Google Cloud and Ericsson partner to develop 5G and edge cloud solutions

Google Cloud and Ericsson have announced a partnership to develop 5G and edge cloud solutions.

The companies say the partnership will help communications service providers (CSPs) digitally transform and enable new enterprise and consumer use cases.

Globally, industries with edge presences, including CSPs, retailers, manufacturers, transport businesses, healthcare, media, and entertainment providers, face more pressure to build businesses with more of a digital focus and new digital experiences for their customers.

To aid businesses with this shift, Google Cloud and Ericsson will be working together to develop new solutions at Ericsson's Silicon Valley D-15 Labs. Advanced solutions and technologies can be developed and tested on a live, multi-layer 5G platform in this state-of-the-art innovation centre.

Ericsson and Google Cloud have already completed functional onboarding of Ericsson 5G on Anthos to enable telco edge, and on-premises use cases for CSPs and enterprises.

The partnership will also involve the companies piloting enterprise applications at the edge of a live network with TIM. This project will automate the functions of TIMs core 5G network and cloud-based applications and use TIMs Telco Cloud infrastructure, Google Cloud solutions, and Ericsson's 5G core network and orchestration technologies.

The joint offerings will help enterprises in the automotive, transportation, manufacturing, and other sectors improve efficiencies and lower latency by bringing connectivity close to a company's physical location.

"Organisations have a tremendous opportunity to digitally transform their businesses with 5G and cloud capabilities like artificial intelligence and machine learning at the edge," says Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian.

"We are proud to partner with Ericsson to help build a foundation for communications service providers and enterprises alike to take advantage of cloud technology and cloud-native services, from telecom network core, to the edge and enterprise premises."

Ericsson North America's president and head, Niklas Heuveldop, says 5G is a powerful innovation platform and combined with edge cloud capabilities, it has the potential to accelerate the digital transformation of virtually any sector of industry or society.

 "We are excited about our partnership with Google Cloud as we engage with our customers to leverage our combined capabilities to solve real-world business challenges for the benefit of consumers, enterprises and society at large," he says.

Ericsson and Google have previously formed a service's partnership to enable the digital transformation of operator networks and application migration through cloud-native, container-based solutions.