How do you address the main IT challenges of 2024?

. —“SES operates in an industry that has been heavily disrupted, with some large players entering the space. This puts a lot of pressure on established companies like us. We have been transforming our company to become much more digital, and a lot more agile. At the heart of this, we have an IT vision that is closely mapped to the Open Digital Architecture, a modern reference architecture for communication service providers.

We have built a roadmap with three distinct items. The first is achieving zero-touch provisioning, to automate the fulfilment process of the products and services we deliver to our customers. This also adds speed to the service delivery process through reducing manual efforts. The second is focused on zero-touch operations, bringing in technologies like AI to create a fully autonomous network that can adjust itself based on what we see happen on the network. And finally, zero-touch partnering, or self-service, which allows customers to easily order, access and upgrade their services. This is all API driven, allowing to also create new products by combining different building blocks together and offer these new products and services to our customers more quickly.

What, in your opinion, are the key technological innovations that will impact businesses over the next five years?

“One specific innovation area is AI. If you look at topics like smart operations, this goes into zero-touch operations, building this autonomous network that has algorithms to optimise its use continuously. The ability to enable predictive analysis and continuously optimise the quality of experience for our customers is something that can bring a lot of benefits including improved quality of the service and enhanced customer experience.

This could also be applied to our network operating centres, for example, through the ability to request, in natural human language, the network status, or simulate different scenarios. Some of these technologies, like automated resource control of our next-generation satellite systems, are here already today – and we as an industry leader are pioneering them. They are also on the roadmap of many of our key ecosystem partners. 

How do you ensure that your organisation remains agile and adaptable to technological advancements and market changes?

“I’m a big believer in building a modular architecture, where you purposely build reusable components that do one thing very well, as opposed to building a big system that tries to do many things at the same time. It’s a great way to separate concerns, allowing for more flexibility and improved agility.

There’s a lot of innovation in technology that opens new opportunities, yet it can be difficult for individuals to stay on top of all these innovations. Rather than developing software in a full-stack fashion, it is much better to build with a platform approach in mind, allowing you to have services that software developers can easily tap into using APIs. Think about plugging into an identity and access management solution –  as one such good example. By offering these building blocks as services, you can significantly reduce the cognitive load on the developers, which allows them to focus on the more specific software that we as a space and satellite player need, and to achieve results quicker.”