Interview: Sanjay Krishnaa, Cyient

How are AI & IoT changing your industry sector, and what are you doing to move with the changes?

Artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT are generating intense heat, and developments in these fields show no sign of abating. However, service providers are looking at AI and IoT to combine to eventually hand over control of the network to machines. The adoption of 5G in the near future will further complicate matters, as it will require network analytics capabilities to support complex network slicing and optimisation. We have recently launched the IoT-enabled Tower Operation Centre, which helps better manage and monitor passive cell tower infrastructure using advance analytics and IoT. Our solution enables efficient tower monitoring resulting in attraction of new tenants and increasing tenancy ratio and profitability. It also addresses issues such as escalating energy costs, lack of visibility on asset health, increasing tower downtime, managing unsecured remote sites, and fuel pilferage.

Which innovations or disruptions are your customers most worried or enthusiastic about for the year ahead?

Well, the biggest worry for CSPs is revenue growth. This is the struggle that every carrier globally is experiencing. As the margins are shrinking with the consumers, the focus for them will be on the enterprise business — they will have to be innovative here. The current structure and mindset don’t support this business model and need to be addressed.

There is also a sense of both excitement and concern from customers we have spoken with as to how the new era of AI will empower innovation within their organisations. The deployment of AI along with RPA will work across customer engagement, business process transformation and securing of mission-critical virtual assets. AI has the potential to be one of the most momentous and transformational technologies of the next decade.

Service providers such as Cyient can help enterprises build data models and architectures that will help capture new data and improve existing knowledge models. The underlying theme that will drive the change is ‘digital transformation’. Cyient brings industry and domain experience and expertise that will help enterprises extract and utilise their data more effectively — this is where we will see the biggest area of differentiation between service providers. We are currently helping some of the carriers achieve these objectives.

What will be the biggest growth opportunities for your company and your customers in 2019?

In our conversations with service providers globally, there is a sense of urgency in building capabilities around all aspects of delivery of network-related services and solutions. Clients are looking at how can they take a digital leap forward, bringing digital transformation, enhancing customer experience with a focus on network automation and closed-loop networking, bringing in new partner ecosystems, and employing artificial intelligence and M2M services. Cloud is another big thing.

Growth for us would align with what our customers are looking for. For the last 25 years we have seen how the telecommunications sector has transformed, and we believe we are in a good position to support our customers when it comes to the rollout of next-gen networks such as small cell, 5G, or bringing about digital transformation through robotics process automation, IoT or AI. The deployment of small cells will be another major growth driver for our business for the next 4–5 years. We are leaders in small cell design and deployment and will continue to invest in this technology.

Sanjay Krishnaa is Cyient’s Senior Vice President, Communications Business, and President, Asia Pacific region, responsible for growing the company’s communications business globally and creating a robust and differentiated portfolio of offerings. He sits on the advisory board of the Deakin School of Engineering and is a member of Engineers Australia.

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