Digital Transformation Framework

Performance management of communication becomes more adaptive and granular in Digital Transformation Framework owing to insights on the basis of the state of the art data mining and analytical tools.

Platform-Centric Digital Transformation

Digital is rapidly blurring the boundaries in the communications ecosystem reducing the labels of telcos, OTTs, content and media players to irrelevance and outdated. The new digital ecosystem is a flatter, direct to device delivery mechanism, where the services ride on platforms which are scalable, virtual and flexible. This platform-centric transformation will redefine the way services are created, delivered and consumed in a radically different manner cutting across the old world boundaries. Digital Transformation Framework, in this sense, is not just about transforming technology, it is about transforming the way the technology is used and consumed, morphing into newer business processes and delivery models hitherto unheard of. The government has shown the direction by creating a clear vision statement around digital India, the guiding beacon to this transformation.

The engineering principles around supply-side economics and the techno-regulatory framework to enable this would play a key role in this mega transformation.

— Shyam Mardikar, CTO, Reliance JIO

The key drivers relating to basic digital advantage are around disaggregation, virtualization, large scale data analytics and innovative management models for any industry. From a telco perspective, these drivers help towards more efficient and productive use of spectral assets and equipment leading to better capital productivity. Also, performance management becomes more adaptive and granular owing to insights basis the state of the art data mining and analytical tools. Lastly, a web-scale model of zero touch and auto-optimizing network operations can ensure the best customer experience.

How Digital Transformation Empowers the Consumers

The biggest power that such a transformation would give to the customers is the visibility, transparency, and control over the experience. Enterprises will use the digital framework to define and manage the service portfolio. The older practices around modeling the services and then waiting to get them delivered would be almost quaint. The digital framework would enable the CIOs to participate in service modeling and creation, pilot various options and arrive at customer led CI/CD way of working. For the consumer segment, it would be around a totally different level of empowerment with regards to their experience, consumption, billing, etc through AI driven self-care modules.

Modeling the digital transformation framework for scale is one of the big learning India has adopted to ensure that we are not in a perpetual catch-up state. The engineering principles around supply-side economics and the techno-regulatory framework to enable this would play a key role in this mega transformation. Additionally, the chronic infrastructure challenges are a bottleneck to structured growth and much-needed densification of new tech-best practices around single window clearance of RoWs, power and space permissions would go a really long way to ensure India gets to it much deserved digital footprint. 

Shyam Mardikar

The author is CTO, Reliance JIO