Vodafone hopes that a new artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) platform built on Google Cloud will significantly enhance its ability to use intelligence in its back-end and consumer-facing operations.
The new ‘AI Booster’ platform can handle thousands of ML models per day, providing the necessary scope for the operator to use the technology across its global markets.
The platform’s ability to accelerate development time from around five months to just four weeks, enhances Vodafone’s resilience and ability to offer new services to both its internal teams and its customers. Areas of interest include customer experience, network performance, and research and development.
Vodafone AI
“It is easier said than done to embed AI and machine learning into the fabric of an organization and to create and deploy ML use cases at scale in a highly regulated industry,” explained James Ma, Head of Technical Account Management, Telco, EMEA at Google. Zipper. “Accomplishing this mission means not only having the right infrastructure for the platform, but also developing new skills, ways of working, and processes.”
“As a technology platform, we are extremely proud to build a cutting-edge MLOps platform based on best-in-class Google Cloud architecture with built-in automation, scalability, and security,” added Ashish Vijayvargia, Head of Analytics Product at Vodafone.
“The result is that we deliver greater value from data science, while embedding reliability engineering principles throughout.”
AI Booster is based on a global data platform (Opens in a new tab) The two organizations built last year. The Nucleus platform contains the Dynamo system that collects and relays information from various Vodafone warehouses around the world into a single cloud-based resource. The Data Ocean provides the massive amounts of data that the ML models in AI Booster depend on to function.
Vodafone also migrates the entire SAP environment and all of its big data and business intelligence workloads to Google Cloud, while also using cloud-based performance management tools across its entire operations.
“Vodafone’s burgeoning relationship with Google Cloud is a vital aspect of our evolution towards becoming a leading global technology communications company,” said Cengiz Openley, Global Head of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Innovation and Governance at Vodafone. “It accelerates our ability to create faster and more scalable solutions to business challenges such as improving customer loyalty and enhancing customer experience, while keeping Vodafone at the forefront of artificial intelligence and data science.”
