BARCELONAāItās pretty well known that Google is a distant third to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft when it comes to market share and the big cloud providers.
Google arrived late to the party and obviously it takes time to grow, but itās growing, and thatās what counts, according to Amol Phadke, GM global telecom industry, Google Cloud.
In fact, market share only measures what happened in the past; itās not about whatās going to happen, and āwe are growing faster than the competition,ā he said.
This marks the first time Google Cloud had its own dedicated exhibit space at Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona, an indication itās expanding in the telecom space and further courting carriers.
āWe are here really to provide growth opportunities for the carriers,ā Phadke said.
What exactly Google Cloud does with mobile carriers takes many different forms.
Google Cloud was part of a significant milestone announced recently with Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson, where they deployed Ericsson 5G Core cloud native network functions (CNFs) on an on-premises implementation of Google Distributed Cloud Edge (GDC Edge).
In the U.S., wireless carriers are partnering with Google as well. Asked about the three biggest wireless carriers in the U.S., āwe have deep relationships with them,ā he said.
Last year, T-Mobile struck a deal with Google Cloud to use its expertise in data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), as well as its portfolio of 5G and edge computing products and services.
With Verizon, Google Cloud is working on bringing the cloud closer to mobile and connected devices at the edge of Verizonās network, specifically with GDC Edge.
Similarly, with AT&T, Google Cloud is working on developing edge solutions for the enterprise.
Last year, Google Cloud joined the TM Forum, and Phadke currently serves on the board. Part of that effort is to help service providers tap into artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the customer experience and develop news sources of revenue.
So far, mobile edge compute (MEC) is an area that hasnāt quite lived up to the hype. If there were a killer app for MEC and customers were willing to pay a premium for it, the industry would have seized upon that years ago, he said.
āWe havenāt yet found it,ā he said.
On the plus side, people are becoming more thoughtful āabout the types of use cases where you really need the edge,ā he said, and thatās encouraging. āWe are still in the process of learning.ā
Original article can be seen at: