Generative AI takes central stage at DTW24 Ignite

And yet, as Amdocs CMO Gil Rosen noted in his keynote session, GenAI deployments at service providers are still very much in their infancy. Indeed, there are many challenges ahead, such as building correct and secure LLMs and upskilling employees, but all speakers agreed that, as Cesar Augusto dos Santo, CIO at Claro Brasil put it in conversation on stage with Gil, “GenAI today is part of our future”.

Collaboration between all the different players in the ecosystem is key in this GenAI future, and NVIDIA executive Chris Penrose made the point that NVIDIA has been working closely with Amdocs, adding that “Amdocs is one the most trusted platforms in the world.”

In a separate keynote fireside chat, Amdocs general manager Sarit Assaf discussed with NVIDIA’s Lilac Ilan and Microsoft’s David Seda how Amdocs has been working with these two companies to embed Co-Pilots inside every Amdocs product and service. The companies are also collaborating on Amdocs amAIz, the only industry TelcoGPT platform.

Platforms, as opposed to vertical stacks, are the direction the industry is moving in. Scott Petty, Vodafone's CTO, noted that GenAI will allow Vodafone to become a true platform company, while Harmeet Mehta, BT's Chief Digital & Innovation Officer, added that today’s technology meant BT would only need 10 percent of their current IT systems to run their new platform.

For the early birds, on day two of the event, Amdocs and AWS shared their GenAI solution for accelerating legacy migration to the cloud at a breakfast presentation. Amdocs’ Shiri Yitzhaki, Guy Ben-Baruch (AWS), and the TM Forum’s chief analyst Mark Newman discussed efficient and secure refactoring of legacy apps. 

Taking a deeper dive in a spotlight session, Amdocs’ Ron Surets, alongside Rick Lievano, CTO of Microsoft telecom and media, focused on GenAI-led telco use cases spanning both consumer and enterprise domains, harnessing the power of Microsoft and Amdocs co-pilots and the collaboration between the two companies. This practical discussion covered the latest insights, proofs of concepts, and best practices. 

Also at DTW, Amdocs launched our innovative amAIz Generative AI Agents (GenAI Agents). These standalone GenAI apps are poised to change the telecommunications industry by empowering CSPs to embrace GenAI and transform into AI-driven telcos -- CSPs that leverage GenAI to enhance aspects of their operations, services, and customer experiences. These GenAI Agents are designed to seamlessly integrate with existing systems, offering CSPs immediate value without the need for extensive IT overhauls. Part of the amAIz platform, these agents are set to revolutionize customer care, marketing, sales, and network management, driving efficiencies and reducing operational costs across various operational areas.

But of course, Digital Transformation World was not solely about GenAI.  Amdocs’ Lee Brady was on stage with Three UK’s Daniel Healey to discuss what Daniel termed Amdocs’ “open-heart surgery on our BSS systems.” Fortunately, the “patient” not only survived but thrived, with the two-year migration of both consumer and business legacy stacks to a new consolidated system allowing Three UK to introduce new products and services with greater flexibility.

When entering such projects, Colt Technology Services Ashish Surti stressed the importance of explaining to the business of moving to new, cloud-native platforms that are always evolving. In an on-stage conversation with Amdocs’ Oleg Volpin, Ashish highlighted the need to gain the trust of the business that IT will deliver on their expectations and that all the partners in any project have a clear understanding of their role in the project to avoid unnecessary competition and ensure a successful and collaborative journey.

Innovation is always key at Digital Transformation World, and we have been participating in two innovative catalysts. Along with our partners Verizon, du, and Infosys, we are taking part in the intent-driven slice management in autonomous network catalyst, which is harnessing machine learning for intent-based customer slices for cloud, 5G networks. This catalyst will enhance existing standard APIs to help CSPs capture the initial slice profile and then use machine learning to capture all the information they need to manage the slice and perform dynamic orchestration.

In the second catalyst, “Beyond Chatbot,” by leveraging the capabilities of GenAI and advanced machine learning algorithms, the Beyond Chatbot anticipates the customers' needs, delivering a customized service experience from the very first interaction. No more lengthy menus and repetitive conversations with agents: with Beyond Chatbot, customers experience a “menu of one,” where personalized responses are crafted for each customer right from the get-go. Our partners here are EY, TurkNet, Snowflake, and solvatio.

We also had solution demos at the event with our hyperscaler partners, such as Google Cloud, with whom we recently announced a collaboration for real-time insights with the Amdocs AI and Data Platform leveraging Google Cloud’s unified AI ready-data platform to help service providers evolve with cost-effective, scalable, and impactful business insights.

Over at the AWS Cloud stand, we had a station demonstrating the Amdocs network and service lifecycle management using GenAI over AWS. In the run-up to DTW24, we were proud to announce the availability of Amazon Bedrock Services on the amAIz platform to accelerate cloud migration, simplify network operations, and improve customer and billing experiences.

At the Amdocs booth itself, there was plenty of action as customers and analysts from around the world came to experience the very latest in Amdocs demos and catch up with their Amdocs counterparts, as well as enjoy our GenAI Happy Hour on Day One.

It was a great show, and we’re already looking forward to next June!