- Indosat Oredoo Hutchison and Google Cloud will develop new AI and GenAI-based use cases for businesses
- The collaboration is crucial to accelerate the CSPs transformation to an AI-native TechCo
- The two companies will also explore a joint go-to-market strategy to enable SMBs to grow their business by using new tech
Indonesia’s second-largest communications service provider (CSP), Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) is taking the leap into artificial intelligence (AI) by extending its existing partnership with Google Cloud to accelerate its transformation from telco to AI-native techco and to develop new AI-based use cases for the country’s businesses.
The collaboration brings together IOH’s network and datasets with Google Cloud’s AI stack to improve customer experience as well as to come up with new AI and generative AI (GenAI) solutions for enterprises.
Indosat Ooredoo and Google Cloud originally partnered in 2021 to “accelerate digital transformation across consumer and enterprise segments in Indonesia.” This partnership was particularly geared to serve the country’s small and medium businesses (SMBs). Now, the company has extended the partnership with a focus on AI and GenAI. It has also recently partnered with chip giant, Nvidia to acquire AI capabilities.
"Indosat's early adoption of cloud-native architectures and an AI-ready data analytics platform exemplifies its forward-thinking approach. This strong foundation, established through our collaboration from 2021, is now enabling Indosat to pursue a wide range of high-value [machine learning] and GenAI use cases at scale — and we’re excited by the possibilities,” says Karan Bajwa, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Google Cloud.
AI team players
The two companies will create customized AI and GenAI solutions, such as Google Cloud’s Contact Center AI solutions and creative AI agents, to enable Indonesian enterprises to leverage AI to grow their businesses. IOH will also be deploying AI-enabled conversational agents to offer self-service options across its digital touchpoints.
In addition, IOH’s operational dataset will be used to train Google Cloud’s custom machine learning models, enabling enterprises to use data to make business decisions. Geospatial analytics and predictive modeling will also help IOH “identify areas with high growth potential but with limited network coverage” and accordingly make informed decisions about network expansion and capacity building.
At the same time, IOH will leverage custom machine learning (ML) and multimodal models to enhance energy efficiency and proactively address network-related issues. It will also develop a GenAI-based enterprise search to improve the efficiency of HR, legal, procurement and finance teams in an organization.
Further, “Indosat and Google Cloud will also explore “joint go-to-market initiatives to empower Indonesia’s digital ecosystem. They will look to provide micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME), startups, enterprises, and public sector organizations with access to these solutions, alongside Google Cloud’s AI-optimized infrastructure, unified data platform, and unified AI development platform,” says the press note.
Leaning on cloud providers
Several CSPs, including Bharti Airtel, have recently partnered with Google Cloud. As part of the partnership, Google Cloud and Airtel will develop AI/ML solutions trained on Airtel’s dataset. Meanwhile, Telefonica extended its partnership with Google Cloud last month to accelerate its own transformation as well as to build new products based on AI, GenAI and MLOps, among other products.
Telcos are leaning on AI to enhance IT and network operations and improve customer experience and to provide AI-based use cases to enterprises to boost their revenue. As enterprises' demands mature and go beyond basic connectivity, telcos need cloud providers to gain capabilities to address their new requirements.
In addition, Indonesia has a booming digital economy, which is likely to contribute $133 billion to its GDP by 2025. IOH is transforming itself to be better placed to address the changing requirements of its enterprise customers, according to the CSP.
IOH is not the only one to bet on AI. Several other CSPs, like South Korea’s SK Telecom, are focusing on AI to go beyond offering basic connectivity services as traditional services revenue continues to decline.