Telenor cuddles up to Google Cloud

Norwegian telecoms group Telenor has decided Google is its new best buddy for all things digital transformation.

In the spirit of their new ‘strategic partnership’ both companies published the same press release announcing their mutual BFF pledge. Telenor has decided its digital ambitions are best served by making Google Cloud an integral part of the process. They will mainly toy with things like AI, data management and creating digital products, but it looks like Google will have an infrastructure role too. Here are the key areas of mutual interest as detailed in the press release.

• Strengthening Telenor’s technology capabilities to make an impact: Both companies aspire to transform and modernise Telenor’s IT and networks by looking into how Google Cloud’s services, global data centre network, and security capabilities can be used. Both companies will also look to drive better customer experiences by leveraging Google Cloud’s data, analytics and AI/ML intelligence technologies.
• Delivering growth through joint go-to-market activities: Telenor and Google Cloud will collaborate on expanding both horizontal and vertical services through joint go-to-market activities, creating new scalable revenue streams.
• Joint innovations: Telenor and Google Cloud will innovate and enhance the capabilities of current and future products, develop new modern industry solutions and services, and drive cost efficiencies. This may include developments to the next generation of virtual network function and edge computing, focusing on IoT and 5G.
• Bringing digital to all: Google Cloud and Telenor are committed to bringing digital to all customers. The two organisations will join forces to support these businesses, helping to get them online and guiding them through their digital transformations by providing access to support teams and next-generation solutions. The aim is to look at how solutions are developed, how businesses are responsibly run, diverse ways of working and ultimately empower societies.

We know it’s a bit lazy to just copy and paste bits of the press release, but sometimes it’s worth reflecting on the sheer corporate-speak glory of it all. “…collaborate on expanding both horizontal and vertical services through joint go-to-market activities, creating new scalable revenue streams.” What useful information does that sentence convey, other than that the Google marketing and legal departments had far too much influence over the thing?

“Telenor wants to work with leaders in the tech industry and stay committed to being at the forefront of modernisation and digitalisation,” said Sigve Brekke, president and CEO of Telenor Group. “As connectivity is the foundation for building trust, we believe that together we can go beyond connectivity to enhance our offering to our customers with new and innovative solutions, whilst improving the overall experience of our current portfolio.”

OK, maybe it was Telenor’s fault, whatever. This doesn’t seem to be quite the kind of public cloud Faustian pact we’ve seen from the likes of Dish, but it still has the potential to evolve into one. Google has some kind of role in the network side of things so it’s fair to assume that if that goes well it will grow. As with all announcements such as this we wait with bated breath to see all the cool digital products that will result.