Google Cloud expanded a partnership with Orange to include generative AI (GenAI) use cases designed to improve customer experiences and keep sensitive data within national bounds.

The cloud provider teamed with Orange to deliver AI-based services at a local level to comply with regulatory requirements for security and data residency, or for places where localised cloud environments are required.

Google Cloud worked with Orange to co-design its Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) platform, which brings its AI services to the network edge for data intensive workloads.

The companies noted GDC will enable Orange to accelerate AI adoption into its operations across the 26 countries it serves.

In addition to keeping data local, Orange will benefit from improvements in network planning and design through the automation of reporting, classification and analysis.

The operator will be able to run GenAI models on-premises in an environment integrated into similar Vertex AI services on Google Cloud.

Vertex AI helps organisations and partners access, augment and deploy custom models, and connect them with enterprise data, systems and processes to roll out generative AI agents.

Orange’s operations and customer services teams will use the AI models to generate answers to problems at a faster rate, while customers will see an improvement in quality of service and quicker fixes.

The operator will also use AI and Google Cloud technology to deliver personalised recommendations across phones, tariffs and services.

GDC enables GenAI-based speech recognition across each country Orange serves, including those without a Google Cloud region.

The partnership also brings the cloud to Orange’s data centres to protect sensitive workloads which need to stay on premise and enables the operator to filter high-volume data of network telemetry.

Orange CEO Christel Heydemann stated the AI-based services with Google Cloud “are foundational” to it “achieving AI at scale and is a major step towards unlocking significant value from all of our data”.

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, noted businesses were increasingly bringing GenAI services closer to the network edge to improve agility, responsiveness and resilience, which he stated opened avenues for new use cases across Orange’s footprint.

The companies first teamed-up in 2020 as part of a plan to power Orange’s digital transformation using data and AI.