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To support the government’s vision, you need to have a robust backbone of connectivity which cannot be provided unless there is a robust telecom infrastructure. So, you see telecom services become a catalyst for supporting the digital vision of Bangladesh, said Abhishek Shukla, Director and Regional Head, Telco, Media and Entertainment, India/South Asia-Red Hat, in an exclusive interview with The Business Post’s Kamrul Hasan
Red Hat offers open source products that facilitate enterprise collaboration across environments and platforms. Could you please tell us about that?
Red Hat is very synonymous to open source worldwide. It entered the market around 25-27 years back with its product called Linux, an open source operating system developed by millions of people. Red Hat Enterprise Linux holds 60 per cent share of paid Linux market for what people pay for.
We evolved over time and diversified into other products. Our flagship product Linux will continue. But we have got products which are middleware, cloud, products in storage and automation. All the fortune 500 companies are customers of our technology.
What solutions is Red Hat now providing to businesses in Bangladesh?
In Bangladesh, Red Hat product line is industry agnostic. So, anybody who is looking for any new deployments of applications needs an operating system and a virtualised layer. So, we are providing subscription-based software services which are the business model for these industries to support their digital transformation initiatives.
Anyone who is looking to renovate, update, upgrade that’s opportunities where we are playing that role in a good install base of customers in Bangladesh across diversified industries such as telecommunications, banking and so on.
What is the future of cloud-base service in Bangladesh and how Red Hat may contribute to it?
If you look globally, Asia Pacific, India and Bangladesh, nowadays cloudification is badly needed. The attributes of cloud journey are cost-saving, resilience, scalability. Cloud’s journey depends on a country’s or company’s maturity. For example, cloud is something very well adopted in the west but it is still on the verge of adoption in emerging countries.
So, everybody had some sort of it. Now from what I call out in particular, telco has a segment where the verge is not very open to choose cloud. Therefore, Red Hat develops an open telco horizontal cloud.
The principles of open source help solve a couple of problems, one is interoperability. And this is where there is a platform approach titled ‘red hat cloud stack’ which includes technologies like red hat openstack and red hat openshift and you port applications on top of these, then you are living with this whole interoperability thing open API communications because it’s built on a platform.
The operators in Bangladesh have already set their vision in this direction by developing a cloud platform approach where they can use this cloud through network applications to do IT and enterprise applications, so it is a three-pronged approach.
What measures, as per your observations, have Bangladeshi firms taken toward embracing emerging IT technologies?
Bangladesh’s demography is supportive for any transformation. Transformation requires a base either it can be a kind of population or services you want to provide. To support the government’s vision, you need to have a robust backbone of connectivity which cannot be provided unless there is a robust telecom infrastructure. And so, you see telecom services become a catalyst for supporting the digital vision of Bangladesh.
My perspective is that telecom operators are embracing this change of the evolution of technology with their open arms. For example, Grameenphone won our Red Hat Innovation Awards last year which had a principle of adoption of emerging technology and making path breaking effects to the organisation or society. Grameenphone embraced our technology ‘openshift’ within their own CRM application which helps them bring down some challenges related to their performance, efficiency and end used experience.
I think people are ready to embrace it. The base of not doing it may vary among the organisations. Bangladesh is leading in many places and at the cusp of a major transformation where 5G is coming next year.
As Bangladesh is in initial stage of its 5G rollout, how will the adoption of 5G technology change the industry?
There are two facets, first is alluding to the digital vision of Bangladesh where you want connectivity to be available to all. Today in 5G different types of spectrum can be procured to provide different types of services such as ultra low latency, high precision services, the midwave is for factory services, and lowest band is for in general consumer services.
So, when 5G comes in, it will open up a whole wide spectrum of services for a B2B and a B2C.
“If you look at 5G as an investment from operator stand point for them, success is relying on monetisation that comes through business, not through consumers. So, return on usecase for 5G has to be B2B which is IoT, industry 4.0, factory automation.”
Bangladesh has already an industrial export hub for a lot of offshore companies which means there is a massive use case of industry automation. Another advantage is that Bangladesh has around 180 million people were enough and more usecases that can solve our daily challenges. 5G is much localised as a usecase and return of investment but Bangladesh with its tremendous demographic, tremendous industry and business presence for offshores, I think there is a great opportunity.
There is a tremendous upside for increasing subscriber base, internet penetration, B2B usecases for 5G in Bangladesh.
How does Red Hat intend to use cloud computing to quicken Bangladesh’s digital transformation?
ICT technology is the heart of any transformation. One is providing digital services to consumers-Aadhaar in India; a social security based solution is completely running on Red Hat’s open source stack. So, from this example, we can say how Red Hat is helping to transform government initiatives. Red Hat has already taken that role and initiative of that scale in India and we believe we can contribute social related pivotal services in Bangladesh as well.
What problems do you envision firms in Bangladesh and other nearby nations facing as they adopt technology?
It varies from company to company. Some people tend to hold on to legacies that they don’t know where to start. People are generally very resistant. Second would be availability of talent and skills. Third would be financial challenges.
What are the current abilities needed to develop a career in the IT field, in your opinion, based on your experience?
The future is all about fast pace innovation in an environment which will be hyper complicated, hyper connected and highly interoperable. So aligning with the open source technology tries and learns those skills. Secondly, technology changes every six months so therefore upskilling is very important to cope up with the current market.
To be a leader in the sector, what qualities do a successful leader should have?
The technology leaders will have to be open for changes. So openness is very important because of the learning mindset and utilises opportunities that come with upskilling.
