Telecom operators are looking at new ways to add value by offering a variety of cloud communication services but it may take 3-4 years to completely and effectively adopt cloud in their entire ecosystem, a top company executive said.

“Although the cloud is live on networks, adopting it in the entire ecosystem effectively and create impact might take another 3-4 years even though the cloud is essential for future competitiveness,” Rajdip Gupta, Group chief executive of Route Mobile told ETT, and added that it was critical to detach IT and network cloud programmes and strategies to derive maximum benefits.

Gupta further said that the telcos that have worked with cloud for the last 1-2 years, are dealing with the impact of the decision of changing the entire network architecture, since the implementation was never simple and results were not seen overnight.

End-user spending on public cloud services in India is expected to reach $3.4 billion in 2020, a 25% increase from 2019, according to Gartner. The double-digit growth, according to the research firm, would position India as the No. 3 country for end-user spending on public cloud services.

“It is recommended that for a few years at least, telcos should find a vendor to achieve success and bring individual components together. If telcos start building everything from scratch with the implementation, it will be difficult,” he added.

The companies that have stayed with the cloud infrastructure for a few years usually opt for multiple vendors as they find their maturity curve. The ones that are fairly new usually opt for a single vendor with one integration, the executive added.

In August, Reliance Jio partnered with Microsoft in the technology space, including the creation of on-cloud solutions. The partnership allowed billionaire Mukesh Ambani-owned telco to leverage the Microsoft Azure cloud platform to develop in cloud solutions focused on the needs of Indian businesses.

Telecom carriers with 3-4 years of cloud infrastructure are at a stage where they are trying to get systems to interact with each other, run any application on cloud and perform a service in a properly managed way, according to the Mumbai-based company.

“Their (telecom operators) implementation is based on the digital and business transformation, driven by consumers and not so much by the competitors,” Gupta said.

“Currently, adding a new service can take up to 18 months for a telco to implement and cloud infrastructure works towards bringing that down by at least 3-4 months, which is an industry goal too,” he added.

Published in ET Telecom: Telcos may take 3-4 years to adopt cloud completely: Route Mobile