The telco’s IT services business and Fastweb were the standouts in its nine-month results so why not accelerate them?
Swisscom has deployed what it claims is Switzerland’s first NVIDIA SuperPOD system which gives enterprises the chance to run AI applications in its data centres – essentially offering guaranteed data storage and processing in-country. The operator said it is already working with customers to test initial applications on the platform. It provides everything, from consulting to operation, from a single source. Swisscom will also offer platform and application services as the system is modular.
The operator argues that AI can only unleash its full potential when enriched with company data. This requires an independent AI infrastructure to guarantee complete data sovereignty across the entire processing chain, as well as data storage and processing in Switzerland, naturally. Swisscom said it is seeing high demand from the financial and public sectors for a secure environment for AI projects to guarantee compliance with the strictest data protection regulations.
Maximum “Swissness”
In its announcement, the operator emphasised, repeatedly, that the service was so sovereign it provides companies with AI infrastructure and applications offering “maximum Swissness”. Yes, it is a thing. The operator has been able to take advantage of a test tun too given its Italian subsidiary Fastweb announced almost a year ago that it will install 31 NVIDIA DGX H100 in its datacentres in Lombardy, powered by renewable energy. That system runs on NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD reference architecture and has 248 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs.
Swisscom wants to give enterprises choice so customers can choose between the Swiss AI Platform, infrastructure operated by global public cloud providers and integrated AI solutions in standard software applications. The Swiss AI Platform offers an AI infrastructure, platform and application services. The modular design gives customers this flexibility to select and combine components according to their requirements.
The operator outlined some of the offers. GPU as a Service gives companies access to high-performance processing power enables the processing of large volumes of data; for instance, for the training, fine-tuning and operation of models. Swisscom’s AI Work Hub is designed for data scientists and machine learning engineers who develop and train models and therefore analyse and process large data volumes. It supports the collaborative implementation of customer-specific AI applications.
GenAI Studio will be available from spring 2025. It gives companies easy access to generative AI services via API interfaces on the platform, which they can use to create their own AI solutions with the content they need in line with company-specific requirements. As an interim step, customers can access a range of Swisscom-operated Large Language Models (LLM), to implement a chatbot, for instance.
The NVIDIA infrastructure enhances Swisscom’s existing products. Swisscom is also using the platform to develop initial applications for its own use, such as automated responses to corporate customer enquiries or generating brand-compliant images for marketing campaigns.
Initial applications
Swisscom is already testing and implementing initial applications on platform. It is working with Thurgauer Kantonalbank (TKB) to test a chatbot to query internal instructions by bank employees. A system for automated responses to customer online enquiries is also being developed with TKB. Swisscom is collaborating with emergency organisations to test the automated transcription of emergency calls. The solution interacts with the operations control system. It automatically transcribes the audio recording of received emergency calls into text for legally required documentation and enriches it with additional information.
“The Swiss AI Platform is a Swiss solution for the Swiss economy,” said presumably Swiss-based, Swisscom head of business customers Urs Lehner. “Sensitive data is in good hands thanks to our powerful, trusted Swiss infrastructure. In addition, our 400 AI and data specialists, working alongside NVIDIA’s leading global industry experts, constitute a unique Swiss Center of Excellence, enabling us to support customers with tailored AI solutions.”