Elisa gets further into bed with Google Cloud

Finnish telco Elisa has brought in hyperscaler Google Cloud to build out new public cloud facilitated services.

As part of the deal Elisa will tap into Google Cloud’s infrastructure, storage, data analytics, and hybrid cloud management services in order to provide new AI tools, edge computing projects, and cloud-based network assurance and automation functionalities.

It’s an extension of an existing partnership – last year Elisa teamed up with Google Cloud to build out more than 30 customers’ private cloud environments, and the telco has apparently already deployed a hybrid cloud set up for ‘a leading healthcare provider in the Nordics.’

“We’re at a pivotal moment in our cloud journey and we wanted a cloud partner that would support our next steps in our digital development,” said Veli-Matti Mattila, CEO of Elisa. “We are a customer-centric organization continuously transforming our business and we’re looking forward to collaborating together with Google Cloud on joint innovations for our global customers.”

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, added: “The telco sector is undergoing significant modernisation and Google Cloud’s expertise in data analytics, multi and hybrid cloud management, and edge computing is supporting industry players to navigate this change. Elisa is a market leader in telecommunications and digital services, and we’re proud to be part of its digital transformation journey.”

In recent years many telcos have partnered with cloud providers to varying extents, sometimes going all in with one provider and sometimes bringing in separate platforms for different aspects of their business. We expect this trend of telcos intertwining themselves with the public cloud to be a key theme of MWC, which kicks off this morning.