"We are going through unprecedented change in the service provider industry -and it's increasingly becoming a mobile and cloud-based world, with competition around every corner," Kelly Ahuja, senior vice president of Cisco's service provider business, told 70 international journalists during Cisco's third annual Global Editors Conference in downtown San Jose earlier this week.

"Change is the lone constant," he continued, "with several major trends driving dramatic impact on every player in the industry."

Ahuja then chronicled several trends impacting the industry. The world has gone mobile, forever altering customer expectations and the rise in cloud computing is dramatically transforming telecom infrastructures, he noted. Also, he said machine-to-machine Internet of Everything (IoE) experiences are at the cusp of wide-scale proliferation in many markets and video continues to drive global IP traffic growth at a clip of 23 percent global CAGR.

Three Keys to Success: Increase Revenue, Reduce Opex, Enhance Service Agility

Each service provider faces unique geographic and competitive challenges, but according to Ahuja, they are all looking for three things from their technology solutions. "Operators want to improve their top lines," he said. "They also need to reduce their spending, particularlycostly operational expenses. And most importantly, they want to move with speed and agility in deploying new services as fast as they can."

Ahuja outlined Cisco's strategy to enable service provider success, armed with technologies like the Evolved Services Platform (ESP), a comprehensive virtualization and orchestration software platform that creates, automates and provisions services in real time, across compute, storage and network functions, enabling the delivery of desired business outcomes for applications running across multiple domains facilitating the shift to new business models.

Transformation Through Innovation

In concluding his presentation, Ahuja unveiled Cisco's framework for service provider success: Transformation through innovation to enable profitable customer and business outcomes.

First, you must transform the business and approach things differently, he said.   Second, you must transform the architecture to reduce operating expenses and enhance service agility.

"And lastly -and most importantly -you have to transform the experience. If you deliver new and exciting services that add value to your customers, they will come back."

Tweet us @CiscoSP360 if you have any questions.