 Hey there and welcome to Capacity Middle East extra powered by JSA. That's us JSA and I am Dean Perine And we are coming to you live on location at the beautiful. It is a beautiful hotel It is a beautiful Hyatt Dubai, and I am here with the very tall The very tall mr. Carl Roberts Carl is a partner at Hadera Consulting Carl. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today. Well Dean. Thanks for inviting me It's always a pleasure to Do a gig with JSA? Whether it's long or short by the way yeah, we'll try to we'll keep this one kind of in the middle of long and short But for our viewers that don't already know Carl Why don't you tell them a little bit about Hadera consulting? Well look Hadara consultings been going since 2015 it's my own consulting company and You know I've been in in this industry or the ICT industry for getting close to 40 years up until now I've been saying 35 in a bit, but it's near a 40. So you started when you were three. So I started when I was three and You know half of that has been in the telecoms industry. So I Used to run Verizon's international carrier business So with all the experience and white hair that goes with that I now provide counsel and advice to see suites of carriers and it's an exciting time because Everything is going digital everything is going software Transformation is everywhere in every little detail of everywhere and there's a lot of work and experience counts and whilst the technology is brilliant and can do everything It's also about organizations and people changing the way they do things So it's fascinating and you know people often say to me. Why do you still do this? I say it's because I love it I love the people and it's really exciting Experience does indeed count. It does Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're gonna go off script immediately I'm just letting you know now because we when we talk about digital transformation and it does it's like the top down The bottom up it is it is in every single thing that we do but in order to really fully understand the Implications of that it takes history Some some hindsight. Yeah, it takes history. It takes hindsight. It takes yeah, it's great to know what works Knowing what doesn't work is also important because you avoid mistakes And also mapping that experience to what today's technology brings is fascinating And I find it really interesting and what I find actually quite fun is when you look at me And you look at some of the people I have on the other end of a zoom Who are a lot younger? I find I'm saying come on you got to move forward and do things differently So that's what I find that's great. And that's what's great about a show like this because Over the past couple of years and particularly since COVID came in that caused an acceleration of Digitization of everything and a lot of operators got caught a little bit short because they're planning was on a longer timeline So now everything's in a rush. So that's broken down a lot of traditional barriers about Co-operating with you know operator to operator Operator to hyperscaler to internet exchange to data center players and also the software companies Who are bringing in these new value-added functions that give us a very new world which is on-demand? Consumers you won't pay for what you consume and that's a very different world from the one that we come from Yeah, I want to hire you right now So look there is a reason that you are you have been called the champion of this event And I think a lot of a lot of that reason was just kind of spilled out onto this table. But what does that mean to you? Well being a champion It's very humbling, but I think there are many champions of this event Well, I love this event because okay, it's called capacity Middle East I'd say in name only it happens to take place in the Middle East But it's got Middle Eastern carriers African carriers European many European carriers lots of Asian carriers a few American carriers Also, and actually some folks from Latin America. So this is it's a very it's a global event each year It's growing and it's I've often said it's earlier Earlier it's early enough in the year so that Conversations you have here can actually bear fruit within the year because as you go further down the year You're talking about starting initiatives that will bear fruit next year here You've got an opportunity in the first half to do something that gives you a kind of kicker and a start this year And and also as you've seen the place is a buzz I mean there's a crazy great vibe here and everybody's upbeat In years gone by you go from enthusiasm to troughs and for a number of years There is a trough, you know COVID was challenging times and we didn't have events like this We did them online and you know kudos to the capacity team for doing that But now that people are back together It's like Extra two or three gears in the gearbox. You can feel it and you can feel it and everything's you know going forward at a Thousand miles an hour and that's why I'm proud to be a champion of this event because I just think it's great Yeah, yeah, obviously I can feel your your passion your compassion your energy for the event and for the transformation that's happening within the greater industry and I see why people Call you the champion and why you say experience counts. We really appreciate your time today. Thank you Okay, well my pleasure and it's great and enjoy the rest of the event. I intend to do that. Thank you very much Carl Okay, thank you Dean you bet and thank you viewers for tuning in. We'll see you soon. Thank you