technologyreseller.co.uk 25 Q&A smart robotics and things they would like to do. The way around that is to put that compute power much closer to the actual business premises. We’re working really closely with another business in our Liberty Global/ Telefónica family, Atlas Edge, who are making real strides forward in how to build that data centre capability in a much more localised way. Combine that with full fibre connectivity and you suddenly create the ability for businesses to deploy really low latency services. We see edge compute capability as a significant, ongoing trend. The beauty of being part of such a big group and having Liberty and Telefónica as co-parents is that there is a huge number of potential ventures and businesses that we can draw upon to work out how can we use this capability to address some of the problem statements out in the market. Atlas Edge is a really pertinent example of that. TR: Are these new services you’ve been talking about being demanded by customers or are you having to push them out and educate customers about what’s possible? DT: It’s a bit of both. Take hyperscalers as an example. They are quite far advanced in terms of their thinking: they share a problem statement with us, they give us the exam question and we lean on the capabilities we have to help them solve it. At the other end of the scale, there are still channel partners we need to educate and make aware of what can be achieved with technology, so they can talk to their end customers about solutions through a lens of what’s on the horizon and achievable in 6, 12, 18 months, rather than being constrained by previous technology or legacy technology. TR: Are you attracting a different type of partner now or looking for a different type of partner that might not have a legacy mindset? DT: Yes, we are. One of the ambitions we have for 2022 is to pivot more towards those new types of partner. We are not going to give less focus to our traditional partners, who still have huge value for us, but we do need to start to diversify the range of partners that we work with to address the new technologies and types of service that can be deployed out in the market. TR: Are your competitors moving in the same direction or is a whole group of businesses just not being served as well as they might be? DT: We’re definitely not the only ones moving in that direction, but we are really well placed because of that richness of capability we have through Telefónica and Liberty Global. We have different bits of the puzzle that we can bring together in a smart way, and our competitors don’t necessarily have that luxury. They can look to partner with businesses with those capabilities, but we, as part of Telefónica and Liberty Global, have it in our family ecosystem. In that respect we are uniquely well placed to make big strides forward, quickly. TR: Can you give me an example? DT: Together with Atlas Edge, we are having conversations with a number of hyperscalers about how we can enable their applications to become much more powerful than they are today, in terms of what they can achieve. The limiting factor currently is latency; while those applications can do some great things in theory, the compute power isn't sufficient to fulfil that potential and the user experience isn’t brilliant. We’re having conversations around how we can combine the capability they have in data centres and the capability we have in highcapacity connectivity with the applications hyperscalers are building. TR: You mentioned that you are continuing to invest in your network. Are you also investing in systems to provide the flexibility that customers are now demanding? DT: That is happening in phases. The first phase, Ultimate Flex, which we launched earlier this year (2021) demonstrated our intent to give partners more flexibility. Instead of having three-year contracts or five-year contracts for connectivity, Ultimate Flex lets you cancel with 30 days’ smart factories and robotics. Businesses are looking to deploy those technologies to help them run their businesses more efficiently and that is driving demand for greater connectivity. Ethernet connectivity may not be good enough to provide the low latency that’s needed for some of those use cases. So, over time we expect high-capacity services to become a bigger part of what the channel partners we work with use in selling-on services to their customers. The demands of digital technology are growing at an exponential rate and the connectivity that underpins it has to move too. TR: How are you addressing this demand on the network side? DT: Today we reach about 80% of UK business premises, so we have good penetration across the UK, and we sell a whole range of connectivity products and high capacity services, up to 100 Gigabit and beyond, where required. Given the pace of change in demand for connectivity, we are investing a lot in advancing our capability in high capacity services (HCS). In 2021, we started making multi-million pound investments in the national HCS network we have across our core sites and that's going to continue in 2022. From the early to mid-part of the year, we're looking to go beyond our core sites and out to all of what we call our metro sites – sites closer to the big cities and towns that bring that network capability closer to our customers. We’re really looking to advance that capability. TR: So, your customers are demanding more flexibility and more bandwidth. What else is shaping your business? DT: The other thing I would mention is that it's not just about fibre. There is a lot of narrative in our industry around full fibre and the importance of full fibre, which I fully agree with. But it’s not just about fibre; it’s also about having compute power deployed much closer to customer sites, because of the much more sophisticated use cases for digital technology and the ultra-low latency that they require. Today, we have huge data centres built in the suburbs of towns and cities that drive that compute power. The problem is that in many cases they are hundreds of miles away from where the customer is, and by the time the traffic has flowed to that customer, latency loss means that they are unable to do some of the really continued... ...continued
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