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Interview
Ep 57 – Catch the public cloud train with TELUS
This week’s guest
Hesham Fahmy
Chief Information Officer TELUSTelcos around the world are signing strategic deals with hyperscalers, setting big goals for public cloud transformation, and finding ways to cross the finish line.
A great example is TELUS, which signed a 10-year strategic agreement with Google Cloud and is on a path to become a cloud-native organization.
For this episode, I talk with Hesham Fahmy, chief information officer at TELUS, about how the telecom built momentum for its cloud journey, what happened along the way, and what it learned that other telcos should know. Hit play to hear our conversation about:
- TELUS’ plan to move 80% of workloads to the cloud by 2025 [03:56];
- Where and how it decided to start its move [06:16];
- How TELUS brought its team along on its public cloud journey [08:42].
- Refactoring applications for the public cloud [12:18].
Links and Resources
- You can find the transcript for this episode here.
- Read the announcement of TELUS’ 10-year strategic alliance with Google Cloud.
- Hear about another digital transformation in episode 52, featuring Nathan Bell, former chief digital officer of M1 Singapore, and now digital practice partner at Kearney.
- Listen to my Telco in 20 conversation with change-management guru Jim Abolt about driving workplace transformation.
- Read my blog about the importance of setting Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs). Don’t forget to publicize and celebrate the wins to align your team and build momentum toward the cloud.
- Check out Hesham’s helmet-cam footage, captured while he was racing his motorcycle, and then find out what makes Turn 1 at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas so special.
- Once you get moving to the cloud, you’ll want to keep your trains running smoothly. Learn how Tokyo runs one of the world’s best subway systems to get ideas on how to keep your organization on track.
Author’s bio
As Chief Information Officer at TELUS, Hesham Fahmy leads the team responsible for spearheading TELUS’ transformation to a fully-digital, software-centric and cloud-enabled organization. With a bachelor of computer engineering from McMaster University and a master of software engineering from the University of Toronto, Hesham has innovated software products and solutions for 25 years, including 19 in senior leadership roles. He has a track record of launching disruptive products and platforms in retail, IoT, fintech and development tooling.
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Podcast Credits
- Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios Royston, TelcoDR
- Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
- Editor/Producer: Alisa Jenkins Wilson, Springboard Marketing
- Audio Editing: Andrew Condell
- Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
- Music: Dyami Wilson
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why did TELUS choose Google Cloud as its primary cloud partner?
TELUS selected Google Cloud as its premier partner for several reasons: a commitment to co-innovation rather than just workload migration, the ability for TELUS to influence Google’s product roadmap as an early adopter, access to world-class software engineering talent that blends seamlessly with TELUS’s own teams, and a strong alignment on ESG and sustainability values. The partnership is structured as a 10-year strategic alliance, reflecting TELUS’s long-term ambition to become a truly cloud-native organization.
2. What is TELUS’s cloud migration goal and timeline?
TELUS has set an ambitious target to move 80% of all its systems—spanning IT, BSS, OSS, and network workloads—to the public cloud by 2025. Rather than starting small, TELUS took a broad approach, inventorying all applications and mapping each to the right migration path, from lift-and-shift to full refactoring, then prioritizing them on a heat map to drive rapid, measurable progress.
3. How did TELUS build internal momentum for its cloud journey?
TELUS used a “release train” model—structured migration sprints that application teams were required to join. Early trains had bumps, but teams quickly realized the move was less painful than feared and yielded real operational benefits. Critically, TELUS invested in internal PR: publicizing wins, showcasing performance improvements, and letting engineers vouch for the results. By release train 15 or 16, demand had flipped—teams were competing to get on board.
4. What is the “iconic apps” strategy and why does it matter?
After early cloud migrations stalled on diminishing returns from easy workloads, TELUS pivoted to tackling its most complex, high-value applications—what CIO Hesham Fahmy calls “iconic apps.” Solving the hard problems on these apps creates reusable patterns that unblock many other migrations. It also delivers visible, meaningful business wins that shift skeptics into believers, accelerating the overall flywheel of change. Danielle Rios highlights this as a model other telcos should adopt: read her blog on setting BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) and celebrating wins to build momentum.
5. How should telcos think about refactoring applications for the public cloud?
Hesham Fahmy outlines a three-level refactoring framework. Level one is making applications stateless so they can autoscale in a Kubernetes environment. Level two involves migrating to cloud-native databases. Level three means rethinking application logic for event-driven architectures. Not every app needs to reach level three—some are best served by a well-executed lift-and-shift. The key is matching the right approach to each workload rather than applying a one-size-fits-all solution.
6. What mindset shift does cloud migration require from telco engineering teams?
The biggest cultural challenge isn’t technical—it’s adapting to the dynamic nature of cloud environments. Unlike traditional on-premise operations, cloud means constant change: upgrading databases, workload shifts, deployments happening continuously. Hesham Fahmy and Danielle Rios both emphasize that teams need to embrace this dynamism. Episode 52 with Nathan Bell explores a similar digital transformation journey for additional context.