Dr Tomek Gerszberg

Next-generation telecommunications company Axiata Enterprise is the B2B unit of Axiata Group. Its core mission is to bring innovation, technology, and telecommunication services to support digital transformation across Asia, from its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

Dr. Tomek Gerszberg is the CTO for Axiata Enterprise. In his role, Gerszberg focuses on products and solutions for the enterprises across Asia and supports delivering homogenous offerings for clients by responding to customer needs with fresh innovation. 

“The business is based on connectivity as the traditional telco type of business,” he says. “We grow towards managed connectivity, but also addressing the customer needs in the field of cloud, security and system integration. Axiata Enterprise provides smart services with a strong focus on digital transformation, based on 5G.

“My career went from traditional network management to delivering innovations for enterprises,” says Gerszberg. “The company itself is highly dynamic. The evolution of the company is much faster than the evolution of the telcos we know from Europe or even from the USA.

“This is a unique opportunity for people like me to be a part of this fast transformation. Before I arrived, it was a product-oriented company. Now it's more service oriented.”

In the last two years, Axiata Enterprise has strengthened the enterprise offering and grown the business in the enterprise segments, moving from a mobile-only, consumer-focused business into the B2B sphere.

Previously, Gerszberg worked at Deutsche Telekom in Europe. Now at Axiata Enterprise, he manages different markets and adoption speeds. 

“It's not necessary to categorise counties as faster or slower, because every country has its own characteristics. Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Cambodia are different to the markets in Europe or the USA, which are homogeneous. In Asia, the challenge is how to work out how to deliver the newest technology at the lowest possible price because that drives the adoption of the innovations.”

Digitalisation and the cloud have transformed the telecoms world.

Over the next year, the company is going to be more present in the area of smart services, 5G networking and security.

“With the pace of the development at Axiata, the next 12 months for the company is like 36 months in some other places,” said Gerszberg. “This is one of the priorities. We'll be much more visible in managed services on security and in all vibes of security related to on-prem security solutions, SD-WAN networking and SASE.”

Gerszberg anticipates future trends in the telco industry, which he and his team will have to roll with. “The telco industry is undergoing the biggest transformation since digitalisation, which was in the 1990s. This is the biggest change in the last 30 years, because technology ecosystems and processes have changed so much. You need to change yourself internally with changing tools, in a changing market.”

The second trend, Gerszberg says, is consultative selling related to solutions in the vertical industries, like solutions for logistics and warehouses. 

“Again, this requires knowledge about the solutions implemented worldwide,” says Gerszberg. “It requires knowledge about the business impact of the technologies in the specific verticals and it requires local capability to execute.” 

He sees this as a new way of localisation, especially in the enterprise segments for the telcos. So how do you combine the global innovation trends with the local talents and local capabilities? 

“I believe this is a kind of sweet spot for the telcos, because they can do that,” he says. “But the second thing is that they have the customer’s trust.” 

For Gerszberg, this is still the biggest asset that any company could imagine.

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