Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 56 | Page 46

CIOopinion CIO OPINION “ IN THE COMING MONTHS, OPERATORS MUST ENSURE THEY ARE EVOLVING NETWORKS IN A PROGRESSIVE WAY, MAKING THE MOST OF NETWORK AUTOMATION TO CREATE MORE FLEXIBLE NETWORK ARCHITECTURES THAT CAN BE RUN WITH MINIMAL HUMAN INTERVENTION. world’s Fourth Industrial Revolution and enabling advanced e-health, e-commerce, e-learning, cloud robotics and more. If we invest now, we can further strengthen our infrastructure, economies and societies to cope in the best way possible with whatever challenges future decades may bring. Despite the uncertainty ahead, there is one thing we can be sure of – as we move “ AS ADVANCED AS OUR TECHNOLOGY GETS, IT WILL ONLY EVER BE AS GOOD AS THE PEOPLE CREATING AND SUPPORTING IT. towards a 5G world, our networks will become even more critical to everyday life. 5G networks are likely to underpin practically all critical functions of government and industry. Ensuring resilience will be of the utmost importance; it could quite literally be a matter of life and death. To support and enable this, we will need to draw on the skills and efforts of the extraordinary teams who have helped us weather the current crisis – field engineers and operations teams who have worked 24/7 to secure and strengthen our vital infrastructure. We must thank our people and invest in them, because as advanced as our technology gets, it will only ever be as good as the people creating and supporting it. • 46 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com