Ericsson: The cloud presents an opportunity for the ICT industry

As top telecom and ICT companies gather in Amman, Jordan for the Arab Advisors Group 9th Convergence Summit, the development of systems to manage cloud jurisdiction was high on Ericsson’s agenda.  A number of Ericsson’s top executives took part in the summit including Anders Lindblad, Head of Region Middle East and North-East Africa, Ericsson, who moderated the ‘State of the industry’ panel discussion. During the discussion, executives from a number of telecom operators shared their insights on the industry and what is to come in the future.

“A key emerging theme we are seeing throughout the summit this year is an increased focus on the cloud,” commented Lindblad. “There is a great opportunity represented by cloud-based services for telecom providers because they increase the value of carrier networks in multiple ways and create new roles and revenues while also accelerating the journey towards the Networked Society.”

Ericsson’s partnership with Akamai continues to improve the technical performance of the cloud.  Furthermore, Ericsson has recently engaged with the regulatory community around the region in order to help develop policies to enable a healthy cloud ecosystem, particularly in areas such as security, privacy reliability, performance and jurisdiction to name a few.

Lindblad goes on to explain that the cloud will greatly increase network traffic and utilization and thus transport revenues. “By delivering cloud-based services, telecom carriers have an opportunity to extract multiple revenue streams from the same function; charging end users for a given level of service quality and charging cloud-based providers for service quality as well,” he added.

In keeping with the ‘cloud’ theme, Tarek Saadi, President, North Middle East, Ericsson took part in a panel discussion entitled ‘Convergence strategies panel: Cloud-based future’ while Ericsson’s Head of marketing, government and industry relations for the Middle East, Jeremy Foster hosted a session entitled ‘Today’s Cloud: Same same or different?’

The event, organized by The Arab Advisors Group and sponsored by Ericsson, was held under the patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan, President of El Hassan Science City and the Royal Scientific Society from May 22–23.

The two-day event saw leaders from the regional ICT industry come together under the theme of ‘The Post Convergence World: Navigating the New Landscape.’