After using 2020 to prepare and focusing on providing telecom entitles with support for their computing needs, Google Cloud is taking its momentum and running with it. Google Cloud is making a name for itself due to its Global Mobile Edge Cloud (GMEC) strategy. The company’s Anthos multi-cloud platform develops solutions. It has also made progress due to its global distributed edge computing infrastructure. This is especially true when it comes to edge computing. A division of parent company Alphabet, Google Cloud is working on solutions for telcos that they can not only use for themselves but take those solutions and sell them to their own customers.
The way we are looking at it as Google Cloud is, we really need to start to build technologies that serve both of those purposes,” said Amol Phadke, Google Cloud’s Managing Director of Telecom Industry Solutions. Continuing, Phadke said that these solutions “can be used both by our CSP partners and clients and also by their end customers that they want to serve, whether that’s businesses or consumers.”
A collaborative effort was announced in 2020 by Google Cloud and AT&T that would see Google’s edge computing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and Kubernetes capabilities work with AT&T’s network. This resulted in both companies testing 5G edge solutions for enterprises across a variety of industries including manufacturing, retail, and transportation. Such collaborations are what are necessary to advance 5G and computing capabilities so that entities can perform more complex functions to provide their users with better experiences.
AT&T Business’ Executive Vice President and CMO, Mo Katibeh, spoke on this matter saying, “Combining 5G with Google Cloud’s edge compute technologies can unlock the cloud’s true potential. This work is bringing us closer to a reality where cloud and edge technologies give businesses the tools to create a whole new world of experiences for their customers.”
The deal with AT&T was far from the only one seen by the industry with Google Cloud developing many. Each deal was heavily dealing with 5G and/or mobile edge computing (MEC). These include deals around the world with Orange, Telefónica, Telus, and Verizon. “One advantage of having that planet-wide infrastructure was that we could really use the edge infrastructure to also offer edge computing. When we are partnering with our CSP clients and partners, it meant we didn’t have to ship out or roll out a new footprint for edge computing. We just leveraged what we had,” says Phadke.
5G is going to bring obvious increases in speed and functions but in its early days, many telecommunication entities are looking to find a way to monetize 5G. Google Cloud is recognizing that edge computing is going to play a big part in creating revenue from the latest generation in wireless for many companies and continues to fill the demand in the market. A market that continues to trend towards partnerships among fellow industry companies.
“There is an appreciation and a recognition that we are to work in an open ecosystem together, with cloud players, to really build this together, and it’s not really any more a ‘here is what we need, can you supply it or not’, it’s more about, ‘how can we leverage this to drive growth to change customer experience radically, to help our customers and is there a way we can look at efficiently running our businesses through TCO’ Those are the imperatives, and it’s more about working collaboratively to solve those imperatives, bringing others in the mix,” said Phadke. There is “…more openness now, because of the possibilities, and because there is no one player that has the whole answer in mind, so it’s really about creating that answer with an ecosystem.”
Source: RCR Wireless