Modernizing telcos to deliver communications better suited for distance learning, remote work and advanced tele-medicine is at the forefront of Dell Technologies Inc.’s customers’ minds for a post-COVID-isolation world.

“If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s about the absolute necessity of communications technology,” said Dennis Hoffman (pictured), senior vice president and general manager for the Telecom Systems Business Group at Dell Technologies.

Hoffman spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during Dell Technologies World. They discussed telco cloud, edge and digital disruption. (* Disclosure below.)

The compute-edge telco network

Digital transformations manifesting themselves now, enabled by 5G radio technology, will necessitate re-thought telco networks, according to Hoffman. Seventy-five percent of data will be created at the edge over the next decade, he added. Thus, networks should be based on edge computing.

“It’s really forcing folks to think hard about if they have the right network architectures,” he said.

Autonomation, such as is now increasingly found in transport and factories, Internet of Things and apps, are examples of transitions to data-driven, compute services requirements that will have to be delivered by networks — much of it is to be run in challenging, remote telco premises environments.

“These networks need to run it many times,” Hoffman said. “They need to be extremely robust. Pulling together a lot of different components from the open ecosystem is a daunting challenge for most of the operators.”

Telco disruption, utilizing servers, such as seen in traditional data centers, along with open standards and Dell VMware reference architecture cloud platform products are needed to take advantage of these new data-driven use cases at the edge, according to Hoffman.

“Wherever we can get data, we can create digital advantage,” he said. “It’s always been cheaper and more effective and faster to move compute to data than to move data to compute.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell Technologies Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE