On June 29, Google Cloud and Ericsson announced a partnership to jointly develop 5G and edge cloud platforms to help communications service providers (CSPs) digitally transform, and to unlock new enterprise and consumer use cases.
As contended by a statement from the partners:
Globally, industries with edge presences—including CSPs, retailers, manufacturers, transport businesses, healthcare, and media and entertainment providers—face pressures to build more digitized businesses and new digital experiences for their customers.
To help businesses address this shift, Google Cloud and Ericsson are working together to develop new solutions at Ericsson's Silicon Valley D-15 Labs, a state-of-the-art innovation center where advanced solutions and technologies can be developed and tested on a live, multi-layer 5G platform.
Ericsson and Google Cloud have already completed functional onboarding of Ericsson 5G on Anthos [Google Cloud's managed application platform] to enable telco edge and on-premise use cases for CSPs and enterprises.
As part of the partnership, Google Cloud and Ericsson announced they are also piloting enterprise applications at the edge on a live network with Italy's TIM. The project, which will automate the functions of TIM's core 5G network and cloud-based applications, will leverage TIM's Telco Cloud infrastructure, Google Cloud solutions, and Ericsson's 5G core network and orchestration technologies. The joint offerings will help enterprises in the automotive, transportation, manufacturing, and other sectors improve efficiencies and lower latency by bringing connectivity close to companies' physical locations.
"Organizations have a tremendous opportunity to digitally transform their businesses with 5G and cloud capabilities like artificial intelligence and machine learning at the edge," said Thomas Kurian, CEO at Google Cloud. "We are proud to partner with Ericsson to help build a foundation for communications service providers and enterprises alike to take advantage of cloud technology and cloud-native services, from telecom network core to the edge and enterprise premises."
"5G is a powerful innovation platform. Combined with edge cloud capabilities, 5G has the potential to accelerate the digital transformation of virtually any sector of industry or society," added Niklas Heuveldop, President and Head of Ericsson North America. "We are excited about our partnership with Google Cloud as we engage with our customers to leverage our combined capabilities to solve real-world business challenges for the benefit of consumers, enterprises and society at large."
Ericsson and Google previously formed a services partnership to enable the digital transformation of operator networks and application migration through cloud-native, container-based solutions. To learn more about Google Cloud's telecom strategy, click here.