Sunnyvale, CA, March 5, 2020 – Google Cloud today announced a comprehensive new strategy to help telecommunications companies digitally transform. Google Cloud’s strategy focuses on three key business outcomes for telecommunications companies: monetizing 5G as a business services platform, engaging customers with data-driven experiences, and improving operational efficiency across telecom core systems. 

“Rapid technology advancements are impacting the telecommunications industry, whether it’s the rise of 5G and network-centric business models or new connected devices and applications,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “Many of these offer significant opportunities for business transformation, and that’s why we’re excited to collaborate with leading telecoms, partners, and customers to help transform the industry together and create better overall experiences for users around the world.”

Enabling and Monetizing 5G as a business services platform

Google Cloud is partnering with telecommunications companies to harness 5G as a business services platform. To meet this goal, Google Cloud today unveiled its Global Mobile Edge Cloud (GMEC) strategy, which will deliver a portfolio and marketplace of 5G solutions built jointly with telecommunications companies; an open cloud platform for developing these network-centric applications; and a global distributed edge for optimally deploying these solutions. 

Today, Google Cloud and AT&T announced a collaboration to help enterprises take advantage of Google Cloud’s technologies and capabilities using AT&T network connectivity at the edge, including 5G. The two companies are testing a portfolio of 5G edge computing solutions for industries, such as retail, manufacturing, and transportation, that bring together AT&T’s network, Google Cloud’s leading technologies including AI/ML and Kubernetes, and edge computing to help enterprises address real business challenges. 

“We’re working with Google Cloud to deliver the next generation of cloud services,” said Mo Katibeh, EVP and CMO, AT&T Business. “Combining 5G with Google Cloud’s edge compute technologies can unlock the cloud’s true potential. This work is bringing us closer to a reality where cloud and edge technologies give businesses the tools to create a whole new world of experiences for their customers.”

Google Cloud also announced Anthos for Telecom, which will bring its Anthos cloud platform to the network edge, allowing telecommunications companies to run their applications wherever it makes the most sense. Much like Android provided an open platform for mobile-centric applications, Anthos for Telecom, based on open-source Kubernetes, will provide a versatile open platform for network-centric applications.

Finally, Google Cloud can partner with telecommunications companies to rapidly enable a global distributed edge by lighting up thousands of edge locations that are already deployed in these telecom networks.

Transforming customer experiences with AI/ML and data-driven insights

Google Cloud is helping telecommunications companies transform customer experiences through data- and AI-driven technologies. Google Cloud’s BigQuery platform provides a scalable data analytics solution—with machine learning built-in—so telecommunications companies can store, process, and analyze data in real time, and build personalization models on top of this data.

“The collaboration with Google Cloud has been invaluable for our business as we use data to become more customer-centric,” said Simon Harris, Group Head of Big Data Delivery at Vodafone. “Not only are we able to gain analytics capabilities across Vodafone products and services, but also we arrive at insights faster, which can then be used to offer more personalized product offerings to customers and to raise the bar on service.”

“We’re leveraging Google Cloud’s data analytics capabilities to deliver customized marketing campaigns, real-time personalization, and talent acquisition for our customers,” said Robert Visser, CIO at Wind Tre, an Italian telecom operator with more than 30 million mobile customers.

Another key Google Cloud solution, Contact Center AI, helps telecommunications companies significantly improve customer service, while decreasing costs. CCAI gives companies 24/7 access to immediate conversational self-service, with seamless handoffs to human agents for more complex issues. It also empowers human agents with continuous support during their calls by identifying intent and providing real-time, step-by-step assistance. 

Google Cloud’s AI and retail solutions are also used by communications companies to transform the retail experience for customers, including omni-channel marketing, sales and service, personalization and recommendations, and virtual-agent presence in stores.

Improving operational efficiency to telecom IT, network, and core systems

Google Cloud is helping telecommunications companies transform their core IT systems and networks. As a part of this transformation, many of the applications, like OSS (Operations Support Systems), BSS (Business Support Systems), and network functions that once resided in telecom environments, will now move to Google Cloud. This will provide customers with benefits, including reducing costs and improving IT efficiencies, and using Google Cloud to virtualize network functions for their core communications networks. 

As part of this effort, Google Cloud today is announcing a partnership with Amdocs to enable communications service providers to run Amdocs’ market leading portfolio on Google Cloud, and to deliver new data analytics, site reliability engineering, and 5G edge solutions to enterprise customers.

“Service providers worldwide are embarking on transformation journeys centered on the cloud in order to drive new services, revenue opportunities and experiences,” said Gary Miles, chief marketing officer, Amdocs. “By combining our cloud-native, open and modular solutions with the fully managed, high performing Google Cloud, we can accelerate this journey.”

As part of the Amdocs and Google Cloud joint go-to-market initiative announced today, Amdocs is also proud to announce that Altice USA has gone live with Amdocs data and intelligence systems on the Google Cloud. Altice USA is an early mover in driving better intelligence into its core operations for enhanced customer insights and experiences.

In addition, Google Cloud is announcing a new partnership with Netcracker to deploy its entire Digital BSS/OSS and Orchestration stack on Google Cloud. Telecommunications companies can now scale and purchase their mission-critical IT applications on demand, with access to unlimited Google Cloud resources, reducing the total cost of ownership and accelerating the availability of new services.

“Netcracker is delighted to offer service providers a choice of cloud platforms with the availability of our digital portfolio on Google Cloud,” said Bob Titus, CTO, Netcracker. “Together with Google Cloud, we are helping our customers on the next phase of their digital transformation with a clear focus on service innovation and a superior customer experience.”

Google Cloud provides organizations with leading infrastructure, platform capabilities and industry solutions, along with expertise, to reinvent their business with data-powered innovation on modern computing infrastructure. We deliver enterprise-grade cloud solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology to help companies operate more efficiently, modernize for growth and innovate for the future. Customers in more than 150 countries turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to solve their most critical business problems.

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