Ericsson, a multinational telecommunications company, says it has enhanced its enterprise 5G portfolio with the launch of its generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based NetCloud Assistant (ANA).
Ericsson said in a statement on Tuesday that the ANA was designed to simplify its enterprise 5G network administration.
According to the company, ANA is the first generative AI virtual expert designed for enterprise Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWAN), utilising large language models.
The statement quoted Pankaj Malhotra, the Head of Enterprise Networking and Security, Wireless Solutions, Ericsson, as saying that its NetCloud was differentiated in its ability to simplify the deployment, management and troubleshooting of enterprise cellular networking.
“By investing heavily in cutting-edge AI technology, we are empowering even the most streamlined Information Technology (IT) teams to tackle 5G administration challenges.
“The technology also helps in enhancing network reliability, security, and user experience with unparalleled efficiency,” Malhotra said.
Ericsson said the ANA provided personalised responses by correlating information from multiple technical documents and unique insights from the customer’s network.
It said that the ANA could transform hours or even days of work into seconds.
Ericsson added that the ANA’s key functions included knowledge summarisation, configuration assistance, enhanced troubleshooting, policy recommendation and custom graph generation.
The statement explained that the ANA’s knowledge summarisation feature correlated information from Ericsson’s library of technical documentation into concise summaries personalised to the customer’s network.
It added that the ANA’s enhanced troubleshooting feature helped to automate common diagnostic tasks and provided step-by-step instructions to troubleshoot and resolve connectivity issues, thereby speeding up time to repair.
The statement said that future releases of ANA would translate business requirements into recommended Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) and WAN bonding policies to enhance WAN performance and application availability.
It added that future releases would also allow administrators to ask ANA to create detailed graphs that visualise more complex information, not typically available in standard NetCloud dashboards or pre-canned reports.
“The ANA complements Ericsson’s NetCloud Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) dashboard, which serves as a vital component in transforming network management.
“The AIOps dashboard detected performance-driven anomalies, such as latency and jitter, specific to each customer’s environment, and provided real-time insights into network performance, ” it said.
Ericsson said the AIOps empowered IT teams to proactively address issues, leveraging ANA as needed, to ensure optimal network operations and enhance the overall digital experience.
