New technology horizons: predictions from telco experts at Infosys

Leading technology consultants from Infosys debated key issues facing our industry with Wholesale customers, at Telstra Wholesale Business Connect.

Priya Chidambaranathana, Senior Principal and Head of Architecture, Infosys explains what you can expect from technology over three horizons.

1. What is happening now

Today, most organisations are asking how they can move into digital and become more agile to maintain competitiveness and support business growth. That translates into discussions about microservices and open APIs that help them integrate with all their ecosystems.

On the network side, the focus is on moving into virtualised solutions such as SD-WAN and virtualised customer premises equipment (vCPE). At the same time, businesses are exploring new connectivity options for IoT use cases.
 

2. One to three years in the future

The second horizon will see a further extension of the above areas of digitisation, with a growing focus on providing new digital bundles of services.

Network slicing through 5G and the rise of edge computing will support the move towards hybrid, agile solutions. Organisations will no longer just think in terms of internal IT, but rather the combination of IT plus their network plus their ecosystem. Organisations will have to consider how they handle these components seamlessly.

"5G and the rise of edge computing will support the move towards hybrid, agile solutions"

3. Looking further ahead

Emerging, transformative technologies will grow to scale in the third horizon. Blockchain for example could be used by telcos to simplify or disrupt processes. While Priya puts new technology adoption falls under the third horizon globally, it doesn’t mean it can’t be done in the next couple of years. Priya says it just depends on how fast organisations want to be at the forefront of disruption.