Nokia revealed a significant rebrand at Mobile World Congress 2023, signally a shift in the company’s focus to enterprise and B2B, which it sees as the future of telecom. For this episode, I talk with Nokia Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Europe Azfar Aslam about Nokia’s new direction, the challenge of refactoring legacy products, and what’s in store as the hyperscalers work to become carrier-grade cloud providers. 

Listen now to hear about:

• The balance of hardware and software in Nokia’s portfolio [04:34];
• How the company is adapting products for a public-cloud-driven future [06:44];
• How it weighs the benefits of refactoring for the public cloud against maintaining a common software base [10:30]; and
• Azfar’s thoughts on network workloads running in public clouds [12:51].

Links and Resources

• Check out Nokia’s technology vision for 2030. It talks about the network of the future (a network of networks!) and how open APIs and the monetization of those APIs will be key. Hmm, sound familiar? 🧐
• Read about Nokia’s super cool rebrand in The Verge.
• What is cloud native, and how can you be sure that vendors are designing their applications correctly? Watch my hilarious Top 5 List with TelecomTV and Ray LeMaistre where I explain this misused term.
• Check out Totogi’s Whoosh! offering that can help CSPs pull developers from Twilio’s ecosystem and into an operator’s. You’ll need this for those network APIs.
• Check out Nokia’s press release about its work on DISH’s 5G standalone core network
• Learn about what DISH is doing with the public cloud and then check out my conversation with DISH Wireless EVP and Chief Network Officer Marc Rouanne.
• You can find the transcript for this episode here.
• Did we talk about dinosaurs in this episode? WE DID! RAR! 🦖 Sometimes dinosaurs can be cool, like when they’re movie stars and scare common folks. Watch the official trailer from Jurassic Park 2, which was filmed on Asfar’s favorite Hawaiian island, Kuwai.

Wanna talk public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.

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This week’s guest

About Azfar Aslam

Azfar is passionate about driving customer success and has shaped technology and business strategies for over 60 Communications Service Providers and Large Enterprises globally. His experience spans new technology evaluations and product introductions, from portfolio and investment optimizations to E2E evolution of communications networks and AI-enabled automation. Azfar has also been deeply involved in corporate strategies, including M&A, new market entry, and establishing new lines of business. His current focus includes helping customers chart their journey toward new value creation in industry 4.0 in the high-performance critical networks era.

Podcast Credits

• Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Royston, TelcoDR
• Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
• Editor/Marketing: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
• Editing: Andrew Condell
• Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
• Music: Dyami Wilson