Operators’ platform ambitions can present new opportunities for specialist suppliers

The telecoms network is steadily converging with cloud and AI infrastructure to become a programmable fabric that will allow users to consume capacity and services as they do in the public cloud. There is an opportunity for telecoms operators to establish platforms that deliver this in a network-as-a-service (NaaS) model, though to succeed, they will need to invest in key enabling technologies and skills. That, in turn, presents an opportunity for specialist vendors to become key members of an operator ecosystem, or even to be acquired, and therefore achieve a degree of influence and stability that they would not have managed standalone. This article examines an example of this trend, Reliance Industries’s (RIL’s) acquisition of Radisys, which was consolidated under RIL’s Jio Platforms division.