Vodafone pens ‘risky’ AI deal with Google Cloud

2022-07-14
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Vodafone has partnered with Google Cloud on a new “AI Booster” platform that is capable of handling thousands of machine learning models per day. The company says the deal will help it towards its goal of scaling up its use of AI across multiple countries, but this close relationship with one of the public cloud hyperscalers, which are increasingly seen as competitors to telcos, may be detrimental to its long-term prospects.

Vodafone says its partnership with Google Cloud will allow for more rapid deployment of machine learning models (Photo: gorodenkoff/iStock)

Announced today, the AI Booster has been in the works for 18 months and is part of a wider plan from Vodafone to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning into its core business and allow for the “rapid building and deploying of machine learning use cases”.

This example of enterprise-scale AI is part of an ongoing relationship between Google Cloud and Vodafone that included moving the data used by the entire organisation into what it describes as a “single source of truth” hosted on Google Cloud. This allowed for new tools, such as the AI Booster, to be built with access to this data.

The tools are built using Google’s Vertex AI, which is designed to allow developers and data scientists to more easily deploy, build and scale ML models. A Google spokesperson told Tech Monitor the tools are for internal use and will be deployed by “Vodafone commercial data scientists across their respective geographies. These data scientists ultimately build algorithms to improve the customer experience for Vodafone’s end customers.”

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James Ma, Google Cloud head of technical account management said in a statement that building next-generation connectivity requires “going beyond what’s possible today and unlocking significant investment in new technology and change”, which includes enhancing customer experience and network performance with AI’s predictive capabilities.

How Vodafone’s Google Cloud partnership will work

A number of projects are already underway including one that involves anonymised, aggregated data being used to better map network coverage and capacity improvements to areas where customers need it most.

This deal extends the existing relationship between Google Cloud and Vodafone, which already included artificial intelligence tools. The move will allow for improved data quality, reduced data costs and “significantly increased efficiency” according to a Google spokesperson.

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Vodafone had already made some moves in this direction, including improving efficiency through the use of machine learning, but this only revealed more potential use cases that required rapid scaling. To build industrial scale machine learning capabilities able to handle thousands of models per day over more than 18 countries quickly, required them to turn to one of the major cloud platforms.

“To maximise business value at pace and scale, our vision was to enable fast creation and horizontal and vertical scaling of use cases in an automated, standardised manner,” said Cornelia Schaurecker, global group director for Big Data & AI at Vodafone.

Vodafone AI Booster is a cloud-native platform designed to integrate with another Vodafone product built on Google Cloud, the Neuron platform, which the firm says acts as a “brain and AI driver” for its machine learning models.

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“As a technology platform, we’re incredibly proud of building a cutting-edge MLOps platform based on best-in-class Google Cloud architecture with in-built automation, scalability and security. The result is we’re delivering more value from data science, while embedding reliability engineering principles throughout,” said Ashish Vijayvargia, analytics product lead at Vodafone.

The key features include fully automated machine learning lifecycle compliance activities via reusable pipelines, containers and managed services. It also includes embedded security by design and the ability to capitalise on Google-native machine learning tooling.

“Vodafone’s flourishing relationship with Google Cloud is a vital aspect of our evolution toward becoming a world-leading tech communications company. It accelerates our ability to create faster, more scalable solutions to business challenges like improving customer loyalty and enhancing customer experience, whilst keeping Vodafone at the forefront of AI and data science,” says Cengiz Ucbenli, Global Head of Big Data and AI, Innovation, Governance at Vodafone. 

Google Cloud deal ‘a risk’ for Vodafone

Vodafone’s AI deal with Google Cloud highlights the growing, and at times uneasy, relationship between telcos and the cloud hyperscalers – Google and its two biggest rivals, Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Other examples include Norwegian telecommunications giant Telenor sealing a partnership with AWS. Last year, Telenet, Belgium’s third-largest telco, announced Google Cloud would be one of three vendors that would provide support for its 5G network, alongside telecommunications equipment makers Nokia and Ericsson.

Indeed, the cloud providers can increasingly provide software-defined telecoms infrastructure, delivered from the cloud and potentially replacing the role played by Vodafone and its rivals in the market. A poll taken in May at the Digital Services Provider Leaders Forum found that 44% of telcos identified competition from hyperscalers as their principal challenge. Almost as many highlighted ‘ill-defined services or cloud strategy’ as a significant barrier.

John Strand, telecom industry analyst and founder of Strand Consult, says this close relationship with Google Cloud could come back to bite Vodafone in the future.

“There are only three major vendors of public cloud services in the UK, AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, and with a number of telecom operators making deals with one or more of the three, they are gaining power in the market," he says.

Strand says it was a surprise to see Vodafone so closely align itself to Google given it has previously talked about a lack of vendor diversity in the infrastructure market. “Right now Vodafone is making itself very dependent on Google," he explains. "This is probably a great deal for Google short, medium and long term, but probably a bad deal for Vodafone long term.”

Read more: 5G pushes mobile operators into a new technology paradigm

Topics in this article: Google Cloud, Vodafone

参考译文
沃达丰与谷歌Cloud达成“高风险”人工智能交易
沃达丰与谷歌Cloud合作开发了一个新的“人工智能助推器”平台,该平台能够每天处理数千个机器学习模型。该公司表示,这笔交易将有助于其实现在多个国家扩大人工智能使用的目标,但与一家公共云超级规模公司的密切关系可能不利于其长期前景,后者越来越被视为电信公司的竞争对手。今天宣布的AI Booster已经进行了18个月,是沃达丰更广泛计划的一部分,该计划将人工智能和机器学习整合到其核心业务中,并允许“快速构建和部署机器学习用例”。这个企业级AI的例子是谷歌Cloud和沃达丰之间持续关系的一部分,包括将整个组织使用的数据转移到谷歌Cloud托管的“单一真相来源”中。这使得AI Booster等新工具能够访问这些数据。这些工具使用谷歌的Vertex AI构建,该AI旨在让开发人员和数据科学家更容易部署、构建和缩放ML模型。谷歌发言人告诉Tech Monitor,这些工具仅供内部使用,将由“沃达丰的商业数据科学家在各自的地理位置部署”。这些数据科学家最终构建了算法,以改善沃达丰终端客户的客户体验。谷歌Cloud技术客户管理负责人詹姆斯·马在一份声明中表示,构建下一代连接需要“超越今天的可能性,并在新技术和变革中投入大量资金”,其中包括利用人工智能的预测能力增强客户体验和网络性能。许多项目已经在进行中,其中一个涉及匿名汇总数据,用于更好地绘制网络覆盖图,并改善客户最需要的地区的容量。这笔交易扩大了谷歌Cloud和沃达丰之间现有的合作关系,后者已经包括人工智能工具。谷歌发言人表示,此举将提高数据质量,降低数据成本,并“显著提高效率”。沃达丰已经在这方面采取了一些行动,包括通过使用机器学习来提高效率,但这只是揭示了更多需要快速扩展的潜在用例。为了建立工业规模的机器学习能力,能够每天快速处理超过18个国家的数千个模型,要求他们转向一个主要的云平台。“为了在速度和规模上实现业务价值的最大化,我们的愿景是以自动化、标准化的方式快速创建用例,并实现横向和纵向扩展,”大数据&人工智能在沃达丰。沃达丰AI Booster是一个原生云平台,旨在与沃达丰另一款基于谷歌云的产品——Neuron平台集成。该公司称,Neuron平台充当其机器学习模型的“大脑和AI驱动程序”。“作为一个技术平台,我们非常自豪地构建了一个基于一流的谷歌云架构的尖端MLOps平台,具有内置的自动化、可扩展性和安全性。结果是,我们从数据科学中提供了更多的价值,同时将可靠性工程原则贯穿始终,”沃达丰分析产品主管阿希什•维杰瓦贾表示。关键特性包括通过可重用管道、容器和托管服务的全自动机器学习生命周期遵从活动。它还包括设计的嵌入式安全性和利用谷歌本地机器学习工具的能力。 “沃达丰与谷歌Cloud的良好关系是我们向世界领先的科技通信公司发展的一个重要方面。沃达丰大数据和人工智能、创新和治理全球主管Cengiz Ucbenli表示:“它加快了我们创造更快、更可扩展的解决方案的能力,以应对提高客户忠诚度和增强客户体验等业务挑战,同时保持沃达丰在人工智能和数据科学方面的领先地位。”沃达丰与谷歌Cloud达成的人工智能交易,突显出电信公司与云计算巨头——谷歌及其两个最大竞争对手——亚马逊的AWS和微软的Azure——之间不断增长、时而令人不安的关系。其他例子还包括挪威电信巨头Telenor与AWS达成合作。去年,比利时第三大电信公司Telenet宣布谷歌Cloud将成为为其5G网络提供支持的三家供应商之一,另外两家是电信设备制造商诺基亚和爱立信。实际上,云提供商可以越来越多地提供由云交付的软件定义的电信基础设施,并可能取代沃达丰(Vodafone)及其竞争对手在市场上扮演的角色。今年5月,数字服务提供商领袖论坛(Digital Services Leaders Forum)进行的一项民意调查发现,44%的电信公司认为来自超大规模运营商的竞争是他们的主要挑战。几乎同样多的人强调,“定义不清的服务或云战略”是一个重大障碍。电信行业分析师、Strand consulting创始人约翰•斯特兰德(John Strand)表示,沃达丰与谷歌Cloud的密切关系可能会在未来反咬沃达丰一口。“英国只有三家主要的公共云服务供应商,AWS、微软Azure和谷歌cloud,随着多家电信运营商与这三家中的一家或多家达成协议,他们在市场上的实力正在增强。他说。斯特兰德表示,沃达丰如此紧密地与谷歌结盟,让人感到意外,因为该公司此前曾表示,基础设施市场缺乏供应商多样性。“现在沃达丰非常依赖谷歌;他解释说。这对谷歌的短期、中期和长期来说可能是一笔好交易,但对沃达丰的长期来说可能是一笔糟糕的交易。”
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