Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Uplink, where we explore the world of digital infrastructure, uncovering the technology, fueling AI and cloud innovation, with the leaders making it happen. I'm your host, michael Reid, and my guest today is Elena Chernik, head of Europe Enterprise Sales at CITIC, telecom, cpc. From aspiring diplomat to tech pioneer, elena joins me to discuss the critical challenge of bridging the digital infrastructure gap between the East and the West and her vision for a future of self-healing, ai-powered networks. Let's dive in. Welcome to Uplink, which is a bit of a podcast, and this is the first time we've gone to Europe, so we're really excited to have you on the show. So we're joined by Elena, and she's the head of Europe Enterprise Sales, based out of Amsterdam for CITEC, and I thought we'd just start with a little bit of a understanding on. How many languages can you speak? That's the first thing I want to know.

Speaker 2: 1:01

I speak English like I speak Dutch, because I just live there. You live in Dutch. Yeah, you live in dutch.

Speaker 1: 1:05

So yeah, I live in the Netherlands, so yeah, just thought you'd learn dutch even though, like they don't need me to speak dutch because, like basically no one speaks dutch to me.

Speaker 2: 1:14

Well, they try, and then they hear my accents and try to to switch to english immediately. But yeah, that's that's, that's fine, okay. So two culture, yeah two, yeah two. Then I know Turkish, and in the university I studied Persian. I believe I still can speak a bit Persian, turkish.

Speaker 1: 1:32

English. Yeah, and my native is Russian. Russian.

Speaker 2: 1:36

I will never forget Five, that's five.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Yes. Well, there you go. That's impressive, so thanks for joining us on the show. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your role and your company? And then? I think it's a fascinating company, because what you're doing is connecting East and West, and you're also then gone well and truly beyond just connectivity, and so I'd love you to share what you're seeing from a customer perspective, how things are changing. You talked a little bit about AI before, but, yeah, let's maybe just start with your company and what you're actually bringing to the table for companies across the world.

Speaker 2: 2:11

Actually, yeah, actually, like CEDIC Telecom, CPC is a digital ICT-enabled company who is helping European enterprises not only European, but, let's say, everything which is not in Asia to come to Asia.

Speaker 1: 2:27

Okay, do you connect in Asia, bringing Asia to the rest of the world?

Speaker 2: 2:30

Yeah, we are bringing Asia to the rest of the world, but also other way around. So we're helping Asian companies to expand their geography towards Europe, us and everything which is overseas.

Speaker 1: 2:46

And you're growing. It's a busy time for you.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Yeah, it has to be always a busy time. So you know, when I stepped in the company it was eight years ago. I still remember that because it was just my second kid was four months old when I started to work at City Telecom, CPC, and yeah, so that I remember how long I worked there.

Speaker 1: 3:10

And have you always been in the head of Europe for enterprise sales?

Speaker 2: 3:14

Oh, no, they're putting me everywhere. What is challenging? Okay, you solve the problems. Yeah, I'm a problem solver, it's true. So when I started to work for City Telecom CPC, I was problem solver, it's true. So when I started to work for CITIC Telecom CPC, I was well, there was no enterprise business at all, Nothing.

Speaker 1: 3:30

So it was like Founding enterprise sales leader yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:34

So that's how I started from the very beginning, being a single person there who is dealing with this kind of stuff, and it was very challenging, very interesting for me because I was also like having a carrier telecom background in my past. But then, you know, all of a sudden I decided that like, yeah, that's something that really helps me to grow, yes, also professionally. So I started over there and, yeah, in the beginning I was responsible for I was basically responsible for everything related to end user experience, or customer and customer experience, and then it was growing and it was growing rather fast, yeah, starting with one customer two, three, four, five and yeah, then, like yeah, then I was, I moved to to the Netherlands, because I had quarter of our European offices in Amsterdam and the Netherlands, so all the management is there. And now I am yeah, I am leading the cross-regional team, so we have a bit of people there and there and, yeah, it's growing yeah, yeah, I cannot complain.

Speaker 1: 4:46

I think you've got about 1,000 people now in the organization roughly.

Speaker 2: 4:55

Yeah, it's much more than 1,100 currently. And yeah, in Europe they're not that big. I must admit, but it's also because of the people, our team, every single matters. So every person is doing a lot of job, yeah, even besides of what is actually what is? Written in their job description. Yes, so that's the secret.

Speaker 1: 5:18

And so what are you seeing? I mean, you're crossing this east and west sort of connectivity piece. What are you seeing from your customers, enterprise customers, what are they trying to do? Where are you helping them connect to? I think you're also delivering different services as you've sort of progressed, probably originally maybe Telcom and now I know cybersecurity is a big thing for you, and you're also mentioning AI and what customers are looking to do there. So I'd love you to share sort of what your customers are seeking help from you and also what trends are you seeing?

Speaker 2: 5:52

In the beginning it was just connecting West and East. It was important for big enterprises to have a European interface towards their Asian footprints and that's how we started. But now we see that the market itself, the speed of the development of the economy, development of the technology development is so high. We have to keep up.

Speaker 1: 6:19

And it's not an easy thing to do. There's not a great deal of companies that can enable that connectivity to occur. I mean, it's not something Megaport offers and that's where our partnership sort of comes into being. But I guess maybe share some of the examples of the customers you were mentioning. It's not just one vertical, it's all sorts.

Speaker 2: 6:40

Yeah, it's, indeed it's a lot, and yeah, we're really not really dependent on one vertical. In the beginning it was more like traditional businesses, like manufacturing. The companies imagine that they have own factories in China, for example, or in Asian Pacific. Yes, but then, like you know, if you talk about manufacturing, there is also bank, who are supporting this international trade stuff, then logistic companies, which is also bank, who are supporting this international trade stuff, then logistic companies, which is also logical.

Speaker 1: 7:07

So, like you know, actually all the businesses are connected to each other yes, pharmaceuticals, yeah, so I think you mentioned some cool electric car companies that are sort of scaling and growing as well, so you're crossing every part of it and you've seen it speed up the connectivity requirement, and you've also seen, I think, cybersecurity and AI. So maybe share what you've seen on those sides or the problems you're solving for your customers.

Speaker 2: 7:35

Absolutely. But if you start from the network, network is traditional. It used to be traditional. The technologies are changing, of course is traditional. It used to be traditional. Like the technologies are changing, of course, like what's happening right now is the AI and machine learning are it's very trendy now to use and basically I think every business already using at some point at some way.

Speaker 2: 7:59

yes, and the challenge which AI and machine learning are creating is a high demand for computing. Yes, and the challenge which AI and machine learning are creating is a high demand for computing.

Speaker 1: 8:08

Yes.

Speaker 2: 8:09

For computing resources, and when companies are using computing resources and they go to use it, it can be scaled up and scaled down, be very agile, flexible and so on. They're also expecting the same from the network.

Speaker 1: 8:21

Yes.

Speaker 2: 8:21

And then it's another thing which is happening right now is network as a service. So, the scalable up and down networks can really be adaptive to the cloud to the computing resources. What we also see is that AI and machine learning applications are used globally by companies. But from the other side, what we also see is companies are becoming more and more sensitive to the localization of the data. Yeah, absolutely, and from that perspective, it's very challenging to control your data when you're using a lot of AI.

Speaker 1: 8:59

Yeah, you stick it up into something, you don't know where it goes, and then you lose it, so yeah, yeah, and you don't know how this data is used.

Speaker 2: 9:07

I mean of course, like you know every time you're getting a lot of pages of what you're actually supposed to read before signing it. But yeah, like who does it.

Speaker 1: 9:19

So that's the thing you accept everything, yeah. Yes.

Speaker 2: 9:22

So that's actually was a driver for us to start on AI development. Yeah, so we have a team who is working on that.

Speaker 1: 9:29

And so how do you solve that? You're actually building AI.

Speaker 2: 9:33

Well, yes, we don't invent the wheel from the very scratch. So, like we use? I think yeah, we use DeepSeek in the background?

Speaker 1: 9:42

Yeah, but you run that on-premise or you control where the data sits.

Speaker 2: 9:48

Correct, yes, so our target is to create a product for companies. It's always customized because you cannot do really AI everything which would be very universal for the particular use of the companies, but of the businesses. But yeah, our value is that we are focusing on creating a control environment. Yes, AI-based mechanism creating a control environment.

Speaker 1: 10:08

Yes.

Speaker 2: 10:09

AI-based mechanism with a control environment.

Speaker 1: 10:12

Fascinating. So that's I mean that's pretty new, presumably yeah, or yeah, I mean that's new, yes.

Speaker 2: 10:18

We have also know-hows. I'm not sure that I am allowed to say it, so I will not. Okay, yes, but we have a know-how. That's really a deal changer.

Speaker 1: 10:27

Yes.

Speaker 2: 10:28

And it will help us also to grow and to develop the product up to the level that it will be fully compliant with the customer needs with the data regulations with the privacy.

Speaker 1: 10:40

And you're delivering these services all around the world, or are there particular regions you focus on?

Speaker 2: 10:46

Yeah, we are delivering it all around the world, so now we are enabling also our own clouds as well. We have 21 clouds around the world. So we are enabling now AI also in the cloud environment, in our footprint, and, yes, it's very close to the production release. There's still work to do but, yeah, our people are very busy with that.

Speaker 1: 11:15

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:16

And, yeah, that's basically our focus right now, together with the cybersecurity, but cybersecurity is also becoming very AI-based.

Speaker 1: 11:24

Yeah, true, yeah. So how do you deal with the cyber component? Very AI-based? Yeah, true, yeah. So how do you deal with the cyber component? Is it more as a managed service piece that you offer to your customers, or how does that play out?

Speaker 2: 11:34

Yes, it's a fully managed service for our customers. Yeah, originally it was also driven by the demand and by the regulation. So regulation in Asia is and different in every country. Yeah, it's different in every country. It's also one of the trends which are now booming, not only in particular regions, it's actually everywhere. And more distributed data. You have more accent and more focus you need to give on cybersecurity.

Speaker 1: 12:08

Yes.

Speaker 2: 12:09

Not to be any more. Only a responsive thing, yes, but also a proactive instrument.

Speaker 1: 12:14

We're seeing this Megaport's, seeing all of this requirement for sovereign clouds to be built, sovereign AI farms, sovereign ie data never leaves the country network never leaves the country. It's interesting for us because we're in 26 countries and the network is totally automated across that platform, and so we're now seeing government agencies in particular asked to make sure that the data stays locally. And it's not just one country. Most countries are trying to solve this at the moment and I think a lot of them are concerned that it's moving so fast. I think so it's hard for them to actually keep up with what's happening with AI.

Speaker 1: 12:56

I mean DeepSeek, as you mentioned before, sort of only came out at the start of the year and all of a sudden, you know you've got a practice that's actually rolling that out on infrastructure inside sovereign regions. It's just moving so quickly. Governments struggle to keep up with that. But yeah, it's fascinating to see that you've already built out a practice to go and service that. Who knows what's next, you know. So it's moving really quickly, but it's cool that you've already solved some of these challenges for your customers. It's just going to get harder and more complex, I think.

Speaker 2: 13:25

Correct and yeah, I mean like it will penetrate basically in all the sectors and all the sectors also in standard telecom portfolio.

Speaker 1: 13:34

Yeah Well, I mean, there's a lot of geopolitics playing out at the moment and we won't go into politics, but it's more of just interesting to see the interdependencies that the US has on all the manufacturing plants throughout either China or Thailand or India. When COVID hit, we realized this huge reliance on the chips coming from TSMC and so forth that are really challenging for the world, because you've got these single points of failures for the world that are outside of these countries, that probably they didn't realize. So you're obviously servicing a lot of the countries that sit into this space. How does it play out for you at the moment? Do you actually see the impact of some of the tariffs that the US is sort of throwing out? Does it impact you much, or is it more your customers that are servicing and going to all of those different locations? How does it play out?

Speaker 2: 14:32

Yeah, definitely there was a lot of said, has been a lot of said recently regarding tariffs right.

Speaker 1: 14:38

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:38

And there will be also China will imply the tariffs on.

Speaker 1: 14:42

US brands.

Speaker 2: 14:45

And yeah, for us it's a huge impact. We we still use a lot of us technologies in our service portfolio. Yes, of course, yeah, so we use vmware, we use velocloud okay, of course, networks.

Speaker 1: 14:57

So when you procure the infrastructure in, yes, yeah, so that way, yeah, it will first.

Speaker 2: 15:02

Yeah, it will first impact us, but also will impact our customers very severely.

Speaker 1: 15:06

Of course, yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:07

Because if it's the same service that they were using for like I don't know, 100 euros will start to be like 200, 200 euros per month. That's already a big impact and if you have like a lot of locations, then it's great. Yes, yeah, very big.

Speaker 1: 15:24

It's interesting. I mean yeah, that's of course, of course the procuring of us based infrastructure. We I mean Megaport is we have a huge amount of network infrastructure that we deploy all around the world. It's funny different countries have really really different tariffs to actually land in um. In Brazil, for example, it's very expensive to buy infrastructure any infrastructure just because of the government um tariffs that you have just bringing it in. So we see the impact, and so when you have these changes flow through quickly and rapidly, it's really difficult to sort of keep up with how it's playing out. But it's good to see that. I think your customers seem to still be growing at the moment, seem to still be needing more services across the East and West connecting those two pieces. What are you seeing from customers, that companies that are trying to move into Asia from Europe Do they come and contact you to help get access? I know that's how we sort of first got connected.

Speaker 2: 16:21

Yes, it's basically very, very different markets. So, yes, of course, when you company business, business, it should be, business with good ambitions to go to that market because, yeah, it's starting from regulation. The way how people react to the products, it's customer experience, the way how you're promoting the way how you visualize your product is absolutely different. It's hard to understand what you need to do as a first step.

Speaker 1: 16:56

Yes.

Speaker 2: 16:58

And ICT sector is very regulated.

Speaker 1: 17:01

Yes.

Speaker 2: 17:02

And here you're really better to rely on the partner rather than do anything yourself on your exploration journey? Yeah, it would be quite challenging. So, yeah, so we are helping with that. We cover most of the needs. How?

Speaker 1: 17:19

many countries roughly, do you cover?

Speaker 2: 17:21

Now we cover 160 countries or so Just a few yes it's just quite a few and we are growing and we increase density also for our presence in every country.

Speaker 1: 17:36

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:37

Yeah, of course, in Asia, it's more because we are originally from there, but also in Europe we are following the demand of the customers and opening Also in Middle East. Recently we opened and pop in the point of presence in Dubai. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1: 17:51

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:52

It's also like a growing region. It's fascinating. Yeah, there's so much change happening at the moment.

Speaker 1: 17:54

Wow, yeah, it's also like a growing region. Yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah, there's so much change happening at the moment, so much investment. I mean we just saw over the weekend the US went to the Saudis and huge investment like hundreds of billions of dollars going into just AI in the region. So yeah, really, really fascinating space. I'd love to pivot the chat and just get some of your thoughts on the industry, and you know how long have you been in the industry? Well, actually we….

Speaker 1: 18:22

Well, you can guess my age, yes we can't say that We'll start talking about that.

Speaker 2: 18:26

But it's quite a long journey.

Speaker 1: 18:28

yes, and you enjoy the industry, and so I assume what advice would you have for someone looking to join the IT industry? How do you get into it?

Speaker 2: 18:38

Why did I? How did I find myself in the industry? Is it because I was not a successful diplomat? So like, basically, I graduated from a diplomatic academy and I was supposed to be a diplomat.

Speaker 2: 18:49

But then, yeah, and then I decided that, like, my region was Iran and the language was Persian. And then I decided that my region was Iran and the language was Persian, and I was thinking that what are your chances to be successful over there? Like, yeah, no, nothing, zero. And then, by coincidence, I started to work for a mobile operator, and then from there to a fixed line operator, then started basically from telecom when I was, yeah, 26, 27 years old.

Speaker 1: 19:17

Yeah, and from there?

Speaker 2: 19:18

I never, because that's my love, yeah, that's my life journey as well, and it developed so fast. Yes, and you know, yeah, probably, if you in this market in this time, if you find a company who is doing only telecom services, probably it's already bankrupt or about to be bankrupt, because, yeah, it used to be very telecom and now it's very, very technological.

Speaker 1: 19:47

Yes tech.

Speaker 2: 19:50

And you are also developing yourself, because new and new technologies are coming every day.

Speaker 1: 19:56

Yes.

Speaker 2: 19:56

And you have to keep up.

Speaker 1: 19:57

You have to.

Speaker 2: 19:58

yeah, keep rolling, and still bringing value to company, to your customers, to businesses, to your team.

Speaker 1: 20:07

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:07

So that makes me, yeah, be in constant development of myself.

Speaker 1: 20:12

So you think it's a good industry to get involved in.

Speaker 2: 20:14

Still, Absolutely yeah, and yeah, from one side it's a bit stable. I would say more stable than, let's say, something which is, I don't know like Instababies or all that stuff.

Speaker 1: 20:27

Yeah, you might be able to make some money for a little bit on Instagram, but longer term, you need a career.

Speaker 1: 20:32

Yeah, it's funny a lot of people end up in technology or IT from weird paths, like I studied aerospace engineering and couldn't get a job in aerospace because there was no jobs in aerospace, and I guess you end up in tech in some way. Nowadays there's obviously degrees for it, but there's still so many paths you can land in tech. It's a great place to be. I think that you know that piece, like you said, sort of being curious or learning all the time. There's so much to learn, keep you interested, so it's a fun place, yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:59

Yeah, absolutely, and especially when you're on the commercial part of your company. Yeah, that's something that company is also asking you to think together. Like you know where we go next.

Speaker 1: 21:09

Yes.

Speaker 2: 21:10

What we are going to do tomorrow, what are the demands, what your?

Speaker 1: 21:20

customers are looking for. Yes, and basically that makes you always to think and to create a plan for the growth. Well, it's impressive that you, like I said before, you've already built out AI practices, that you're actually rolling out DeepSeek as an example, which has only been around for like three or four months or five months or whatever it is.

Speaker 2: 21:30

I don't even know where we are now four months and you're rolling that out on infrastructure in different sovereign locations, delivering that to your customers like what's next? Who knows, like where do we go to from here?

Speaker 2: 21:44

it's really going to be an impressive journey and, yeah, in in the near future, the speed of the penetration of ai and machine learning yeah, will be more and and you see now that, yeah, we talk about networks that's something that not yet very much using AI, but in the nearest future the network will be self-healing, machine learning. The machines will actually manage it.

Speaker 1: 22:10

Yeah so that.

Speaker 2: 22:11

Detect the faults, heal it yes, also, forecast and scale up, scale down bandwidths, manage the routing yes, it's something which is now done with engineers manually People looking at charts and changing routes because the chart's gone up.

Speaker 1: 22:28

they can do it automatically now.

Speaker 2: 22:30

Yeah, absolutely so. That's something that will be done by artificial intelligence, and, yeah, probably, then engineers can focus on something else.

Speaker 1: 22:39

Yeah, well, they're probably building out more interesting features and functions. Our purpose is to constantly add interesting tech that solves the customer problems that we can automate at scale, planet scale, totally automated. Well, this has been fun. Is there anything else you'd like to share, particularly around? If I'm a customer, why would I look at your company? When would we think of you?

Speaker 2: 23:05

If customer is looking for a reliable partner who can help them to expand internationally, then we are the ones who are helping.

Speaker 1: 23:18

And you deliver to a lot of locations that most companies can't deliver to. I think is probably a good differentiator.

Speaker 2: 23:24

Yes, we are also how to say? Vendor neutral. So we work with everyone around the world. We help in different locations. We are specialists in Asia Pacific and in China. We have local presence. It helps us also to localize the requirements and to convert it in a good and stable ICT environment for every customer that uses us.

Speaker 1: 23:55

It's cool, and I mean you're solving problems that most companies can't solve. I think yes. We certainly can't solve a lot of these problems, particularly the connectivity piece, so it must be great for companies to come to you who need that access Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 24:12

And you need to know, yes, what's going on locally. And you need to know, yes, what's going on locally. And, yeah, for Megaport, I believe you will have a great future, because now we see the expanding demand to clouds.

Speaker 1: 24:26

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:27

Also, it's very much connected to the amount of IoT devices that are being used. This amount of data that is being stored and analyzed in clouds and the multi-cloud portfolio of every standard business is impressive and it will drive into the networks in the end, because this data needs to be transferred in a way and around.

Speaker 2: 24:57

So I believe that a company like yours, like Megaport, with your approach, how you do business, being very responsive, fast, also helping your partners to get the code for connectivity, to manage routers globally, to manage rotors globally, to manage customers' infrastructure and to get everything very fast.

Speaker 1: 25:23

Yes.

Speaker 2: 25:23

And scale up and scale down. That's very impressive.

Speaker 1: 25:26

It's still unique. You know we've been doing it for 11 years.

Speaker 2: 25:28

It's still unique, but it's still yes, you're still in this blue ocean. I would say because, like, yeah, it's not so many companies and yeah, I used to know a couple of them, but one is already out.

Speaker 1: 25:41

Yeah, there's a lot of tried. It's very hard to automate physical digital things. The only way you can do it is if you build it from the ground up, and most companies come through an acquisition path, particularly telcos, like you were mentioning before. The more you acquire, the harder it is to automate, because the infrastructure is all different, someone's built it in different ways and so it's almost impossible to automate. If you can't automate it, it can't be done quickly, it has to be, and you also then have a huge cost to manage the network, which is why we're lucky.

Speaker 1: 26:11

We've got, you know, 30 000 connections, 950 to 960 data centers with 6 000 fiber connections and 3 000 devices or something like that, and not a single human touches any of it. It's all delivered via code. So that's sort of our secret source. But the only way you can build that is from what we can see is really ground up. So we're lucky that we've sort of been able to grow organically and get to a critical mass of revenue and scale and size that we can continue to add that value to our customers. We've seen other companies try but just can't cross that critical mass and therefore it doesn't work. So yeah, we're lucky, but we're in growth phase, and so we appreciate your partnership. There's lots of customers that we have that are trying to scale into all sorts of regions around the world that we don't support and service, and so thank you for the support that you've brought to our partners.

Speaker 2: 27:01

Thank you to you. I believe that we will create more and more opportunities together and, yeah, create a big success story out of our partnership.

Speaker 1: 27:10

Beautiful. Thanks for coming.