Telstra taps Ericsson for enterprise edge cloud services

Australian telco Telstra is months away from bringing to market edge cloud services for enterprises, thanks to an expanded partnership with Ericsson.

The aim is to equip the telco with a portfolio offering capabilities – like seamless orchestration, network exposure and service assurance – that can be tailored to various industries. Ericsson and Telstra have identified agriculture, industrial IoT, enterprise branch connectivity services, and smart cities, in particular.

The partnership builds on that which was forged in February 2019, when the two companies got together with Commonwealth Bank of Australia to trial 5G edge computing use cases for the financial services sector. That seems to have gone well enough that Telstra and Ericsson want to look at how enterprise edge cloud services could benefit other verticals.

Ericsson is a longstanding Telstra supplier. It is the telco’s 5G network partner; the two are working together on mmWave; and it has also supplied Telstra’s cloud native 5G core, paving the way for standalone 5G.

“This is a natural progression from last year’s trial around 5G edge computing and will serve as a framework for us to bring the benefits of 5G to the hands of Australians,” said Nikos Katinakis, Telstra group executive, networks and IT, in a statement on Monday.

“It also paves the way for future use cases into other industries, such as agriculture and manufacturing. As the 5G rollout continues across Australia, harnessing edge computing will enable us to tap into the potential of 5G technology, ensuring that Australia and our customers remain at the cutting edge of mobile technology,” he said.

“With this extended partnership with Telstra into enterprise edge cloud, we continue to push the boundaries of technological innovation, bringing the benefits of 5G and edge to enterprises, whilst supporting Telstra to create new services across its network,” added Wmilio Romeo, head of Ericsson Australia and New Zealand, for good measure.

Although there is no mention of it in the release, edge cloud networking services seem like a natural complement to Telstra Data Hub. Built on Microsoft Azure, it offers enterprises tools they can use gather, analyse and share data. In September, Telstra and Microsoft expanded their partnership to include the development of cloud-based enterprise services that leverage IoT, edge, AI and digital twin capability.