CSPs,
we are saying hey, you give this Anthos
to an ecosystem of community, whether that community is
network, whether that community is IT,
whether that community is Edge apps,
all of those can reside seamlessly
on this sort of Anthos fabric, John.
>> Yeah and that's going to set the table for multicloud
which is basically cloud words for multi-vendor, multi app.
Amol, I've got to ask you while I have you here,
first of all, thank you for coming on
and sharing your insights.
It's really great industry perspective.
And obviously, Google Cloud has got huge scale
and great leadership.
And again, you know, the big, the big cloud players
are moving in and helping out and enabling a lot of value.
I got to ask you, if you don't mind sharing,
if someone asked you hey, Amol, tell me
about the impact that public cloud is having
on the Telco industry.
What would you say?
What's, what's the answer to that?
Because a lot of people are like,
okay, public cloud, I get it.
I know what it looks like, but now everyone's
knows it's going hybrid, so everyone asks you,
will ask you the question,
what does public cloud doing for the Telecom sector?
>> Yeah, I think it's doing three things, John.
And great question by the way.
Number one, we are actually providing unprecedented amount
of insights on data that the CSPs traditionally already had,
but have never looked at it from the angle
we have looked at it, whether that insights are
at a network layer, whether those insights are
to personalize customer experiences
on the front-end systems, or whether those insights are
to drive care solutions in contact centers
and so on and so forth.
So it's a massive uplift of customer experience that
we can help on, right?
So that's, that's a very important point
because we do have a significant amount of leadership,
John, at Google Cloud on analytics and data and insights.
So, and we offered those to overseas people.
Number two is really what I talked about which is
helping them build an ecosystem
because let's take retail as an example.
As a minimum, there are five constituents
in that ecosystem, John.
There is a CSP, there is Google Cloud,
there's a actual retail store,
there is a hardware supplier,
there's a software developer.
All of them as a minimum, have to work together
to build that ecosystem, which is where we
give those solutions, right?
So that's the second part.
And then the third part is as they move
towards cloud-native, we are really helping them
change their business model to become a DevOps,
a cloud-native mindset, not just a cloud-native network
or IP, but a cloud-native mindset that creates
unparalleled agility and flexibility
in how they work as a business.
So those are the three things I would say
as a response to that question.
>> And obviously, the retail's a great vertical
for Google to go in there, given the Amazon fear out there.
People want this, it's certainly low-hanging fruit.
I think the DevOps piece is going to be a big
winning opportunity to see how the developers
get driven into the landscape.
I think that's a huge point.
Amol, that's really great insight.
Final question for you, while I got you here.
If someone says hey, what's happened
in the industry since 2019?
Last time we had Mobile World Congress,
they were talking speeds and feeds.
Now the world has changed.
We're coming out of the pandemic.
California's opening up.
There's going to be an, a physical event.
The world's going hybrid, certainly on the event,
and certainly cloud.
What's different in the Telecom industry
from, you know, many, many months ago,
over a year and a half ago from 2019?
>> I would say primarily, it's the adoption
of digital everywhere, which previously,
you know, there were all these inhibitions
and oh, would this work,
would my customer systems become fully digital?
Would I be able to offer AR VR experiences?
Ah, that's a futuristic thing, you know?
And suddenly, the pandemic has created
this acceleration that says, oh, even post-pandemic,
half my customers are always going to talk to me
via our digital channel only, which means the way
they experience us has to be through these new experiences,
whether it's AR VR, whether it's some
other kinds of applications.
So that has been accelerated, John,
and the CSPs have therefore really started
to go to the application and to the services,
which is why you are seeing less on, you know,
speeds and feeds, because 5G is here, 5G is being deployed.
Now, how do we monetize 5G?
How can we leverage that application on top?
So that's the biggest change.
>> There's down stack and then there's
up top of the stack for applications.
And certainly, there's a lot of assets
in the Telecom landscape, a lot of value,
a lot of refactoring going on,
and new opportunities that are out there.
Great, great conversation.
Well, thank you, Amol Phadke, Managing Director
at Telecom Industry Solutions.
Thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate it.
>> Thank you, John, thank you for having me.
>> Okay, Mobile World Congress here,
in-person, and hybrid, and remote.
I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE.
Thank you for watching.
We are here in person at the Cloud City Expo Community area.
Thanks for watching.