Comviva NewsLetter The Futurist - September Edition, 2019 | Page 5

5
DIGITAL DISRUPTION
SEPTEMBER 2019
TMF
MAO
On a scale of 1 to 10 where is the telecoms industry today
in its digital transformation?
My personal view is that the industry is at a four or five. This isn’t because the
industry isn’t doing it correctly. It’s because most people today still think that the
need for transformation is one- time. If one goes back 20 years, one knew that
any change in IT systems would have a life of ten years. Now, a lot of people
are being myopic and thinking that the transformation would serve them for
three to four years. But, in truth, one needs to accept that one has to live with
transformation on a daily basis.
To cite an example pertaining to software and agility, when I started in my
career, major software builds were being carried out per year. Five years ago, a
software build was being carried out per quarter. Now, a major software build is
being carried out twice a year through agile. In fact, I read that Amazon is doing
a software build every 11 minutes!
TMF
MAO
How are most Chief Information Officers (CIOs)
approaching transformation?
A. There is a whole spectrum of views and
approaches. One section of chief information
officers (CIOs) believes that one either
transforms lock, stock, and barrel or not at all.
Others are happy doing bits and pieces. I
would say that most CIOs are taking a middle
path. The reality is that there are a number
of constraints for the CIOs. They have
hundreds of services running that are
generating revenues and these are paying
their employees’ salaries.
Most people are disrupting for the future,
not to meet today’s challenges. To do this,
one needs to adopt a leap-frogging
approach. The need to leverage data is
growing by the day. This is increasing
demand for computing power and
bandwidth for communication. If one has
not prepared oneself for this growth, one is
building up potential challenges for the
future, when this explosion happens.