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"We need to understand the full spectrum to see the moves our industry must make to become truly industrial grade." – Philippe Ensarguet, VP Software Engineering, Orange
Open source and cloud-native are central to telecom’s transformation agenda, but moving from pilot to production remains a real challenge.
In this special operator spotlight episode of Zero-Touch Live, guest host Keith Dyer, editor of The Mobile Network, spoke candidly with Philippe Ensarguet, VP of Software Engineering at Orange, and Vivek Chadha, SVP and Global Head at Rakuten Cloud, to unpack what it truly takes to industrialize open platforms and scale automation in real-world telco environments.
Watch the full episode replay now below.
Philippe opened by grounding the conversation in reality: most operators don’t have the luxury of starting from scratch.
Rather, transformation must happen amid legacy systems, vendor constraints and production pressures, requiring product-level support, lifecycle management and security expectations equal to commercial software.
Vivek echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the need for a certified, shared foundation that gives operators and vendors alike a stable base for innovation. He warned that without this foundation, the complexity of maintaining bespoke environments will continue to stall progress and limit AI adoption.
Key takeaways from our discussion:
If you’re a telco that wants to accelerate transformation, the message from today’s experts was clear: simplify, certify and scale together.
Keith did an excellent job getting to the heart of a wide range of challenges, as Philippe and Vivek both spoke openly about their real experiences and what needs to happen next for true success.
