Credit: Dreamstime
StarHub has selected Red Hat to help develop and up-skill its workforce in a concerted effort to embrace open-source technology and boost innovation.
The Singapore-based telecommunications provider has sought to transform its business in the wake of increased competition and a changing tech landscape, which has seen revenue from its legacy business decline in recent years as new competitors and business models emerge.
Since the appointment of a new CEO in mid-2018, the business has sought a strategic transformation to improve operational efficiencies and productivity, announcing in late 2018 the planned three-year transformation that will see the cutting of 300 jobs in the process.
The transformation is expected to realise an estimated $210 million in savings over the three-year period from 2019, as the telco giant's new CEO grapples with increased competition and unfavourable market trends for its legacy business.
The transformation is also expected to see StarHub realign towards new business such as the recently created cyber security company - Ensign InfoSecurity - and further digitalisation initiatives around customer experience and new wireless and fibre services.
However, to capitalise on these changes, it will need its staff to be training in the latest technology trends, particularly around cloud and open-source technology.
As such, the provider’s workforce will be trained under the Red Hat Training and Certification programme, to up-skill its workforce in-line with the increased adoption of open source technology.
“Our networks can only be as good as the team managing them,” said Chong Siew Loong, chief technology officer of StarHub. “This is why at StarHub, we invest in the development of our people to maintain the high levels of professional competency required to offer our customers the best network experience.
“Amid rapid technological advances, we work with renowned software companies like Red Hat to hone skills that are not only relevant today, but a catalyst for future innovation."
Specialised expertise
The training program will provide specialised training for StarHub’s Integrated Network Engineering team on Red Hat OpenStack Platform, which is deployed across the company’s infrastructure.
This includes keeping the engineers’ technical expertise up-to-date and sharing best practices in next-generation cloud-based platforms.
“We are excited to work with StarHub and empower their teams with the skills and expertise to help build the next-generation of telco innovation with Red Hat OpenStack Platform,” said Damien Wong, vice president and general manager of Asian Growth and Emerging Markets (GEMs) at Red Hat.
“We hope our training and certification programme helps to deliver value in the form of support for business requirements and enables StarHub to deliver innovation alongside the quality of connectivity that their customers simply expect."
Chong leads the Integrated Network Engineering team, which designs and maintains fixed and wireless networks for the delivery of services, content and solutions to consumers and enterprises.
The training and certification on OpenStack is expected equip engineers to deliver solutions on Red Hat OpenStack Platform more quickly with less need for troubleshooting post-rollout.
The hands-on training and lab-based approach to learning allows them to gain an understanding of Red Hat tools and solutions.
The program also exposes them to "unique and critical" real-world scenarios by providing extensive training and knowledge of selected tools and solutions for different situations.
Market development
In late 2018, Red Hat launched a new training and certification program in an effort to support the future development of the telecommunications industry.
The certified architect program in telco cloud was designed to help engineers develop the necessary skills for building and maintaining core-to-edge telecommunications clouds.
The aim of the program was to focus on skills development for telecommunications engineers towards building network function virtualisation (NFV) clouds, a component to help drive advanced services such as the next generation of telecommunications technology, 5G.
The highest certifications awarded by Red Hat are the certified architect in infrastructure and certified architect in enterprise applications.
Specifically, the telco cloud program has a certification path that is recommended for professionals in the telecom industry that will ultimately lead to the certified architect in infrastructure.
Therefore, engineers who take this program will gain the skills needed to build open, next-generation infrastructure that covers core to edge processes and technologies, enabling them to more effectively create full-scale NFV clouds.
To qualify for the telco cloud program, participants must first become certified as Red Hat Certified Engineers, and then must earn a set of additional certifications.
Specifically, these include certified system administrator in Red Hat OpenStack, certified engineer in Red Hat OpenStack, certified specialist in Ceph Storage Administration, certified specialist in Ansible Automation, and certified specialist in Configuration Management.
