Innovating with Europe's Largest Telecommunications Provider, Deutsche Telekom | Juniper Summit

00:00 [music]

00:07 Hello, everyone. My name is Mathias Kokot.

00:09 I'm the VP of PLM in the software team in Juniper,

00:13 and I'm responsible for the Telco Cloud Solution portfolio.

00:17 I'm joined today by Christoph Hilz, who leads the Voice & Messaging Organization

00:22 at Deutsche Telekom. Welcome, Christoph.

00:25 Hi, Mathias. Great to see you again.

00:28 Christoph, Deutsche Telekom and Juniper have partnered for many years,

00:34 and we have a long history of deploying and developing

00:37 innovative networking solutions at Core, at the Edge Data Center,

00:42 as well as at the Telco Cloud.

00:45 How have you seen

00:46 Deutsche Telekom's relationship with Juniper evolve over the years?

00:52 I've been working with Juniper for more than 10 years now,

00:56 and yes, I can confirm that we have continuously evolved the partnership,

01:01 and, of course, if you know each other for such a long time,

01:04 you have shared a lot of experiences that were ups and downs

01:08 but overall, more of the positive experiences,

01:12 otherwise, I would not be here today.

01:15 I like Juniper's spirit because it matches Allianz.

01:18 You are a very innovative company.

01:20 You're always hungry, and you're also customer-centric.

01:24 The Juniper and Deutsche Telekom have collaborated in many projects

01:28 like the BNG, IP-Core, data centers,

01:32 and nowadays, with NIMS also in the core service area.

01:36 With Telco Cloud NIMS, Juniper also demonstrated its capabilities

01:42 to grow new paths and develop its portfolio further.

01:49 Great. I can remember some of the projects like the BNG project really well.

01:54 Christoph, you have over 20 years of experience in the telecommunication industry

02:00 with positions in engineering, operations, and planning.

02:06 Tell us about your current role at Deutsche Telekom,

02:11 and your areas of ownership and responsibility.

02:16 You're right.

02:17 I have had the opportunity to collect experience in different fields,

02:21 starting as a network planner in the service platform area,

02:25 leading the data network planning, and later the IP network engineering team.

02:29 Today, I'm running the Voice & Messaging unit

02:32 at Telecom Germany with a DevOps structure.

02:35 There is engineering, planning, operation, and also validation

02:38 as part of my portfolio, all in one hand.

02:42 My ambition has always been to continuously develop the network,

02:47 not just keep it rolling but develop it further,

02:50 of course, Deutsche Telekom stands for high quality and best network experiences.

02:54 Whatever we do, we would not make any compromise towards this target,

03:00 providing the best service to our customer, and having this in mind,

03:05 we innovate and rebuild all voice and messaging platforms.

03:08 This means disaggregation, cloudification, and, of course, automation.

03:16 Christoph, last year was challenging with COVID accelerating

03:20 the world's online culture to work, learn,

03:24 as well as play, and everything, and all from home.

03:28 Did 2020 change or influence

03:31 Deutsche Telekom's strategic vision for the future?

03:37 I think the answer is no,

03:39 but you probably would like to know why I have that opinion.

03:43 I think that the pandemic demonstrated the importance

03:47 of a highly available, scalable, and robust telecommunication network.

03:51 In Germany alone, we have seen the two-digit million number of people

03:55 working from the home office,

03:56 the same with all the classic retail customers.

04:00 Instead of face-to-face talks, they have used their home,

04:03 cell phones or computers to keep in touch.

04:06 Deutsche Telekom and my team, as part of it,

04:08 have been keeping an important role and responsibility for Germany.

04:13 It's on us to ensure that our voice and messaging services

04:17 perform best in class, are flexible and scale

04:21 even if traffic really explodes from one week to another as we experienced,

04:27 and that's absolutely important, while the majority of my DevOps team

04:31 was sitting at home, in home office,

04:34 and thus, the pandemic did not change the DT's strategy

04:38 and also the vision, but it confirmed it

04:41 because it was and it's still our ambition of being the leading European Telco.

04:47 We constantly digitalize, we simplify, and we accelerate our operations,

04:54 and this includes a truly radical network automation.

05:00 It's actually a good segue.

05:04 In the previous keynote, we heard Brendan Gibbs talked about

05:09 Experience-First Networking as a true north for Juniper strategy

05:14 with automation as the key enabler for our network operators.

05:19 What is your view?

05:21 Is automation in the critical path for Deutsche Telekom?

05:27 Yes. As I said, radical automation.

05:31 Automation to ensure best quality for our customers,

05:36 always as it should, no failures by manual actions.

05:40 Automation to be more efficient, because we have less involved units.

05:45 Automation to be faster, software operates within minutes,

05:49 new features for our customers in weeks.

05:52 The more automation, the more value for our customer.

05:55 This is just possible with real end-to-end automation,

05:59 not limited to certain parts of the production chain,

06:02 instead of focusing on the complete software life cycle process,

06:06 check-in in the lab, roll out of the software in a live network,

06:10 automated operations.

06:12 Of course, it sounds logical, and it also sounds easy,

06:17 but it needs a proper vision. It needs a proper target architecture.

06:21 It needs a good team, mindset, technology,

06:25 and also fitting vendors and partners to make it happen.

06:30 That's good.

06:31 Christoph, digital transformation and cloudification

06:35 are not new to the industry,

06:38 but the past to deploying network clouds has seen mixed results.

06:44 Given Deutsche Telekom's success, can you share some of the lessons learned?

06:50 I think we have some larger communication on it soon,

06:55 but I don't want to say too much now, but let me share some of my thoughts.

07:00 In my opinion, we need to act urgently due to four key reasons.

07:05 First, dependency on our vendors and the vendor lock-in is too high.

07:11 Secondly, the current delivery time for features is definitely too long.

07:16 Third, the automation degree is by far too low,

07:20 and fourth, the production in silos is absolutely inefficient.

07:25 Disaggregation and cloudification will help us there.

07:29 My key lessons learned so far, you need to understand the problem.

07:37 You need to define the challenging vision.

07:40 You need to ensure having the right team around you,

07:44 believing in you, believing in the vision, and also, believing in their own skills,

07:50 have respect, but no fear.

07:53 Don't wait until everything is perfectly defined.

07:57 Look for hungry and forward-looking and forward-thinking suppliers,

08:03 and just start doing it.

08:06 I have to say, Christoph, it has been a great journey with Deutsche Telekom

08:12 from a Juniper's perspective.

08:13 Thanks for giving us the opportunity to be one of these hungry vendors and suppliers.

08:22 Christoph, the pace of change is accelerating,

08:26 and this is true for all areas of the telecommunication industry,

08:33 what is the next big challenge or opportunity

08:36 that is facing service providers like Deutsche Telekom?

08:40 It's definitely an opportunity, and it's also a challenge together.

08:46 It's all about disaggregation; disaggregation everywhere.

08:50 It's disaggregation in the core, how we're doing it with NIMS.

08:53 Is disaggregation in the aggregation network

08:56 and in the access network, like in radio was our O-RAN initiative.

09:01 This requires an architecture based on cloud technology

09:05 and a full end-to-end automation.

09:08 In some years, this will be the new normal

09:11 instead of today's Windows silos.

09:13 In Telecom, we'll lead this architectural model.

09:17 With our ambition, we will succeed.

09:20 I hope Juniper will continue to be a strong supporter on that way.

09:25 As our CEO said, we will not stop until everyone is connected.

09:31 That is great.

09:32 I assure you, Juniper will be a great supporter on your journey there.

09:38 Thank you, Christoph. It was great having you here.

09:43 Great discussion. Thank you.

09:46 I look forward to seeing you face to face. Thank you.

09:51 Thank you very much, Mathias. Thanks for having me.

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