Telecommunications& Media
Constant change is the norm for the telecoms industry, as it continues with the rollout of fibre broadband and 5G mobile networks while coping with increased demand for bandwidth-intensive cloud and streaming services.
Smarter networks, using AI and ML to proactively manage network issues and congestion, promise to be a game-changer, and more are leaning on automation and natural language processing systems to enhance their customer support. At the same time, telecoms companies are a frontline target for cyberattacks, and have their own regulatory challenges to contend with. In a highly competitive landscape, there’s always pressure to streamline and reduce operating costs.
Telecoms organisations thrive or struggle on their technology, and many are looking to modernise the technology stacks that have, as a recent McKinsey report1 puts it been ‘“cobbled together over decades of business evolution.” As a result, many organisations are looking to switch to a new stack based on cloud-native, open source technologies that improve their agility and operational efficiency. However, this places heavy demands on IT teams – and on the budgets used to handle existing operations.
It’s estimated nearly 5% of a telecoms organisation’s revenue is accounted for by its IT costs2. In other industries the figure is usually around 2%. Ernst and Young’s 2022 Tech Horizon Study3 found the high cost of technology infrastructure was the industry’s number one data and technology barrier, with complexity in integrating multiple systems the third.
Telecoms organisations are responsible for critical infrastructure, making them a rich target for DDoS attacks, credential theft operations and persistent, targeted threats. This makes it even more crucial that every element of the business, from the network infrastructure through to endpoints, is fully hardened and secured.
This is a highly regulated sector, leaving organisations with challenges around customer privacy, competition, data security, data sovereignty and customer support. In the Tech Horizon Study, complex security and privacy requirements was the second most significant barrier to transformation for companies within the sector. Telecoms businesses are also under pressure to become more sustainable, and push towards ambitious environmental, social and governance goals.
Focus on your prioritiesManaging devices and infrastructure in-house takes manpower and resources. Moving to cloud-based endpoint management services can help telecoms firms manage and secure their endpoints while lowering their IT costs. With HP Adaptive Endpoint Management, HP service experts take over the support of user devices, while automated, zero-touch updates ensure that all devices comply with security policies.
Reduce complexity and prepare to scaleSwitching to Device as a Service can reduce complexity and bring consistency to a business’s device fleet. What’s more, engagement with HP’s Device as a Service team makes it easier to procure new devices as requirements change, adding to a firm’s agility and ability to scale. Complete lifecycle management ensures that devices are refurbished and reused where possible, or retired responsibly and the parts recycled where not.
Get help with your securityTelecoms companies have their own security expertise, but that doesn’t have to mean going it alone. Working with HP Wolf Security, they can leave HP to protect endpoint devices across the network, providing layers of resilience and rapid disaster recovery. Threats can be identified at speed and the endpoint devices isolated, locking down attacks before they get a chance to spread.
The largest provider of post and telecoms services in Luxembourg wanted to pair a more agile, integrated workforce with a more cost-effective and productive approach to IT. Moving to HP Device as a Service brought device consistency and an improved user experience, while reducing IT management workloads. Automated OS and security uploads, with compliance reporting, helped POST Luxembourg meet its security and compliance goals. ‘“If we identify a new requirement, we can react much quicker. The engagement with HP means we don’t have to go through a lengthy procurement process. A short briefing is all it takes,” said Jeronimo Azevedo, Head of Corporate IT & Enterprise Architecture, POST Luxembourg.
Media companies also face continual disruption, as new competitors with different business models battle with incumbents over fragmented audiences and declining ad-spends. There’s increasing pressure to streamline operations and switch to agile, cost-efficient workflows, and to harness the power of data and AI to understand and produce what your audiences want.
What’s more, media production involves some of the most demanding applications out there, in terms of network bandwidth, file sizes and the sheer compute power involved. Where media companies are shifting to hybrid working practices, there are real technical obstacles in their way.
Like telecoms companies, media organisations can do more by optimising their existing operations, either through managed IT services or by adopting DaaS into their strategy. What’s more, remote workspace services, like HP Anyware, give them the tools to support remote workflows across multiple sites, enabling producers, developers, artists and editors to collaborate even when they can’t be in the same room. As no data or work-in-progress leaves the corporate network, studios can rest easy that no files or data will leak.
The UK broadcasters’ Daytime production team was pushed towards cloud adoption during the COVID 19 pandemic, and enabling editors, producers and project managers to work from home. By implementing HP Anyware, it connected three edit suites and a content pipeline to a remote post-production team. The high-performance, low-latency PCoIP environment worked so effectively that ITV adopted a hybrid working model, reducing travel for the workforce and office overheads.
1 McKinsey & Company, ‘A blueprint for telcoms critical reinventon’, April 2021 https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/a-blueprint-for-telecoms-critical-reinvention2 LinkedIn, ‘Role of Information Technology in Telecommunication Industry’, January 2022 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/role-information-technology-telecommunication-industry-yadav/3 EY UK, ‘Top ten risks for telecommunications in 2023’, November 2022 https://www.ey.com/en_uk/telecommunications/top-ten-risks-for-telecommunications-in-2023
