By Bas Burger, CEO Business, BT

One of the most interesting parts of being a CEO is asking customers what keeps them awake at night. When I recently asked members of our Customer Advisory Board, a group of CIOs from leading multinational companies and UK-based organisations, they singled out cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. Themes that echoed recent researchwe carried out. Clearly both can be powers for good or evil - and the ability to harness their potential is a source of differentiation for companies striving to be sustainably relevant for their customers, employees and shareholders in the future.

So to do this, the next logical questions for companies are: 'Are we secure?' and 'Are we AI-ready?' The answer to these questions is one of the reasons we are confident about the future of modern global networks, about the need for further consolidation and the opportunity for industry collaboration to deliver performance benefits to customers around the globe.

I'd like to offer a perspective on this by talking about factories and fabric.

First, factories. Industry uses AI to accelerate research, development and distribution. Leveraging AI offers unprecedented opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce costs and accelerate time-to-market for new products. Most companies face sizeable hurdles, including high R&D costs, globally dispersed people and operations, long development cycles and stringent regulatory requirements.

It is no surprise that they want to explore how AI can deliver faster data-driven decision-making, predictive analytics and automation. This requires the integration of AI into existing workflows and that in itself requires seamless international collaboration, secure data sharing and compliance with global standards. Naturally, there is very little point of doing this if those workflows travel over networks that are simply not AI-ready themselves.

This is where we come in. Or rather Network-as-a-Service (NaaS), which is where we see the greatest opportunity for consolidation in a frustratingly fragmented market. NaaS is like having a virtual toolbox which allows companies to adapt the network to suit their needs in an instant, whereas with previous technologies it could take weeks. It enables them to modernise traditional networks into highly scalable, cloud-centric solutions that adapt quickly to different data needs.

In short, a NaaS should connect companies to everything they need, wherever they are, in the most intelligent, secure and sustainable way. That makes sense. It also ties into our ambition at BT which is to be the most trusted connector of people, devices and machines.

And so to fabric.

The world of networks has been through several seismic moments as new technologies have emerged and transformed the landscape. In the 1970s and 1980s a technology called X.25 revolutionised the way in which companies accessed their remote mainframe terminals. In the 1990s Frame Relay allowed you to connect to a cloud making it more efficient to run corporate networks and a lot cheaper too. The next big breakthrough came with the introduction of multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) in the mid-2000s, which allowed carriers to converge voice, video and data on the same network. Each of these network solutions was right for its time. We are now at another pivot point in the history of networking, driven by the demand for higher bandwidth, seamless connectivity to and between cloud services and dispersed workforces and operations, flexible economics and pervasive scalability.

Our response to this is Global Fabric, which revolutionises connectivity as organisations adapt to modern network demands and ask the question: 'Are we AI ready?' We think companies like BT, who have global connectivity solutions, serving multinationals around the world, can lead the rollout of a single, integrated agnostic platform that delivers value to customers, cloud service providers, technology companies and other global telcos.

Back in May, we talked about exploring options for our global operations in the context of BT Group needing to double down on its core UK businesses. This leaves the field clear for opportunities to engage in much deeper international partnerships to leverage the investment we have made in rolling out Global Fabric.

We know there is a common desire among companies to optimise cloud and network costs, to reduce cybersecurity risks and to enhance sustainability across their IT estate, especially in the light of the surge in demand from AI-driven applications. Network operators face the challenge of upgrading their network infrastructure as the current technology reaches the end of its lifecycle. We know that AI has intensified the challenges of data distribution, due to the surge in data produced by AI systems. And we know that AI's electricity demands will present huge challenges to companies striving to achieve their Net Zero carbon emissions goals.

As organisations adopt AI strategies and shift their apps to the cloud or edge to bring them closer to their business operations, network demandswill grow in scale and complexity. At the same a modern network will help reduce the concentration of risk in single points of failure and make it easier to address major IT outages, as experiencedglobally on 19 July 2024.

At BT, we believe strongly in the future benefits of AI and we're ready to help companies answer the question: 'Are we AI ready?' At the same time we believe this is a pivotal moment in networking technology and recognise that international partnership and collaboration is the best way of realising the considerable benefits of this new era on the global stage. BT stands ready to make this real.

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