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"Simplification isn’t a feature, it’s a survival strategy." – Sandeep Karkala, CTO OSS Business Unit, Rakuten Symphony
As telecom heads to FutureNet World London next week, Rakuten Symphony’s CMO Geoff Hollingworth and OSS Business Unit CTO Sandeep Karkala joined us on Zero-Touch Live to discuss how telcos can prepare now to meet rising demands from 6G, AI and large-scale private deployments, without compounding complexity.
A replay of our conversation is available here.
The case for simplification
Sandeep outlined how legacy organizational structures have created operational silos that lead to inconsistent tooling and disconnected data. The result is slow, manual processes that block scale and efficiency.
He dove into how operators can build real-time, unified architectures that abstract complexity, normalize data and expose APIs to build a foundation that allows automation and AI to deliver on business objectives.
“It’s time for telcos to focus on eliminating complexity and automating simplicity,” he said.
Future network demands are calling
Geoff pointed out that telecom can’t move forward while operating like a 17th-century sailing ship. Rather, the shift to modern, software-driven, autonomous operations requires breaking away from layered legacy systems and building networks with fewer moving parts.
He stressed that usable, dependable data is key to delivering the real-time observability and automation operators need. And the question telcos should be asking isn’t what’s possible with AI, it’s what’s slowing us down and how do we fix it now?
As Geoff put it, “Everyone knows what needs to be done. The challenge is choosing the most effective way to do it.”
