Thousands of miles away, on the other side of the ocean, Internet service applications, from mobile payment, e-commerce to small program platforms, which are very mature in China, are blossoming overseas with the successful mode of digital transformation of China market exported by a batch of outstanding enterprises. Whale technology, which is committed to becoming the world’s leading provider of digital technology and services, is one of them that deserves great attention.
"Whale Technology has been exploring the international market since 2005, and has provided digital technology and services to telecom operators, public service departments and customers in other industries in more than 80 countries and regions around the world." Cao Zhenzhong, chief marketing officer of Whale Technology (International), said in an exclusive interview with C114 after MWC24 Barcelona, "China market has rich technological innovation and practical experience in the digital field, and Whale Technology is actively applying these successful cases and technical experience to overseas market projects. On the one hand, we join hands with overseas operators to accelerate our own digital transformation; On the other hand, on top of the modern digital infrastructure of operators, the digital economy of the market we serve is also entering the fast lane of development, and the whole society is benefiting from it. "
Future first-mover connection
"Future First" is the theme of this year’s MWC24 Barcelona, and the deep integration of 5G and AI has become one of the most concerned topics of this year’s participants. From the commercialization of 5G in 2019 to the announcement that China telecom operators will start the large-scale deployment of 5G-A, the evolution and upgrading of technology has never stopped. An obvious truth is that technology empowers business value, and conversely, the realization of business value will also promote technology to go further. However, in the telecom industry, realizing such a positive cycle is becoming an urgent problem for the whole industry.
When Whale Technology was founded in 2003, the mobile communication market was still in the 2G era, and the demographic dividend made telecom operators enjoy a long-lasting barbaric and extensive growth. At that time, it was even dubbed as "the era of making money while lying down". Nowadays, most telecom operators in the world are facing the embarrassing situation that their revenue growth is slowing down, or even OTT companies are grabbing most of their profits. This is no secret in the industry. Then, as a company that has taken the communication industry as its main development channel since its establishment, how does Whale Technology help operators to meet such challenges?
"Our BSS and OSS suites are powerful tools to support operators to realize 5G realization." Cao Zhenzhong said that the latest telecommunications BSS/OSS suite exhibited by Whale Technology at MWC24 is not only equipped with AI-driven sales, marketing and service platforms, but also can help operators improve customer acquisition efficiency and the life cycle value of existing customers. At the same time, cloud native technology and process automation technology can be used to help enterprises simplify internal workflows and improve operational efficiency.
In addition, in terms of self-intelligent network, telecom operators can use the technology of Whale Technology to build a modern network and operating environment, and improve network scalability, reliability and resource utilization. As for how to monetize 5G, Whale Technology can cooperate with telecom operators, especially overseas operators, to bring innovative technologies and services that have been verified in China market to the market together, and help them gradually shift from 5G B2C to B2B and then to B2B2X and other fields, thus expanding their income sources.
Beyond connection, from paving the way to empowerment, from basic communication connection service provider to digital service provider, this is the core of the answer given by Cao Zhenzhong in an interview.
Last year, at MWC23, GSMA proposed the Open Gateway initiative, hoping to unify and open the network capabilities in the telecommunications network through API, and reproduce the magical effects brought by global voice roaming in that year, thus providing new possibilities for 5G revenue generation. This year, GSMA announced at MWC24 that as many as 47 mobile operator groups (representing 65% of global connections), including the three major operators in China, have signed the Open Gateway plan.
"We believe that the opening of telecom network capacity will bring new revenue opportunities to operators. Especially in the B2B market, operators mainly sell connectivity, cloud resources and resell third-party services. However, in order to enhance the stickiness with partners, operators must open their own capabilities and embed them into third-party services. This can not only increase the profit of B2B business, but also improve the stickiness with partners, and at the same time become a differentiation factor for operators from hyperscalers. If these capabilities are effectively standardized, it can also reduce the integration cost of global partners and promote the development of the entire ecosystem. " Cao Zhenzhong said.
It is also in this context that Whale Technology demonstrated a complete B2B solution at MWC24, covering the B2B support system of operators and TaaS(Telco as a Service). According to reports, TaaS includes a series of solutions, including not only messaging platform as a service (river map) products in the traditional network/communication capability open field, Video Intelligence in the data and AI capability open field, AIGCortex platform (large model platform) and application scenarios, but also operational capability open solutions such as SuperAPP and DMC (digital marketing cloud). Moreover, these solutions have been commercialized and verified in China, Singapore, South America and other markets. At the same time, Whale Technology is also strengthening cooperation with important industry organizations such as GSMA, hoping to actively contribute to ecological construction.
No China, no world.
Huang Yuhong, president of China Mobile Research Institute, recalled MWC2024 Barcelona, and said that besides "no 5G, no AI", there was also "no China, no globe".
In South America, which is separated from Wan Li, as a representative enterprise of China’s technology "going out to sea", Whale Technology helped South American operator Claro to build a Super APP based on small programs and build a local ecology. At the same time, the company held the "Mini Program Super APP Competition" in conjunction with Universidad de La Sabana and Claro in Colombia, aiming at inspiring the younger generation to explore and explore small programs. After receiving the professional training of Whale Science and Technology Instructor, the students of Universidad de La Sabana designed and developed a small program that can solve practical problems in campus life within two weeks. This activity not only allows students to understand and apply knowledge in practice, but also helps local people to cultivate digital talents. It also makes the innovative technology of applet more widely promoted in the American continent, and it is an attempt to integrate science and technology, business and education.
In C114′ s view, the rich ICT experience and industry insight accumulated in the telecommunications field from the 2G to 5G era, coupled with the super blessing of cloud technology and Internet industry experience, has successfully changed from a software service provider to a "digital intelligence service professional company" that understands the telecommunications ICT field, cloud services and Internet genes, which is also the basis for its ability to compete and cooperate with industry giants in overseas markets.
Take the LPC (Local Public Cloud) solution provided by Whale Technology for overseas markets as an example. This solution realizes the efficient operation of major cloud platforms through its self-developed CRE engine. "Our LPC solution enables IDC customers or carrier customers to transform into cloud service operators. They can choose a suitable cloud base scheme according to their own needs and build a cloud infrastructure that meets their own needs. Zain, a Saudi operator, is one of the successful cases. LPC not only meets the requirements of Zain and the Saudi government for data security and data protection, but also achieves sustainable development in business. " Cao Zhenzhong told us that LPC scheme can greatly reduce the threshold for customers to intervene in cloud computing and digital transformation, and provide new infrastructure options for digital transformation of overseas customers.
We have noticed that this scheme has been quoted by Gartner as the sample vendor of the "sovereign cloud". Gartner’s latest forecast also shows that by 2027, 70% of enterprises adopting generative AI will take sustainable development and digital sovereignty as the primary criteria for choosing public cloud generative AI services. In view of this, the LPC scheme is also constantly developing. At this year’s MWC24, Whale Technology launched the Local X series under the background of "digital sovereignty". Local X includes a series of local applications, such as Local Mobile Payment, LocalGPT, Local SuperAPP, Local Security and so on. These digital infrastructures can help a country to establish local, controllable facilities that meet the national regulatory requirements, while Whale Technology has the ability to plan, build and operate such digital infrastructures.
In fact, since 2005, Whale Technology has continuously increased its overseas layout. Up to now, Whale Technology has covered 150+ mainstream telecom operators in more than 80 countries or regions on six continents, serving nearly 1.8 billion end users. In the field of cloud computing and industry digitalization, Whale Technology is the core cloud MSP partner of Alibaba Cloud, and its LPC products have been commercialized in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, South Africa and other countries. Up to now, Whale Technology has set up several R&D centers or branches in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Colombia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, India and other countries.
"A year’s plan lies in spring". After the opening ceremony of MWC24 in Barcelona, Cao Zhenzhong also conveyed to C114 the company’s determination and development goal to continue to deepen overseas markets in the future: with the arrival of the new year, Whale Technology will continue to uphold and practice the "STRATO" strategy of digital transformation 2.0 in the international market. Due to the increasing demand for digital infrastructure, supervision and security in overseas national strategies, LPC-based Local X will become an important development direction. At the same time, the company will gradually move from the telecom operator industry to the digitalization of other industries such as finance and cross-industry digitalization capacity building in order to achieve sustained growth.
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