Gen AI Strategy: Vodafone Partners with Tech Giants Google and Microsoft

Vodafone, a telecommunications operator, is exploring the application of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) to enhance its internal processes. One notable implementation involves utilizing a summarization engine to analyze call transcripts from contact center agents.

By anonymizing the data, Vodafone can identify and address customer issues more efficiently. Additionally, the company has deployed gen AI as a “virtual assistant” for software engineering, leading to improved productivity based on successful trial results.

To access powerful large language models (LLMs) securely, Vodafone has partnered with leading hyperscalers like Google’s Vertex AI and Microsoft’s Open AI, ensuring sensitive data remains protected within private containers.

Despite these advancements, Vodafone remains cautious about directly implementing gen AI in customer-facing roles and is mindful of concerns regarding potential job displacement. Instead, the company views gen AI as a valuable tool to augment customer service rather than replacing human agents entirely.

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Gen AI Potential: Why Vodafone Prioritizes Talent Over On-premises Deployments

 

While gen AI shows considerable potential, Vodafone currently refrains from considering on-premises deployments or investing in expensive graphical processing units (GPUs) for LLM training from companies like Nvidia.

Instead, the company adopts a balanced approach by bolstering its team with additional software engineers and leveraging a mix of public clouds, such as AWS, GCP, OCI, and Azure, to avoid over-reliance on any specific vendor and prevent vendor lock-in.

A notable ongoing project, TaaS (telecom-as-a-service), focuses on facilitating in-house software development while achieving multicloud interoperability. Despite challenges in moving workloads between different hyperscalers, Vodafone successfully migrated its SAP environment to GCP.

This migration demonstrated the potential benefits of shifting large applications to the cloud, resulting in cost savings and improved efficiency for the company.

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Source: Light Reading