Keith White, Senior Vice President and General Manager at HPE GreenLake cloud services, recently sat down with Abhay Savargaonkar, Chief Technology Officer for Global CSP Sales at Nokia, to discuss the many benefits of as a service for CSPs and the ways in which Nokia has embraced this strategy.
During their conversation, Abhay pointed out the fact that operators have typically always worked on an ownership model. The question from CTOs, or at least within Nokia, was its cost of ownership. But Abhay has argued that, fundamentally, companies shouldn’t base adoption decisions solely on cost. Instead, it’s crucial to consider the expertise brought in as technology continues to advance and evolve at such a rapid pace. “We started off in the world of virtualization,” he explains, “which was mostly vertically virtualized. Then we moved forward to horizontal virtualization. Then we moved over to containers. And now we are talking about containers over bare metal.” Here’s where a cloud service provider can offer that added fluidity to adapt.
At Nokia he’s also found that, as they’ve advanced in their own journey, given the enterprise play that 5G brings in, operators are comfortable dealing with connectivity. But when it comes to services beyond connectivity, they welcome added expertise. So when a company looks to evolve into new service models—models so new that they lack certainty around revenue, volumes, and subscribers—as a service makes the most sense. Nokia’s strategy, in fact, has evolved along with cloud and network services, currently focused solely on a shift toward an as a service model.
In tapping into the expertise offered through HP Greenlake, a platform melding both the hardware and infrastructure layer, Nokia can stay focused on the delivery of software, network functions, and specialized expertise.