Globe Telecom Cooks Up AI Success Empowering Employees

• Globe Telecom is using AI to boost internal productivity through low-code tools and employee-led innovation
• The company built a reusable AI infrastructure to avoid vendor lock-in and streamline complex deployments
• Security remains central to Globe’s AI strategy, balancing innovation with strict safeguards

At DTW IGNITE in Copenhagen, Anton Reynaldo Bonifacio of Globe Telecom shared how a call from then-CEO Ernest Cu, who was inspired by AI advancements in China during a visit, led to Bonifacio spearheading AI initiatives for the company.

Bonifacio joked during his keynote, "I knew what my title was even before I knew what my job was." His significant title is Executive Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), and Chief AI Officer for Globe Telecom. He now defines his role as encompassing strategic AI planning, development, enablement, implementation, operations, governance, and compliance.

Empowering Employees with AI

The primary objective for the initial six months was to deliver immediate results. Improving internal productivity was identified as the quickest path, achieved by empowering employees with tools for citizen development, including low-code, no-code solutions, and access to Google Gemini. Bonifacio highlighted that this grassroots approach is superior to top-down directives, as it "empower[s] people to be able to solve their own problems."

An AI advocacy working group established by Globe Telecom saw remarkable engagement, with 1,300 employees out of 6,000 signing up in the initial weeks. "We ran a campaign called 'Make work fun again,' which was one of the battle cries," Bonifacio shared.

Building a Reusable AI Kitchen

However, grassroots efforts alone are insufficient. "There's going to be some business requirements that I can't rely on citizen development to be able to build," Bonifacio noted. This necessitates building a top-down infrastructure for more complex AI applications.

Bonifacio reflected, "Just like I knew the job title before I knew the job, in a lot of ways I knew what not to do rather than immediately knowing what to do." He was determined that Globe Telecom would not repeat common mistakes made by other telcos and service providers, such as repeatedly reinventing infrastructure for different use cases in legacy and cloud environments.

Globe Telecom's Anton Reynaldo Bonifacio discusses the Philippine operator's AI success. (Photo: Mitch Wagner for Fierce Network)

Bonifacio introduced a kitchen metaphor to illustrate Globe Telecom's AI deployment strategy.

"Every top-down use case is like a dish. Business is hungry. They want Chinese food, or maybe they want steak. Imagine we have to build a separate kitchen for each use case, with separate components and separate appliances, engaging different partners. We're going to wind up in the same nightmare we're in now, where you've got vendor-locked, overlapping technologies," he elaborated.

Globe Telecom's "AI kitchen" features reusable components like common AI landing zones – pre-configured cloud environments for rapid and secure AI workload deployment. Other "appliances" include an observability stack, LLM guardrails, data, and Terraform scripts. Bonifacio emphasized that many generative AI solutions share common reusable parts, stating, "You really don't need 10 different vendors for every use case."

Integrating AI with Robust Security

Security is an integral part of Globe's AI strategy, a responsibility also falling under Bonifacio's purview. "I'm both the Chief AI officer and Chief Information Security Officer," he confirmed.

Globe Telecom enforces stringent information security policies. For instance, to shield customers from malicious messages, the company blocks any SMS containing a link. "It's not even URL filtering or domain filtering — if the SMS has a link, we block it," Bonifacio explained. This robust security philosophy underpins their approach to innovation.

"You have to be safe to innovate," he asserted. "That's where a lot of companies, not just operators, get stuck sometimes. There is so much fear from a security perspective." Such fear, he cautioned, can stifle innovation.

Early Successes and Future Collaboration

Bonifacio reported, "We've had great results already." As an example, Globe's B2B team, even without technical backgrounds, developed a quality assurance chatbot for call center operations using APIs and low-code/no-code tools. This initiative successfully brought a previously outsourced function in-house.

Looking to the future, Globe Telecom aims to extend this collaborative model. "We'd like to empower our customers to cook in the same kitchen so they can actually collaborate with us," Bonifacio envisioned, signaling a move towards co-innovation with both business and consumer customers.

Catch all of our coverage from this year's DTW Ignite show here.