A transformational mindset for growth
Mardia van der Walt, SVP Deutsche Telekom ICSS, welcomes a transforming industry - Changing market requirements necessitate a fresh mindset
Unlike many others in the wholesale industry, Mardia van der Walt, SVP ICSS, views the continually evolving telco market as an opportunity to discover new growth areas and create fresh business models. While realizing that the current wholesale landscape will dramatically transform over the next months and years, she sees this as a welcome challenge and not a life-threatening crisis.
To deal with the situation brought about by recent technologies such as IoT, cloud computing, network virtualization and the proliferation of OTT providers, van der Walt puts her faith in her people. She believes that everyone has the desire to work toward a common goal when they understand the importance of their role. To that end, she fosters a business culture of inclusion, which involves allowing everyone the freedom to make their own decisions about how best to reach their objectives.
Van der Walt also has confidence in the three main pillars of the company’s strategy to support ICSS in its growth endeavors. The first is a matter she helped implement, which involved aggregating the wholesale business of all Deutsche Telekom Group units and thus ensures the benefits of scale. Secondly, ICSS has focused on increasing agility, efficiency and cost-effectiveness while continuing to meet the specific needs of clients. Lastly, the organization ensures the delivery of high-quality products that are simple, fast, reliable and inherently secure.
Over the last months, ICSS has dramatically enlarged its solutions in the security area with its 360° Defense Strategy. This is comprised of a range of products and services to fight cyber criminality, SMS fraud, SS7 security breaches, DDoS and multi-vector attacks.
To read more on this topic, see the October/November edition of Capacity Magazine for the full interview with Mardia van der Walt.