Rakuten’s Disruption-as-a-Service business tunes up for global domination. Even Tareq Amin struggled (momentarily) to explain the category that the newly revealed Rakuten Symphony entity fits into. Part SI, part ISV, with both telcos and non-telcos as customers, selling its own technology as well as reselling the products of third parties in its ecosystem, it’s like nothing the telecom industry has seen before. As if to prove the point (Rakuten doesn’t do vague announcements), Symphony unveiled 1&1 Drillisch as its newest customer. Not its first customer – that was already Rakuten Mobile. And certainly not its first engagement outside Japan – in our “Who’s Winning in Open RAN” report in June, Appledore credited Rakuten with a unique position as both vendor and customer in Open RAN, and second only to NEC in SI roles on Open RAN projects (ahead of IBM, World Wide Technology, Tech Mahindra). Rakuten also offered some insights on Symphony’s immediate pipeline of opportunities. For a “new entrant”, it’s a pretty impressive start: As a new distinct company – because that’s what it is – Rakuten Symphony emerges with: A private cloud platform (its unified cloud) Network functions Intelligent Operations (OSS, more or less) Billing (BSS, more or […]