Page 7 - SAMENA Trends - September 2019

FEATURED SAMENA TRENDS

Q. What are the key areas through which Q. How does Microsoft help Telecom We are working with
Microsoft is helping Telecom Operators Operators deliver better experiences
to transform into the new network to customers, creating long-lasting telecom operators to
transformation paradigm? relationships.? create an environment
where they can rapidly
A. Microsoft is focusing its work in the A. Microsoft helps telcos create customer
telco industry around three key business loyalty by offering data and analytics support new services
imperatives that companies must deliver solutions that allow them to proactively while increasing network
on in order to differentiate and succeed. anticipate needs, drive a consistent
• Deliver personalized experiences. experience and deliver the products and efficiency, scalability and
We’re working with the industry services customers want, when and where reliability on an intelligent,
to develop seamless, intelligent they want them. Our secure, intelligent
telecommunications services and collaboration and productivity tools digital platform.
employee collaboration tools to help support this kind of innovation by ensuring
them earn customers for life. efficient communications between data centers in South Africa to serve
• Provide agile operations. We’re employees, suppliers and partners. the African continent, and two in UAE to
empowering telcos with technology serve our middle east customers. These
to rapidly support new services while Q. What are the dimensions of agile facilities are providing enterprise-grade
increasing network efficiency, scalability operations that you suggest Operators to reliability, performance, security and the
and reliability on an intelligent, digital immediately pay attention to? broadest compliance with access to
telecom platform. cloud services.
• Accelerate growth and innovation. A. We are working with telecom operators • We also launched two Africa
Finally, we’re supporting the industry to create an environment where they Development Centers (ADCs) In Kenya
by helping them uncover key insights can rapidly support new services while and Nigeria. This $100 MN investment
to better understand their customers, increasing network efficiency, scalability will enable the ADCs to become a
create new and exciting services and and reliability on an intelligent, digital premier centre of engineering for
go to market faster with what their platform. Specifically, we’re helping our Microsoft, where world-class African
customers really want. telco customers scale into the cloud talent can create solutions for local and
to: more quickly replicate and extend global impact.
Microsoft helps telcos products and services and capitalize on • In addition these investments, we
emerging opportunities; drive down costs,
have also recently partnered with
create customer loyalty realize efficiencies and predict and avoid Telecom Egypt to extend our global
by offering data and disruptions in services with advanced cloud network. This investment will
analytics; increase productivity while
analytics solutions that lowering operational costs by empowering increase capacity and use the latest in
network optimization for the delivery of
allow them to proactively field technicians with next-generation field Microsoft services in Egypt, North Africa
and the region.
anticipate needs, drive services; and democratize technologies • Moreover, our other investments in
such as Network Edge Compute (NEC),
a consistent experience Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and Internet the region – such as policy innovation
and deliver the products of Things (IoT) to deliver new innovation. centers in Africa, an Advanced
Technology Lab in Cairo, and Customer
and services customers Q. What are Microsoft’s technology and Support Centers in Jordan and Nigeria –
want, when and where ICT development plans for the region? are all aimed at gearing up the region’s
they want them. A. The Middle East & Africa has entered digital transformation capabilities
and empowering its public and private
a period of significant digitization across sector organizations to achieve more.
In addition, we’re working hard to ensure all industries. We see that governments • Our contribution toward job creation is
that Azure remains the platform cloud for and organizations are now embracing the also an effort worth noting. IDC research
the communications industry. This means cloud and tapping into its rich potential found that Microsoft and our cloud
that our customers’ data is their own, and to achieve more. As such, Microsoft’s ecosystem is expected to generate over
we’re not aggregating this data for our own role here is to empower our customers in 520,000 jobs across MEA by 2022.
benefit. We’re differentiated in that we’re this journey. We’re doing this by focusing • We are also working very closely in the
empowering – not competing – with our on core areas such as making critical region to address the growing skills
customers. infrastructure investments and addressing gap in the tech sector. For example,
the skills gap. Some examples include: our Microsoft Cloud Society initiative
• This year Microsoft has launched two has over 170,000 registrants from

7 SEPTEMBER 2019