At MWC, Microsoft’s Maziar Zolghadr shared how AI, security, and cloud solutions are transforming telecom operators from cost-cutting to revenue growth. By integrating Microsoft 365, Teams, and Azure, telcos are creating new services, particularly for SMBs and enterprise customers. AI-powered automation and cybersecurity are key drivers, enabling operators to expand beyond traditional connectivity services.
Microsoft’s ecosystem approach also helps carriers monetize emerging verticals like healthcare and public sector security. By combining telco network intelligence with Microsoft’s AI and cloud capabilities, operators can offer advanced cybersecurity solutions, improving both protection and response. With AI shifting from personal productivity to business transformation, telecom providers must adapt to remain competitive. Watch the full interview to explore these opportunities.
Steve Saunders:
Welcome back to FNTV at MWC25. I am Steve Saunders, and I'm delighted to welcome Maziar Zolghadr, General Manager for Global Lead Telco Partners at Microsoft.
Now, Maziar and Microsoft for that matter, are in the vanguard of the big industry trend that's all across MWC this year. The shift from using tech to save money on OpEx to using AI and data technologies to empower telecommunications carriers to drive revenue growth. Maziar, welcome.
Maziar Zolghadr:
Thank you, Steve.
Steve Saunders:
How is Microsoft working with your carrier customers to help them generate new revenues from things like AI?
Maziar Zolghadr:
Yeah, that's a good question. We've been working with Telco across both as a customer using this technology for their internal journey of transformation. But most importantly, on us, what I'm focusing, and my team's focusing on, is how they can make money and create new revenue streams.
And so to answer to your question, we've been working with them for the last 10, 15 years. And so, one of the things we've started first was around Microsoft 365, and how they can add their own core services around Microsoft 365, create services for their customers, especially around SMBs, and go and sell to them and make money out of it. That's where we started.
And then, once the maturity of the service becomes better, they start leveraging platforms such as Azure, and security, and build migration factories, and implementing us as a service using Microsoft technology. And lately, and you'll see in this show, we talk a lot about AI agents. So now, we see some of our more advanced partners bringing this new technology and creating even more value for the customers.
Steve Saunders:
How does that play out? Are you selling people bundled offerings? And if you're selling them bundled offerings of the different technologies, what are the most important ones, the most popular ones with, say, your SMB customers today?
Maziar Zolghadr:
Right now, [inaudible 00:02:09] is around business productivity, and we started with that with Microsoft 365. And then, a natural play for Telco have been to add their voice capability around Teams and Teams Phone, and have a unique solution for the market. We can benefit from the Telco historical knowledge about connectivity and Microsoft mobile way to work and hybrid work that is coming.
But nowadays, of course, this type of solution are evolving from more simplistic to more sophisticated. And the two area where we're seeing is around, of course, AI and cybersecurity.
Steve Saunders:
We talked about SMBs, but are the size of the companies you're working with starting to get larger, and are there specific markets which are emerging where you see the application of these technologies being helpful in generating revenue?
Maziar Zolghadr:
Yeah. So if you think about the cybersecurity that I just talked about, this is an area where we have some verticals that have unmet need. Think about public sector, healthcare, these are segmented, at the same time, have the similar needs even more than the commercial environments.
This is an area where we're working with Telco, they can bring their knowledge, think about threat intelligence they have, the intelligence they have on the network, we bring our intelligence and threat intelligence we have on the software and the cloud, bring it together, have a one single glass that they can go and offer to those customers, and not just for protection, but also being able to react once we have that. So that's one area on this vertical.
Steve Saunders:
The big risk for carriers is, well, obviously, they have to derail this issue they have with OTTs making money on their networks, but they also need to avoid becoming just the data utility. They need to add that value.
Now, Microsoft comes in and you sit over that ecosystem and you provide that value for them, but do they need to reinvent themselves to really own markets, vertical markets like healthcare or in the future, some of the heavy industry markets like that? Do carriers need to make significant changes to their DNA to play in those spaces?
Maziar Zolghadr:
That's a great question. And one of our competitive differentiation we believe is the channel ecosystem that Microsoft has because that's really part of our DNA. So being able to work with partners to reach our customers, that's one of the goal we have and we're looking at.
So for us, it's important that they can monetize around B2B, and that has been always the case. Now, of course, you can say, well, with the cloud coming in, that puts some challenge. Think about voice, for instance, that is transforming from legacy to something that is much more modern using Teams as a technology.
But to your point, if you think about the transformation they need to go through, there are different layers of transformation. First, how to build products that combine their core Telco services with cloud. Second, being able to go to market with elements that are not core Telco services and requires their sellers, their offering, their go-to market to be revisited and have also a digital engagement end-to-end.
And third, especially in the area of AI, and we talk about last year, about a lot of personal productivity gain with AI, but this year is all about business process transformation. And you can't have business process transformation if you don't know your customer. So that's another shift that needs to happen.
Steve Saunders:
Really interesting. Last question from me. America has a new administration, big tech companies have a lot of influence over the regulatory environment in the US already, and now we'll have even more.
Is it a good idea to have a deregulated high-end, big tech technology market in North America, particularly when we think about things like AI, are you worried about it or you just think it's good for business for Microsoft?
Maziar Zolghadr:
We had a experience here in 2018, we launched a chatbot on Twitter.
Steve Saunders:
I saw that.
Maziar Zolghadr:
Remember that?
Steve Saunders:
Yeah.
Maziar Zolghadr:
It went crazy, right? It started to post a lot of bad things on Twitter because some people knew how to change it. So that's something we learned a lot from that. And now we're have what we call internally the responsible AI, which comes with six principles such as fairness, inclusivity, but also transparency and accountability.
But it also comes with the governance that put in place inside Microsoft from top to the bottom, which means that there are some of the products we just don't want to go and build. Think about face recognitions, for instance.
Steve Saunders:
Yeah, absolutely.
Maziar Zolghadr:
Some of the RFE that we are not going to respond, and the most important is that we build tools and resources, and I don't know if you heard about it, but we have something that's called responsible AI standard. We are in version two, and our goal is really to share with the wider ecosystem.
But what is important is that of course, this is a very complex technology. It's not one technology, it's a lot of complication coming together. And of course, every country, every environment has to protect. And we're in Europe right now. We have the EU AI Act, and of course, we want to be compliant with that, and we are compliant with that.
Steve Saunders:
Very good answer. And I think we can trust Microsoft to behave responsibly with AI. Not sure about some of your competitors. That's it for now, from FNTV. Maziar, really interesting conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Maziar Zolghadr:
Thank you, Steve, for having me here. Thank you.