MWC, the telco industry’s annual February gathering in Barcelona, has evolved into an event where the technology world’s leading trends are on full display.

From the adoption of artificial intelligence throughout the infrastructure all the way to the edge, to the integration of cloud platforms and innovative data management solutions, the telco community is entering a new paradigm where a confluence of technologies will shape its infrastructure future for years to come.

“Everything has changed, because with AI you have these elephant workloads that cannot run on a single processor,” said Broadcom Inc. President Charlie Kawwas (pictured), in an exclusive interview with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, at MWC Barcelona. “Now you have to scale out to many of these systems and racks, and you have to interconnect them. And guess what? If you don’t have the right network strategy and connectivity strategy, this will not work. This will not scale up.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Charlie Kawwas:

Here are four key insights you might have missed during the event:

1. HPE + Juniper = a new networking company that can redefine how AI is used in the enterprise.

The acquisition by Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. of Juniper Networks Inc. sets the stage for a new business that could change the competitive landscape for a networking market that has been dominated by Cisco Systems Inc. In his interview with theCUBE,  Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE, described his vision for an enterprise future defined by connectivity, intelligence and agility.

“We have been saying that the enterprise of the future will be edge-centric, cloud-enabled and data-driven,” Neri said. “When I think about the Juniper acquisition, it is about accelerating the deployment of AI through the network, because ultimately you need an AI-native architecture that brings the data to the right computational resources to accelerate business productivity and data insight.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Antonio Neri:

For Rami Rahim, CEO of Juniper Networks, the combination of the two companies represents an opportunity to take a bold step that will capitalize on the innovation being generated by growing AI adoption.

“The big inflection of our time is artificial intelligence,” said Rahim, in his appearance on theCUBE. “I believe that incremental moves toward capturing this market are not going to be sufficient. You need bold moves, and this is an example of a bold move. I think this is ultimately the opportunity that we can pursue better as one company.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Rami Rahim, who was joined by guest analyst Zeus Kerravala:

2. Telecom offers a prime use case for generative AI deployment at the edge.

With AI being a prime topic of discussion at MWC in Barcelona, telco providers and industry suppliers made a series of announcements during the event to further define how AI will impact the edge. This included Qualcomm Technologies Inc., which unveiled its newest 5G and Wi-Fi networking processors, equipped with onboard AI software and accelerators for generative AI applications.

“Generative AI may have started on the cloud, but it’s transitioning to the edge, it’s coming to the device, and that brings in with it [an] amazing amount of benefits,” said Ziad Asghar, senior vice president of product management and head of AI Technology at Qualcomm, in an interview with theCUBE at MWC.

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Ziad Asghar:

This opportunity is leading some major enterprise technology providers to develop new solutions that will ease the transition for AI deployment at the edge. Broadcom’s VMware subsidiary made news at MWC with the release of new edge computing products designed to simplify delivery of software-defined services for a multinetwork orchestration platform.

“When one of our customers wants to go and deploy compute at the edge or digitize the edge, it’s not a very simple and easy path,” said Saadat Malik, vice president and general manager of edge computing at VMware, during an appearance on theCUBE. “You have to worry about what software you are going to use, how you’re going to run that software, what hardware you are going to use. VMware Edge Compute Stack essentially solves this problem. It makes it very easy for our customers to go from the idea to actual outcome in a seamless and pain-free manner.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Saadat Malik:

3. Intersection of data with AI will drive the telco playbook going forward.

During theCUBE’s many interviews with executives over four days, data came up in the discussion about as often as AI. The ability to move data to the right place and generate insights rapidly from it will be a key ingredient in any successful AI strategy.

Major tech players, such as Dell Technologies Inc., are spending a considerable amount of time and energy on building efficient data storage solutions to support the increasingly complex computations that AI demands.

“You need data, because if you have no data, you have no AI. If you have bad data, you have bad AI,” said Michael Dell, chairman and chief executive officer of Dell Technologies, during an exclusive interview on theCUBE. “The fuel for these systems is enormous amounts of data. That’s a topic we know a lot about and spend a lot of time on at Dell Technologies.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Michael Dell:

One major player in the telecom world that has focused extensively on its data strategy is Ericsson, a provider of 5G network equipment in the U.S., which has embraced a federated data model to enhance governance across domains and facilitate AI-driven initiatives.

“[Ericsson] has really invested and committed to making data a priority, as evidenced by my new role and the elevated mandate,” said Caitlin Halferty, global chief data officer of Ericsson, in an interview with theCUBE. “[We’re] identifying the AI use cases that we can really go after and show impact. There’s this growing recognition that there is data dependency for our AI efforts to scale, so the accessibility, the quality, the access, those are the things we have to really tackle and go after in order for us to deliver on this promise.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Caitlin Halferty:

The intersection of data with AI can also be seen in recent announcements from IBM Corp. surrounding Zero Touch Mobility, the company’s joint venture with Samsung SDS America Inc. Zero Touch Mobility integrates watsonx, IBM’s AI computing platform to harness historical data and provide real-time insights.

“Watsonx governance is an extension of all the capabilities that we’re delivering,” said Ruth Sun, global managing director of strategic partnerships at IBM, in an interview with theCUBE. “The beauty of governance, as you talk about the quality of data, is being able to understand and see that full data lineage … and then being able to manage the regulatory risk compliance about it.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Ruth Sun, who was joined by David Kinlough, head of division – solution sales at Samsung SDS:

4. MWC assessment: Open technology is poised to deliver new innovation for AI-capable systems.

MWC also highlighted the telco industry’s interest in open technologies. Key executives from major players, such as Amazon Web Services Inc., along with several analysts, made this point clear during their appearances on theCUBE.

Open solutions also offer a path for bringing more cloud services to the edge, an area of keen interest for AWS. The cloud provider has been collaborating with the Global System for Mobile Communications Association’s Open Gateway initiative, a framework of common network APIs, to facilitate universal access to operator networks by developers.

“What Open Gateway is doing is standardizing [APIs] across telcos,” said Ishwar Parulkar, chief technology officer of telecom and edge cloud at AWS, during his conversation with theCUBE at MWC. “Even though it’s coming from a different operator, it has to be the same API, same format that can be integrated into the application.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Ishwar Parulkar:

Initiatives such as Open RAN and Open Gateway highlight how telco companies are adapting to a new phase of openness and collaboration, fueled by technologies surrounding AI and data management in the cloud era.

“We used to be an industry that was always self-contained,” said Chris Lewis, founder and managing director of Lewis Insight Ltd., during his interview on theCUBE. “What the IT world is teaching us, the cloud world is teaching us and the AI world is teaching us is that you’ve got to be more open.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Chris Lewis:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of MWC, here’s our complete event video playlist:

And make sure to check out the top highlights in AI infrastructure from theCUBE’s MWC coverage:

Photo: SiliconANGLE