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In my previous post , we explored the growing pressures on OPEX in the telecom sector, from network upgrades and regulatory compliance to rising energy costs and cybersecurity. As telecom executives work to navigate these challenges, finding a balance between fostering innovation and managing operating expenses is no longer optional — it is a necessity for survival. In this blog, we’ll explore a powerful approach to achieving both in 2025: the concept of composable ERP, a proven path to helping telecom companies optimize their OPEX while driving innovation and efficiency. The case for composable ERP strategies Composable ERP strategy focuses on flexibility and modularity, allowing telecoms to integrate existing systems with cloud-based services and other modern technologies. The idea is to break down IT systems into discrete, interchangeable elements that can be configured and optimized independently. With this approach, telecoms can retain critical systems like ERP while updating or replacing other components as needed. For example, instead of migrating an entire ERP system to the cloud, telecoms could move specific modules, such as HR or finance, while leaving the core system intact. This allows them to leverage cloud technologies without incurring the full OPEX burden of a complete migration, the wait time to realize the investment, or the risk of project failure. Composable ERP is about creating a more adaptive and scalable technology environment that can evolve with the business, with less reliance on software vendors’ roadmaps. Supporting innovation with managing OPEX Composable ERP offers greater flexibility, scalability and efficiency – three ingredients that will help telecom leaders brace for changes in technology, adopt the latest innovations without delay, and allow them to be strategic about resource allocations and investments. Here’s how it helps strike that balance:  Scalability without overprovisioning A composable ERP approach enables telecoms to scale infrastructure dynamically, avoiding the costs of overprovisioning. This allows them to add or reduce resources based on real-time demand, paying only for what’s needed. Faster time to market for new servicesAccelerate the deployment of new services by enabling rapid assembly and testing of solution components. This speed to market supports innovation while keeping costs in check, as telecoms quickly adapt to new opportunities. Cost efficiency through resource optimizationBy optimizing existing resources, telecoms can maximize the use of their infrastructure. Composable ERP enables better management of compute, storage, networking, and other limited resources. Integration with legacy systemsComposable ERP supports incremental upgrades by integrating new technologies with existing legacy systems. Telecoms can leverage modern innovations without overhauling their entire infrastructure, maintaining OPEX predictability. Streamlined operations with automation AI-driven automation allows telecoms to reduce operational overhead while improving service delivery and eliminating inefficiencies. By automating tasks once handled manually, employees can focus on more strategic initiatives, while minimizing human error and cost. The path forward for telecom success Embracing a composable ERP strategy is essential for telecom companies and can provide the agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency needed to succeed amid a rapidly evolving landscape. By strategically deploying modular IT components, automating operations, integrating new technologies with existing systems, and leveraging a simplified approach, telecom companies can confidently drive innovation without sacrificing operational health or inflating OPEX. Discover how Rimini Street is helping telecom clients accelerate digital transformation, regain control of their IT roadmap and significantly reduce maintenance costs, while freeing funds to invest in priority initiatives. Drive digital transformation without disruption while maximizing the value of your investments.   source

However, Carter noted, “the way that IDC frames the world is often not how our buyers categorize things. And so we’re learning that we need to maybe have more knowledge — what we call a knowledge graph orientation — towards this, where they can pick and choose different options, and they define their requirements a bit more dynamically, as opposed to falling into our traditional categories as we’ve done as a research house over the years. So it’s really forcing us to ask ourselves some of the harder questions about how we should serve this up in the future.” As the criteria fall into place, the application winnows down the list of possible vendors. Users can click through and view IDC research on each, add comments, and even “favorite” vendors. Each one is scored based on its match to the requirements. For example, all other things being equal, if Product A’s pricing model requires annual commitments and Product B’s is quarterly, the buyer’s preference, then Product B will have a higher vendor score. Requirements can also include support and implementation options. To provide another perspective, IDC has partnered with software marketplace G2, which provides customer ratings and comparisons of products. “We see that as complementary, because this provides the peer review perspective on that product, so that it adds another layer of value to a user,” Carter explained. source

About nine months later, she called me and said, ‘I have this opportunity.’ At that point, I was commuting from Atlanta to Los Angeles every week for Bank of America and didn’t want to have to travel for an interview, so I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do a video call.’ This was late 2011, and it wasn’t like you could do a video call from your home back then, so I drove to a place with video-call technology, and I did an interview with a bunch of people from KeyBank, which I’d never heard of before. I wasn’t looking to move to Cleveland, but they were just amazing people. I drove home and said to my husband, ‘If they ask me to come in for an in-person interview, I’d really like to do it, just to see if they’re for real.’ A couple of weeks later, I got on a plane to meet Beth Mooney, who was CEO at the time. My husband watched a video of her giving a speech while I was on the plane, and he got goosebumps and said, ‘All right, we’re moving to Cleveland,’ before I had even met her. source

Overview In celebration of International Women’s Day, CIO Leadership Live Middle East is proud to feature Heide Young, a trailblazer in the cybersecurity space and co-founder of Women in Cybersecurity Middle East (WiCSME). As an advocate for diversity, inclusion, and the empowerment of women in tech, Heide has played a pivotal role in shaping the region’s cybersecurity landscape.Join us for an inspiring conversation as we explore the evolving role of women in cybersecurity, the challenges they face, and the opportunities that lie ahead. From mentorship to leadership and breaking industry barriers, this session will highlight the impact of women driving change in one of the world’s most critical sectors. Register Now source

At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025, Huawei has positioned itself at the forefront of technological innovation, showcasing its latest advancements in 5G, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. The Chinese tech giant presented cutting-edge solutions aimed at enhancing connectivity, smart cities, and enterprise digital transformation, with a particular emphasis on how these developments will impact the Middle East. The company unveiled its next-generation 5G infrastructure, promising faster speeds, lower latency, and greater efficiency. The company also introduced its vision for 6G, emphasizing AI-driven networks that will redefine the future of connectivity. With a strong focus on AI, Huawei demonstrated how artificial intelligence is integrated into its cloud computing services, providing enhanced cybersecurity, automated operations, and data-driven insights for businesses and telecom operators. The Huawei Cloud Summit at MWC 2025, themed “Accelerate Intelligence, Amplify Success,” brought together industry leaders from telecom, finance, government, and more. Huawei Cloud unveiled cutting-edge AI-native cloud services, reinforcing its commitment to intelligent transformation. AI is reshaping industries globally, and Huawei Cloud is at the forefront of this shift. Jacqueline Shi, President of Huawei Cloud Global Marketing and Sales Service, emphasized Huawei Cloud’s strategy of transitioning from cloud-native to AI-native, integrating AI across all cloud services and offering platforms to accelerate AI adoption. In 2024, Huawei Cloud expanded by over 50% outside of China, partnering with over 140 carriers and 500 financial institutions. source

FOMO, or the fear of missing out, is a thing, mostly in social media and personal endeavors. But it also has a parallel in enterprise software roadmaps. Stay with me and I’ll explain. ERP software first hit the scene in the 1960s. In the decades that followed, the number and variety of ERP vendors and packages grew. In 1992, SAP launched the first client-server ERP software with the introduction of SAP R/3. ERP software vendors vied for new customers and worked to retain existing ones by introducing new features and capabilities at a feverish pace. New versions, service packs, and enhancement packs usually had new bells and whistles to help companies run more efficiently and get more value from their software. SAP users looked forward to getting shiny new toys from their software provider, all included in their annual maintenance agreements. But that model changed significantly, and in favor of vendors. By 2010, ERP software packages were feature-rich and quite stable, which meant the rate and quantity of new features began to taper off. Vendors started investing in their next-generation, cloud-based software solutions. In 2016, SAP delivered its last enhancement pack (EHP 8) for ECC6 (its successor to R/3) and announced there will be no more enhancement packs for ECC. Since then, SAP ECC customers, who number in the tens of thousands, continue to pay increasing annual maintenance fees for the software. For that, they get support and… well… support. But not support for customizations, and with no more new features. To push more customers to move to the latest products, vendors started to fan the flames on FOMO, selling the idea that customers who do not continue on their upgrade track will be missing out, even if those new features are not aligned to customers’ future business needs. FOMO or forgo? For SAP ECC customers, new features aren’t coming. They haven’t been coming since 2016. S/4HANA on-premises customers find themselves in a similar, though not identical, situation. While SAP plans to deliver three “Feature Pack Stacks” to S/4HANA on-premises customers after each key release, it has announced that its premium innovations will only be available to customers on its S/4HANA Cloud platform.1  The roadmap for customers who migrated to S/4HANA before the cloud version was available now leads to a cul-de-sac. To get the good stuff — the premium innovations — they will be forced to make the leap to S/4HANA Cloud and the RISE with SAP or GROW with SAP programs. CIOs are being pushed to go back to the board, hat in hand, to ask for more money. And if SAP were to make even more changes to their innovation availability model, how will this impact those who may have already incurred significant cost and disruption to their business? Many SAP customers around the globe have learned and benefitted from saying “No” to the pretense of FOMO, choosing instead to maximize the value and life of their existing release. They are reallocating the funds and talent that would have been locked up in the lengthy upgrade cycle to instead innovate around the edges and in the areas that make most sense for their business – immediately. Rimini Street: Replacing FOMO with FOR SURE In 2005, Rimini Street entered the market, offering organizations an independent, third-party option for transferring their annual support from the vendor to an independent provider. It’s no surprise many of our clients decided that the freedom and responsiveness benefits of third-party support outweighed the unknown value or applicability of future software enhancements. Many SAP customers, a number of whom customized their systems to best fit their business processes, switch from vendor maintenance to Rimini Street support and benefit from: The freedom to stay longer on their current software version Comprehensive support, including support for customizations not typically supported by the vendor No vendor pressure to upgrade just to stay fully supported Flexibility to choose and apply innovations, regardless of vendor Don’t get caught up in the FOMO trap. You’re not only NOT missing out on new features but also freeing yourself of uncertain value to your company. Choose what is best for your business, now and later, and take control of your IT investments and future roadmap. Remember: When SAP comes asking WHEN you’re going to upgrade, your response should be, “WHY?” 1 “ SAP CEO push for cloud-only ‘innovation’ shatters users’ trust in German-speaking heartlands.” Aug. 3, 2023, The Register. Rimini Street can help accelerate innovation with your existing systems. Connect with our SAP experts here. source

Testing should involve key players responsible for response and recovery, not just the IT department. In addition, these parties may include legal, crisis management, LOB directors, business leaders team, communications, etc. Business continuity resources should be engaged for tabletop and working tests to ensure complete communication processes, documentation, resiliency plans, and stakeholder engagement are aligned with mitigating the impact and accelerating recovery. Testing should involve not just recovery of IT systems, but mitigation of impacts on staff work (e.g., where staff would work, how they would receive communications, acceptable levels of performance during recovery, order of recovery, etc.). This would include communications plans, alternative working locations, mapping resources to services, defining roles in response, and providing runbooks for disaster scenarios and their business continuity impacts. IDC’s January 2023 report titled IDC PlanScape: Disaster Recovery Testing for On-Premises, Hybrid Cloud, Multicloud, and DRaaS Models indicated that successful DR/BCP testing requires clear roles and responsibilities across the organization and that tests should include both DR (technical) and BC (business) risks and mitigations. Key roles involved are: source

Over the past year, a series of indictments and threat intelligence reports uncovered a sophisticated program to place North Korea-affiliated operatives into remote IT jobs around the world. In January, the U.S. Justice Department indicted five men for operating one such scheme that profited nearly $900,000. North Korean operatives, using deepfakes, laptop farms, and stolen identities to pose as U.S.-based job candidates, have been hired at numerous Fortune 500 companies, creating enormous insider risk and compliance threats while generating hundreds of millions of dollars to fund North Korea’s weapons programs. From an IT perspective, initial credentialing (also known as credential delivery or account provisioning) is a company’s last chance to stop these and other threat actors from getting in the door. Once a new employee or contractor sets their password, they are inside the castle, and removing them becomes extremely difficult. Onboarding just one threat actor can make a company liable to sanctions violations, stolen data and secrets, a system-encrypting ransomware attack, and a badly damaged public reputation – all of which can be disastrous for the organization’s market cap. Monetary costs: cutting corners raises security risk The financial cost of onboarding is quantifiable: According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the cost of hiring just one person averages $4,700. Onboarding and training alone run between $1,000 to $1,420 per employee. There is also the risk of refused access for legitimate employees. If the company can’t verify a new hire, they may have to start the hiring process all over again. While this cost cannot compare to the amount an organization stands to lose in a ransomware attack, it adds up quickly for fast-growing companies onboarding hundreds or thousands of employees and contractors per year. source

At the end of 2023, Chicago-based Article Student Living was acquired by a global real estate investment company, which allowed the business to expand, and enabled it to make key investments in the high-demand student housing market. But because Article was growing so quickly, managing one of the largest student housing portfolios in the US, it needed to be more intentional about operational efficiency. “There are a lot of moving parts across our properties,” says Erica White, the company’s SVP of technology and strategic innovation. “Managing everything at our physical residences is crucial to ensure smooth resident experiences, and it’s equally important to guarantee efficiency within our internal operations.” Article’s technology strategy of creating integrated, scalable systems has been key to success. “In line with this, we understood that the more real-time insights and data we had available across our rapidly growing portfolio of properties, the more efficient we could be,” she adds. The goal was to bring everything together, which meant combining third-party solutions, like cloud-based cameras, with the brand’s centralized property reporting system to create an integrated environment capable of delivering actionable insights around property performance and resident satisfaction. “Article’s approach to innovation is built on three key pillars: user experience, employee experience and engagement, and increasing asset value,” she says. According to White, the decision to develop a centralized property reporting system stemmed from a need for a highly customized, efficient way to manage data across the portfolio. “Off-the-shelf solutions simply didn’t offer the level of flexibility and integration we required to make real-time, data-driven decisions,” she says. source