With its rebranding earlier this year, e& (formerly known as Etisalat Group) has undergone considerable transformation and is headed towards further change and innovation, says a senior executive at the global technology and investment conglomerate.
“It is a significant change. It is not only a reflection of the changing times in general for the telecoms market, but also the behaviour of our customers, and the importance of the digital world and technology in every industry and segment we touch,” says Miguel Angel Villalonga, CEO, ETS, e& enterprise cloud, as he discusses the rebranding in the second episode of Future Now podcast series by Gulf News in association with Microsoft UAE.
“It is a statement of a company that is no longer a telco, but is now geared to be a technology group. It’s telecom plus, so that's why the name is Etisalat&. It is Etisalat and everything else we want to do.”
Future Now is a podcast series hosted by Ihsan Anabtawi, COO and CMO of Microsoft UAE, where he sits down with thought leaders and discusses where we’re at and how we move forward.
In this episode, titled Digital Transformation at Scale, Villalonga talks about e&’s three new divisions, e& life that provides digital solutions to consumers, e& capital, a venture capital fund that invests in tech companies, and his organisation, e& enterprise, which offers digital transformation solutions to businesses.
“We are very proud of being the country’s flagship company in technology,” he says. “But I think the real contribution has been that we have been an infrastructure builder. Our strength comes from our continued infrastructure vision and ambition.
“We are the country with the highest fibre-to-home penetration; our mobile network is unique – the fastest network in the world; we are one of the first countries to deploy 5G technologies; our data centre network is unique – we have built 10 times the capacity that we had six years ago. And around this infrastructure, we create layers that look at adding value to our customers. For example, the creation of Etisalat Digital that now has become e& enterprise.
“Basically, we provide solutions using our infrastructure to help our customers in their digital transformation journey, around cloud technology, IoT, security, AI, so there's real value that can be extracted from technology for our customers.”
To find out more about digital transformation at scale, check out the podcast that drops tomorrow. Future Now series is also available on all leading podcast channels.
