RAKUTEN SYMPHONY
Establishing a disruptive ecosystem For this to occur , a disruptive ecosystem of partners is needed , all working together to future-proof the industry by driving down operational costs and unlocking static vendor relationships .
“ Rakuten couldn ' t have done this without the ecosystem of partners that participated in our buildout of the network in Japan and that continue to participate with us , globally ,” Dabboussi establishes . “ These are both big names and small names , and there ' s many of them ; we ' re very open and our ecosystem is quite large . A few examples of these partners , which are demonstrating with us at Mobile World Congress Barcelona , include BMI , BayTec , and CIQ .
“Seeing how other enterprise IT companies , hyperscalers , and webscalers run their operations was honestly probably the biggest fundamental transformation in my thinking that has happened ”
TAREQ AMIN CEO , RAKUTEN SYMPHONY
“ BMI is a small radio supplier of ours , and they ’ re only building Open-RAN-compliant radios . I have a lot of aspirations for them . If they continue to execute well , they can bring a real change in the industry .
“ BayTec , meanwhile , manufactures and supplies numerous different components for us , from ancillaries and batteries to devices and small radio units .
” Our philosophy about open , software-centric mobile networks is pivotal for a successful transformation of the mobile industry .
“ For telecom , Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten Symphony are working closely with CIQ to ensure that Rocky Linux is proven at scale in commercial operations . There is a large and growing proactive community of very large technology companies that are ensuring Rocky Linux is leading , in terms of certified software drivers and capability compatibility for telecom . Rocky Linux and the community are ensuring that it is the best alternative for the highly demanding telecom industry , which is seen as a proxy for all industries that require edge-to-core-tocloud solutions .”
The aim of the game here is disruption , which – in terms of partnerships – potentially means moving away from some of the legacy cloud licensing methods in the telco worlds in favour of smaller , more agile and innovative players that are changing the game .
“ We feel that these three partners are foundational to what we do , but our partnerships aren ’ t exclusive to our existing partners . We ’ re so open and transparent , always looking for new innovators to come and join us in this mission , because we cannot achieve it alone . And the industry is heading that way – the more players and
48 March 2023