MTN embraces opportunities to move towards converged solutions

MTN SA's chief technology officer, Kanagaratnam Lambotharan, highlighted trends and insight in the ICT sector and provided a view of MTN's positioning particularly on its move towards the provision of seamless converged solutions to leapfrog customer service.

"There is no doubt that the local telecoms market continues to grow and develop as more investment is made into broadband infrastructure," said Lambotharan. "This development has brought about ample opportunity for the broader telecoms market to explore and as a leader in this space, MTN is not only a catalyst for change, but is embracing the opportunities we identify to leapfrog and enhance customer experience."

Key trends are identified

According to Lambotharan, the current ICT opportunity in telecoms exists in the data centre, managed services and cloud markets - all areas that are experiencing phenomenal growth across various sectors. In fact, the financial services sector accounts for the largest share of data centre services employed, followed by ICT and government respectively. The managed services sector remains in its growth stage and is becoming a priority for several industries including manufacturing, media and automotive.

Lambotharan identified key trends including social networking, enterprise mobility, content management as well as cloud, as a new set of factors in the telecoms space that have emerged in tandem with entrenchment of ICT within the enterprise. "It is critically important for us to take note of such trends for our enterprise customers, to be able to develop strategies that speak to these, and in return, effectively meet our enterprise customers needs through a diverse products and service offering that propels their businesses efficiently."

A variety of solutions available

MTN have developed a convergence commercial solutions suite, taking into consideration the current state of the telecoms market, the factors that are impacting its growth and the needs of the enterprise user. "Our convergence offering ranges across a variety of solutions including enterprise mobility apps, fixed mobile convergence, software as a service, communications as a service, as well as solutions specific to small businesses," added Lambotharan.

"The industry has certainly been talking about achieving true convergence for some time now, yet the reality is that it is upon us and as an Internet services provider, we need to take on the challenge to develop a truly converged offering to support our customers on their business journeys."

Lambotharan maintained that MTN will remain at the forefront of developments in this space, identifying further relationships between the synergies and economies of scale. For now, the brand remains focused on the convergence of ICT as a state that the current market is in and will continue to deliver more converged, broader spectrum solutions to its enterprise customers through its new Enterprise Business Unit structure.