The enterprise segment is an increasingly rich seam for telecoms carriers to mine. Some analysts predict that global ICT demand will grow at a compound annual rate of over 10% in the coming years, making enterprise a key source for pursuing future opportunities. This is happening as businesses across all verticals continue to migrate services to the cloud and invest in advanced digital services and IoT.
As a result, some wholesale providers have realigned in recent years to ensure they fully service these needs and are ready to meet new demands. “We are in an era where technological innovation is advancing rapidly, and enterprises need providers that can swiftly transform expertise into practical execution for concrete products and use cases,” says Maurizio Gemito, head of voice and mobile product management at Sparkle.
For Sparkle, these trends have prompted an evolution that began several years ago in which the company has been transitioning from a wholesale operator into a broader role as an enterprise service provider.
“This trend started some years ago and now we have a deep understanding of the market,” says Antonella Sanguineti, head of marketing and product management for networking, cloud, security and identity solutions. “That means now we are boosting the strategy.”
Skills development
Sanguineti says the transition has required significant changes to how Sparkle approaches the market.
“We had to build dedicated sales teams because the way you sell to enterprises is very different to selling wholesale services,” she says. Additional skills have been onboarded, building the full ecosystem to serve the enterprise segment.
“We had to enlarge the pre-sales and sales teams, as well as product management, to cope with the different needs that enterprises have,” says Sanguineti. “We also had to shift perception of the brand.”
The current strategy centres on a range of services that include Cloud Connect, SD-WAN, SASE-as-a-service and automation, as well as the company continuing to expand its IoT offerings across verticals. Sparkle counts around 400 enterprises among its 1,500 customers globally, alongside 1,100 telcos, OTT providers and ISPs.
Sanguineti explains that enterprises are keen on the opportunity to have a one-stop shop for products. “Our core business has always been connectivity, so our approach is to excel in connectivity and everything that surrounds it,” she says.
Part of this involves an agnostic multi-vendor, multi-technology approach to SD-WAN and private, direct connectivity to the major hyperscalers for cloud applications. Sanguineti points out that Sparkle is not only offering simple connectivity to the cloud in different flavours, but also the services that enable enterprises to migrate via fully automated and customer-oriented service models.
The strategy of providing support on top of the connectivity is very much the ethos of Sparkle throughout its enterprise product offerings, she adds. “We guide and accompany customers in their journey because this is exactly what we see they are asking for.”
Quantum-level protection
Some of Sparkle’s key innovations for enterprises are happening in security, which has become an essential part of any offering as threats have grown. Sparkle plans to release a product this year providing encryption for quantum computing, after recently completing a test of the technology over an international virtual private network between Italy and Germany, and two proofs-of-concept in Greece.
The service will help prepare for threats well into the future. That’s something the company sees as essential given its many customers in areas that demand top-quality security, such as the government, financial and healthcare sectors.
“We are investigating post-quantum security a lot because it involves threats that can affect things in the future,” says Sanguineti. “We wanted to be prepared well in time because these are things that you cannot understand and put into practice overnight. As many of our customers have critical data – think DNA samples, other healthcare data or financial data – we really wanted to have a solution in place today.” She adds that it is also software-based, meaning it can be upgraded over time.
One security-based technology that Sparkle has seen gaining traction already is SASE. On this front, Sparkle is following a similar one-stop-shop strategy to the approach it takes with other services. Its SASE Connect product comprises a multi-vendor proposition that complements the company’s SD-WAN service and allows greater agility, including the ability for use in remote working.
Furthermore, Sparkle is exploring the use of SASE for IoT services. The demand for security is only going to increase in that segment, considering the huge growth that Sparkle is harnessing in IoT and as a complement to the company’s wider portfolio of services for enterprises.
Full scope
In IoT, Sparkle is again looking at the entire value chain to fully support customers. “Sometimes, IoT is mistakenly seen as just a simple SIM card, but it encompasses much more,” says Gemito. “While some players may choose to resell IoT SIM cards from third parties, that is not our strategy. Instead, we focus on deploying the infrastructure and environment necessary to provide global IoT solutions.”
In 2022, Sparkle launched IoT Global, a managed connectivity service that enables companies to control their IoT assets across multiple countries using global M2M SIMs that can connect to any mobile network and switch to achieve the best available signal. This one-SIM strategy means companies need not activate services with local operators themselves, instead leveraging Sparkle’s multi-IMSI technology alongside its roaming agreements with more than 600 mobile operators worldwide.
“Each vertical has unique IoT needs that require different network resources and configurations, making our role crucial for IoT customers,” says Gemito. “We have complete control over the entire infrastructure, enabling us to meet their specific requirements.”
Sparkle also has virtualised and distributed local core networks around the world to meet ultra-low-latency IoT demands in sectors such as the automotive industry, agriculture and healthcare. “There are many use cases for which control of the infrastructure is key for providing assurance that latency will be in the milliseconds and not hundreds of milliseconds, which can make the difference,” says Gemito.
This low latency is supported by the company’s Seabone global IP network, with a backbone comprising 600,000km of terrestrial fibre and international submarine cables. IoT leverages Sparkle’s extensive data centres and points of presence too.
Window to the future
Capitalising on the IoT segment creates substantial room for growth, says Gemito. “I believe that IoT is our window to the future,” he says. “By investing our time and effort in these services, we will be riding the wave of the new era of robotics, AI and blockchain technology.”
Viewing the enterprise sector as a whole, Gemito says Sparkle’s extensive experience in wholesale and membership of the TIM Group has taught the company a lot about enterprise needs. “Moreover, we pride ourselves on being a nimble company that can develop customised solutions swiftly for partners,” he adds.
Sanguineti says, meanwhile, that Sparkle is acting as a driver of digital transformation for the industry through assuming a place at the forefront of the push towards standardisation. “We are continuously investing a lot in automation and are driving standards in the MEF,” she says. “This gives us a vision a bit ahead of what’s needed in networks and allows us to drive the future network-as-a-service ecosystem.”
That allows the company to keep ahead of the curve when it comes to meeting the latest market demands with the full set of services required, says Sanguineti. “We start typically early with innovation because there’s always an ecosystem to be created for services,” she says. “We want to be ready with our own ecosystems when it’s time.”
