AWS accelerates Vodacom’s move to cloud
South African telco Vodacom is migrating the majority of its 1 400 IT applications to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform.
This, in an effort to increase agility, drive innovation and create new customer experiences, said AWS CEO Adam Selipsky.
Selipsky delivered the opening keynote on day two of Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2022 in Barcelona, Spain, sharing examples of the telcos working with AWS to accelerate their cloud journeys through data centre consolidation and rapid migration of workloads.
Among those telcos that have migrated to AWS cloud are Deutsche Telekom and South Africa’s largest mobile operator, Vodacom.
“Since they [Vodacom] started the migration, they’ve been able to rapidly innovate on new applications like the VodaPay digital wallet,” said Selipsky. “Users can access discounts, send money, order food and even pay bills from the convenience of a mobile device.”
For Deutsche Telekom, in 2019, the telecoms company set a goal to move nearly 60% of its applications to the cloud with AWS as its preferred provider for IT transformation.
“They [Deutsche Telekom] are seeing incredible benefits,” he told the audience. “Today, they can get most of their IT products to market in just 2.5 months, where it used to take 18 months.”
Migrating IT infrastructure into the cloud not only removes a lot of the heavy lifting of managing infrastructure like servers, but also increases automation and cuts costs across all business processes, according to the CEO.
While developers were early adopters of the cloud, “forward-thinking” enterprises joined the movement over the years, he said. This is the same pattern unfolding in the mobile industry in terms of moving to the cloud, Selipsky stated.
“Telecoms pioneers are modernising their networks and systems with the cloud, using solutions from AWS.
“For many telecoms operators, it started with transforming their IT infrastructure and operations − all the back-end functions, services, equipment, billing, finance and contracts.”
As to the VodaPay app, Selipsky revealed it’s been downloaded 1.4 million times following its debut in October.
Developed by Vodacom’s fintech arm, Vodacom Financial and Digital Services, VodaPay is a mobile payments solution that has been customised to meet the lifestyle and payment needs of consumers, businesses and tech developers.
Vodacom first announced the app in June 2021, when it invited developers and businesses to join its ecosystem by building their own “Mini Programs” on the mobile platform.
It is backed by Chinese-owned online payment platform Alipay, which powers over 1.2 billion users and almost 100 million merchant partners, using technologies such as artificial intelligence.
MWC 2022 is under way in Barcelona, Spain, until 3 March.