As the largest telecommunications service provider in Portugal, Altice Portugal plays a key role in helping the country’s businesses and consumers build a robust digital infrastructure.

The company is preparing for the deployment of a new 5G wireless standard and capitalizing on its dominance as the largest fiber-to-the-home, or FTTH, wholesaler in the country. This has resulted in a set of partnerships, including one with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., for continued expansion of Altice’s services and Portugal’s ongoing digital transformation.

“As a country, we cannot achieve the level of modernization and automation of operational models or the revision of companies’ cost structures without the strong and widespread model of as-a-service, pay-as-you-go cloudlike services,” said Paulo Rego (pictured, right), director of B2B product and pre-sales at Altice Portugal. “We have a decade of cloud presence in the market, based on a five-datacenter network that we have in Portugal. We have positioned ourselves as the preferred partner for digital transformation of organizations both private and public.”

Rego spoke with Carlos Leite (pictured, left), Portugal managing director at HPE, during the recent HPE GreenLake Day event, hosted by theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming video studio. They discussed an interest in future proof IT solutions, increased reliance on cloud technologies as COVID cases recently surged in Portugal, new opportunities in the e-health space, and the role of GreenLake Central in managing business needs. (* Disclosure below.)

Embracing new solutions

Through working with Altice and other key technology providers in the country, HPE’s Leite has found that Portugal offered an attractive mix of a skilled workforce, a willingness to invest in digital modernization in both public and private sectors, and a disposition toward embracing new solutions. Enterprise customers in Portugal are also looking for easy-to-use, packaged solutions, which has opened opportunities for HPE with GreenLake and other portfolio products, according to Leite.

“Companies are currently facing many challenges and looking for solutions that address their needs, but those should also be future-proof,” Leite said. “It’s important to have a trust relationship.”

That trust will undoubtedly be forged on the ability of HPE and other business partners to meet the challenges created by a global pandemic. After experiencing a relatively low rate of COVID infections for much of 2020, Portugal’s cases suddenly spiraled upward in mid-October and surged even higher in January, forcing a lockdown of the entire country.

“We all need to bring new solutions to the market, increase digital means and introduce new workplace transformation because we are all working away from the office,” Rego said. “What we see here in Portugal is that cloud-enabled organizations were barely prepared for these challenges. Now we need to step forward; we need to leverage the increased ecommerce levels, remote work practices and webinars.”

Investing in e-health

As other parts of the world have experienced when the pandemic surged higher and forced closure of many basic in-person services, a reliance on technology to support critical needs such as healthcare becomes paramount. Portugal embarked on a series of e-health initiatives starting in 2017, which leveraged cloud-based technologies and solutions.

“E-health will bring us new opportunities in the near future, and the proper foundations are crucial for new healthcare services, patient-focused approaches and data-driven decisions,” Rego said. “Being that the cloud market is mature now, I think that some companies still count on their partners to facilitate the cloud journey.”

Altice has relied on HPE GreenLake to help manage its own cloud journey. The organizational structure of a major telecommunications provider can be extensive, with many different stakeholders and IT needs. HPE GreenLake Central allows businesses to centralize operations and insights across a hybrid estate, using a single intuitive self-service platform.

“HPE brings to the table a key differentiator, which is GreenLake Central,” Rego noted. “We have one portal to manage all cloud on-premises, having at the same time the control, easy-to-use and better capacity to plan future needs. It serves IT, finance and legal teams, giving the proper visibility to all stakeholders.”

From the perspective of a major telecommunications provider that serves the needs of an entire country, Altice can see the impact of digital transformation across a wide range of industries. This includes how cloud adoption has varied based on issues such as regulation and data governance.

“Some verticals like healthcare, banking or public administration have tight requirements on compliance, security and control,” Rego said. “They want simplified IT, provisioning and operational elasticity but nevertheless are compelled to keep data close to home when data protection is critical in compliance and data governance is crucial. The right partners’ tools, like GreenLake Central, will be the key to achieving a single as-a-service experience from edge to cloud.”

The global pandemic has hit home for Portugal, yet the country’s business leaders are already planning for a post-COVID world, one that will likely include increased reliance on digital solutions to steer through whatever difficulties lie ahead.

“The future will be concentrated on solving post-pandemic crises,” Rego said. “Customers and service providers will face this challenge, and we’re able to cope with it in 2021 by being very supported on technology and digital solutions. For the future, we hope for the best and we will count on leading partners like HPE to drive us on this uncertain, but promising future.”

Watch more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE GreenLake Day event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the HPE GreenLake Day event. Neither HPE, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: HPE