Salman Ali

Principal

Spain

Salman advises on strategy, organization and innovation, capitalizing on his cross-sector consulting experience.

Education

Imperial College London, University of London
Master of Science in Petroleum Engineering
Imperial College London, University of London
Bachelor of Engineering with Honors in Mechanical Engineering, with the scholarship from the Society of Petroleum Engineers

Salman is a Principal at the Madrid Office and a member of the Technology and Innovation Management practice. 

Since joining Arthur D. Little in 1996, Salman has worked on strategic operations, M&A and more recently, innovation topics in a range of sectors including TIME, Oil & Gas, Industrial Goods and Travel and Transportation. 

Salman is a recognized thought leader on the Future of networking and cloud computing.

From good to great: Enhancing innovation performance through effective management processes
From good to great: Enhancing innovation performance through effective management processes
Better together
Better together
Fraud is big business, costing the global economy an estimated US $5 trillion per annum, according to a report by Crowe and the Centre for Counter Fraud Studies. It is a problem no one can afford to ignore, as businesses and consumers struggle with the direct cost and associated disruption to economic life. Most worryingly, the incidence of fraud has increased as a result of mass digital adoption during COVID-19. This Viewpoint explains why a business-as-usual approach to managing fraud simply won’t do.
Pivoting the international carrier business
The international carrier industry has not brought much satisfaction over the past years. Traditional international carrier products are suffering low growth or are in structural decline, while service and asset innovators emerging in the adjacencies are making a mark in value creation. Telecom groups could have captured those trends through their international wholesale departments or subsidiaries, but their potential as trend hunters has been hindered by fragmentation or missing purpose.
Time for a pivot
The cloud is the playing field of the digital economy. However, most financial services companies have only been able to scratch the surface. Working within its existing operating practices and vendor ecosystem, it seems impossible to look beyond the lowest-hanging fruit. We make the case that it is time to try something new.
What the customer wants!
In the recent past, information technologies operated in static infrastructure silos. However, mass adoption of the cloud delivery model has irreversibly changed enterprises’ expectations of how IT infrastructure services should be built, provisioned and priced.
Future Telco Production Model
Given the speed of technology cycles, new flexible production architectures are a prerequisite to driving the pace of product innovation and transforming operations.
Reshaping the future with NFV and SDN
A geographically diverse set of Tier 1 carriers is driving initiatives to standardize critical components of network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networks (SDN). Led by AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, NTT, Telefonica and Verizon, among others, these carriers hope to bring new technologies first developed and proven in the data center into their networks. The excitement over NFV and SDN has created renewed interest in the networking business and has fanned debate regarding potential winners and losers. So far, however, there has been only limited analysis of the potential economic and competitive impact of these technologies on the network, operations and the bottom-line.
Clarity on carrier cloud
Carrier’s the world over are actively investing to find their niche in cloud services to drive growth, but few can claim success. Building a credible cloud service will require to fully understand the market potential for public, private cloud and related services. Potential entrants need to analyze how cloud technology will shape the market, what are the required technology and software capabilities and how to create a win-win situation through alliances.
Assessing innovation and R&D capabilities across multi-center organizations
Over the last decades most global companies have evolved to organize their innovation efforts through an “open innovation” model with individual research centers. Globalization and mergers & acquisitions have changed these networks, making them more complex to manage successfully. A robust capability assessment is the starting point for capturing synergies, fostering cross-center collaboration and steering critical make-or-buy and resource allocation decisions in the right direction. This article shows how this can be done.

Salman is a Principal at the Madrid Office and a member of the Technology and Innovation Management practice. 

Since joining Arthur D. Little in 1996, Salman has worked on strategic operations, M&A and more recently, innovation topics in a range of sectors including TIME, Oil & Gas, Industrial Goods and Travel and Transportation. 

Salman is a recognized thought leader on the Future of networking and cloud computing.

From good to great: Enhancing innovation performance through effective management processes
From good to great: Enhancing innovation performance through effective management processes
Better together
Better together
Fraud is big business, costing the global economy an estimated US $5 trillion per annum, according to a report by Crowe and the Centre for Counter Fraud Studies. It is a problem no one can afford to ignore, as businesses and consumers struggle with the direct cost and associated disruption to economic life. Most worryingly, the incidence of fraud has increased as a result of mass digital adoption during COVID-19. This Viewpoint explains why a business-as-usual approach to managing fraud simply won’t do.
Pivoting the international carrier business
The international carrier industry has not brought much satisfaction over the past years. Traditional international carrier products are suffering low growth or are in structural decline, while service and asset innovators emerging in the adjacencies are making a mark in value creation. Telecom groups could have captured those trends through their international wholesale departments or subsidiaries, but their potential as trend hunters has been hindered by fragmentation or missing purpose.
Time for a pivot
The cloud is the playing field of the digital economy. However, most financial services companies have only been able to scratch the surface. Working within its existing operating practices and vendor ecosystem, it seems impossible to look beyond the lowest-hanging fruit. We make the case that it is time to try something new.
What the customer wants!
In the recent past, information technologies operated in static infrastructure silos. However, mass adoption of the cloud delivery model has irreversibly changed enterprises’ expectations of how IT infrastructure services should be built, provisioned and priced.
Future Telco Production Model
Given the speed of technology cycles, new flexible production architectures are a prerequisite to driving the pace of product innovation and transforming operations.
Reshaping the future with NFV and SDN
A geographically diverse set of Tier 1 carriers is driving initiatives to standardize critical components of network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networks (SDN). Led by AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, NTT, Telefonica and Verizon, among others, these carriers hope to bring new technologies first developed and proven in the data center into their networks. The excitement over NFV and SDN has created renewed interest in the networking business and has fanned debate regarding potential winners and losers. So far, however, there has been only limited analysis of the potential economic and competitive impact of these technologies on the network, operations and the bottom-line.
Clarity on carrier cloud
Carrier’s the world over are actively investing to find their niche in cloud services to drive growth, but few can claim success. Building a credible cloud service will require to fully understand the market potential for public, private cloud and related services. Potential entrants need to analyze how cloud technology will shape the market, what are the required technology and software capabilities and how to create a win-win situation through alliances.
Assessing innovation and R&D capabilities across multi-center organizations
Over the last decades most global companies have evolved to organize their innovation efforts through an “open innovation” model with individual research centers. Globalization and mergers & acquisitions have changed these networks, making them more complex to manage successfully. A robust capability assessment is the starting point for capturing synergies, fostering cross-center collaboration and steering critical make-or-buy and resource allocation decisions in the right direction. This article shows how this can be done.

More About Salman
  • Imperial College London, University of London
    Master of Science in Petroleum Engineering
  • Imperial College London, University of London
    Bachelor of Engineering with Honors in Mechanical Engineering, with the scholarship from the Society of Petroleum Engineers