Google Cloud and Vodafone announce AI Booster to energise next generation development

Google Cloud and Vodafone have today announced the launch of a new artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) platform dubbed the “AI Booster.” The fully scalable platform promises to spit improvements to customer experience, research speed and network performance.

Both companies are committed to expanding ML and AI use cases on an industrial scale, and this was the driving force behind the 18-month-long project.

Google and Vodafone say the collaboration will fuel the next generation of AI development, with Vodafone saying it can handle thousands of ML models per day. In the announcement, Vodafone credited AI Booster with an 80% reduction in time between proof of concept and production — from 5 months to 4 weeks.

AI Booster is built upon Google’s Vertex AI, which allows customers to design and deploy ML models at speed. Fully cloud-native, Vodafone promises that the platform will utilise all the benefits of its integration with Vodafone’s Neuron platform, with customers able to leverage powerful AI Booster environments simply by filling in an online form with their preferences.

Pre-trained tooling will complement custom options, with completely automated ML lifecycle compliance activities and embedded security giving customers the flexibility to deploy use cases as simple or complex as they need them to be, without fear of compromising their data.\

Google Cloud partner Datatonic has also provided reusable MLOps Turbo Templates, which allow developers to rapidly train models without running into technical debt and reducing deployment or adoption risks.

In 2019, Vodafone announced the integration of Google Cloud controls into its custom Vodafone Neuron platform, pointing to exciting opportunities the collaboration provided such as improved network optimisation, and even more detailed analytics to improve systems such as those handling commercial offers for customers.

Although ML models are still only gradually being utilised by organisations, Google is heavily invested in expanding the reach and user-friendliness of such models throughout its cloud, with recognition of the boosts to efficiency they can provide across all sectors.

“As a technology platform, we’re incredibly proud of building a cutting-edge MLOps platform based on best-in-class Google Cloud architecture with in-built automation, scalability and security,” stated Ashish Vijayvargia, Analytics Product Lead at Vodafone.

“The result is we’re delivering more value from data science while embedding reliability engineering principles throughout.”