At MWC Barcelona, Ericsson showcased its cutting-edge AI innovations, demonstrating how artificial intelligence is transforming enterprise networks. Anthony Lawson, Senior Director of Product Management, highlighted two key AI applications: AI-driven edge computing for IoT and NetCloud’s AI-powered insights and operations. With AI seamlessly integrated into network management, enterprises can enhance performance, troubleshoot issues faster, and optimize connectivity.
A standout innovation is ANA, Ericsson’s AI NetCloud Assistant, which provides real-time, AI-driven troubleshooting and intelligent recommendations. ANA continuously monitors networks, detecting faults and offering immediate solutions, significantly reducing the time IT teams spend diagnosing issues. By leveraging generative AI, ANA not only identifies problems but also suggests actionable policies to improve network performance. This proactive approach ensures mission-critical applications, like point-of-sale systems, operate seamlessly.
Alejandro Piñero:
Anthony, here we are in one of the must-visit spots of MWC Barcelona every year, the Ericsson stand. AI, obviously something we're all going to be talking about. Lots of flavors of AI. What are you guys showing this year?
Anthony Lawson:
Definitely a big buzzword. So two things we're showing. The first is we've got our complement of Ericsson Enterprise Solutions, where we have edge compute ability to do AI at the edge, to power a lot of really cool new IoT use cases. But then the other flavor of AI that we've been pioneering for the last several years within our NetCloud service platform is AI insights and AI operations, and the ability to bring an AI expert into the customer's IT group.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. And what are some benefits that we can see today in terms of the carriers by using and leveraging AI and even looking forward into the future?
Anthony Lawson:
So you'll see a lot of things also this show that they're talking about how AI has talked to the network, how the carriers benefit from AI. But from our perspective at Enterprise Wireless, we're talking about the enterprise-connected device to the network. And where we are bringing AI in is the AI is the first and foremost the expert about all things technical that is possible in the platform. And then this year we brought generative AI in to give the enterprise customer an advanced generative AI troubleshooting experience. And that's what I'm going to show here in a second. And then the second piece is a recommendations' engine. So when based on the troubleshooting that AI helps you with, let's now transition and quickly pivot and show here's the art of the possible and how we can build a policy to mitigate certain things you're seeing on the network.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. All right, well let's see it. I think you've got-
Anthony Lawson:
Yeah, let's pivot right over.
Alejandro Piñero:
... something to show us.
Anthony Lawson:
So the quick setup here. This is our NetCloud service platform. This is the interface that all of our end users use, either service providers, carriers, or enterprise customers. The setup is this is a 10-site network that's participating in our NetCloud SASE platform. The user is getting maybe some vague complaints from their field, from the site saying, hey, the point of sale applications acting kind of funky, maybe it's dropping out. So what can we do? All right? Normally the user can go through all of our troubleshooting steps manually. Well, actually now we have ANA, which is our AI NetCloud assistant, and ANA is that expert to help you. So we're going to ask ANA a very simple question. I'm going to say, ANA, how many sites are having issues with my square point of sale? That's my really important application for me to do business. And so, ANA is constantly 24 by 7 modeling the network and looking for what we call network faults.
And this is faults that are specific to certain applications. And so ANA is going to go out, and ANA actually came back and very quickly gave me an assessment that said, 7 of my 10 locations are actually having faults specifically with my point of sale application. That's my mission-critical, that's my business-critical application. So now we have that immediate confirmation, we also now have AI-generated graphics on-the-fly. So ANA's actually building a graphical representation of that as well. Now this is generative AI advanced troubleshooting, right within a couple seconds of what a human might take, 5, 10, 15 minutes to accomplish. Now let's switch over to, okay, my next follow-up question is, ANA, you've helped me understand, you've helped me confirm that there's a problem on the network, now I need to go into mediation. So how do I fix this? What kind of policy can I implement? What kind of configuration can I use within the NetCloud SASE platform to resolve what ANA has helped me identify?
So I'm going to ask ANA a question here. How could I build a policy or what policy, ANA would you recommend that I configure to fix this issue? So ANA has come back, ANA analyzed the actual equipment and the software licensing and everything that's in place at this location said, hey, based on your setup and based on your square point of sale application, do you know that you can configure your two cellular WAN links with flow duplication, which would guarantee that that application would always get the best possible experience and no longer have this fault and no longer have the complaints from the end user failed. So basically what we're showing is this is AI in practice. We think of ANA as an extension or a member of their IT team, and now they have this 24 by 7 expert that's helping them troubleshoot, monitor, model the network, and then immediately arrive at some policies to help remediate some issues.
Alejandro Piñero:
Brilliant. Love to see you in action. Anthony, thank you so much for showing us.
Anthony Lawson:
Thank you for stopping by.
Alejandro Piñero:
Yeah.