Ericsson and Google Cloud have announced a collaboration to develop 5G and edge cloud solutions.
According to the companies, the collaboration will assist communications service providers (CSPs) in digital transformation and enable new enterprise and consumer use cases.
Globally, industries with leading positions, such as CSPs, retailers, manufacturers, transportation companies, healthcare, media, and entertainment providers, are under increasing pressure to develop businesses with a stronger digital focus and new digital experiences for their customers.
Google Cloud and Ericsson will collaborate to develop new solutions at Ericsson’s Silicon Valley D-15 Labs to assist businesses with this transition. In this state-of-the-art innovation centre, 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, enabling use cases at the telco edge and on-premises for CSPs and enterprises.
Additionally, the companies will collaborate on piloting enterprise applications at the edge of a live network with TIM. This project will automate TIM’s core 5G network and cloud-based applications by leveraging TIM’s Telco Cloud infrastructure, Google Cloud solutions, and Ericsson’s 5G core network and orchestration technologies.
By bringing connectivity closer to a business’s physical location, the joint offerings will help enterprises in the automotive, transportation, manufacturing, and other sectors improve efficiency and reduce latency.
“With 5G and cloud capabilities such as artificial intelligence and machine learning at the edge, organisations have an incredible opportunity to digitally transform their businesses,” says Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.
“We are honoured to collaborate with Ericsson to help lay the groundwork for communications service providers and enterprises to leverage cloud technology and cloud-native services across the telecom network core, the edge, and enterprise premises.”
Niklas Heuveldop, president and chief executive officer of Ericsson North America, says 5G is a powerful innovation platform that, when combined with edge cloud capabilities, has the potential to accelerate the digital transformation of virtually any industry or society.
“We are excited about our partnership with Google Cloud as we work with customers to leverage our combined capabilities to address real-world business challenges for the benefit of consumers, businesses, and society at large,” he says.
Ericsson and Google previously formed a service partnership to enable operator network and application digital transformation through cloud-native, container-based solutions.
