Incorporating hybrid multicloud and AI drives agility, collaboration and competition among telcos

Recent changes in the business landscape owing to the technological revolution have enabled business agility and flexibility. Already, technologies like AI, machine learning, cloud computing, and data analytics, among others have driven farfetched transformation across industries. The telecommunications industry is not an exception. Today, the telecom space is at the cusp of technological transformation, led by mobile and broadband services along with the emergence of IoT and 5G networks. As many communications service providers (CSPs) face surging demands for higher quality services and better customer experience, they are now finding it necessary to stimulate their migration to multicloud platforms.

According to IDC, the multicloud telco environment is an external digital lever for CSPs to provide enterprises with required key performance indicators such as latency, bandwidth, and jitter, through a public cloud or cloudified internal systems. This enables scalability, faster go to market, and improved customer experience.

Many telcos also see AI-driven solutions for their digital transformation. In a blog, IBM pointed out the industry's AI reinvention which lies in three key strategies, including monetizing at the edge, saving costs through automation and improving customer engagement. Leveraging edge computing, telcos can deliver higher-value services. Edge allows them to offer critical data and insights via IoT or other devices, helping B2B businesses in industries make faster decisions with much less latency. Telecommunications can expand further their value beyond providing connectivity to offering higher value services using edge technologies that intensify revenue per user.

Artificial intelligence can play a vital role in the telco industry by enabling zero-touch service automation. It automates the end-to-end network lifecycle on a private, public, or hybrid cloud infrastructure at scale. By embracing AI technologies, telcos can also personalize customer experiences and envisage consumer behavior based on previous purchases or interactions on a retailer's website. This can be done by leveraging vast amounts of data gleaned over the years from the retailer's massive customer bases.

As Gartner predicts that there will be 20.4 billion connected devices in use worldwide by 2020, more and more CSPs are harnessing the power of AI. They are mainly investing in network optimization, preventive maintenance, virtual assistants, and RPA, among others.

AI in the Telecommunication Cloud

As a large-scale, complex infrastructure, the telecommunication cloud is critical to the information industry. It has largely been driven by the rapid development of AI in recent years. AI leverages powerful data analysis and information mining capabilities that help operators translate data into meaningful information, and let them take further actions. The technology is also perceived as an effective approach to boost efficiency and capability in telecommunication. 

Multicloud Approach in Telecom

Multicloud infrastructure has become prevalent in the modern cloud environment. In telecommunications, it provides best-in line automation, minimized total cost of ownership, and reduced time to market. Multicloud also makes CSPs take benefit from two or more cloud providers and stay in control of their environment.

As per IDC, telos can adopt a multi-cloud journey via four ways: cloud infrastructure (IaaS), cloud orchestration, cloud life-cycle services, and cloud interconnect solutions.