Artificial intelligence is blending across industries and changing how companies reach customers, manage operations and deliver value.

One of those industries, telecom, has navigated a whirlwind of breakneck innovation, encapsulated by the rollout of 5G networking and edge computing. Through its telecom business unit, Amazon Web Services Inc. is helping businesses streamline critical telecom functions, such as operations support system/business support, network management, billing and 5G infrastructure.

“As things evolved, we realized that a lot of our customers wanted to leverage AWS for not just the enterprise IT workloads, but all the way into the network domain as well,” said Robin Harwani (pictured), head of global telecom industry solutions at AWS. “All the way from the core and the radio access networks for 5G were important for them, and they wanted to make sure they were able to leverage the power of cloud. While doing all of this, they also wanted to leverage the platform for automation, orchestration and a common software delivery model that they could use for all of these workloads.”

Harwani spoke with theCUBE host Lisa Martin at the “Supercloud 5: The Battle for AI Supremacy” event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the  journey of AWS in the telecom sector, its partner strategies and the new developments on the horizon. (* Disclosure below.)

Partner focus: The key to success

A company-wide ethos at AWS is the focus on industry partners to deliver competent solutions to real customer problems. Making AWS the best place for telecom partners has been a core tenet since the unit’s inception, according to Harwani. The intentional focus on building partner communities has paved the way for collaborative efforts, helping customers achieve their business outcomes faster.

“I think AWS, at the very heart of building the industry vertical for telecom, wants to make sure that AWS was the easiest place for partners to deploy the workloads,” Harwani explained. “And the whole purpose was so that our customers could achieve their business outcomes faster at a pace that they wanted to leverage — at the cloud pace.”

Over the past few years, AWS’ scope has expanded from being a facilitator of enterprise IT workloads to a key player in the virtualization of 5G networks. And with generative AI showing tangible maturity, it’ll be a key factor in orchestrating networks through an intent-based framework, Harwani added.

“As time has evolved over the last five years, virtualization of 5G networks has been a key focus for our customers,” he said. “That’s where generative AI has been so crucial, and we have had so much work that has gone into it.“

AWS assists its telecom customers in three key priority areas. Firstly, customers want to build networks that are resilient, scalable and capable of real-time adjustments based on data rate needs. Secondly, they want to offer differentiated solutions beyond connectivity, creating new revenue streams. Lastly, they aim to elevate network automation through AI, machine learning and gen AI, reducing ongoing maintenance costs, Harwani explained.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the “Supercloud 5: The Battle for AI Supremacy” event:

(* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE