Amdocs Reveals Insightful Generative AI Research

Amdocs (NASDAQ: DOX), a leading provider of software and services to communications and media companies operates in more than 90 countries, with its headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, and has approximately 30,000 employees. Revenues reported in 2023 were $489 billion. Today it just released a major research report on genAI that will surely accelerate strategic investments by communication service providers (CSPs).

GenAI is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can produce various types of content, including text, imagery, audio and synthetic data.

The company’s mantra is “we help those who build the future to make it amazing,” and it is well known for creating meaningful digital experiences and advancing new technologies to advance CSPs innovative potential is a constant heart beat. Their offerings take advantage of customers’ migration to the cloud, leveraging the 5G era, automating operations, and providing end users with the next-generation communication and media experiences, so with their vast data reservoirs AI is a natural evolution for building their customer’s amazing future potential.

Amdocs has just released a global major research study across US, Europe and Asia, on GenAI to appreciate what CSPs views were on genAI. The primary research finding was that 90% of service providers believe that GenAI is critical for achieving business goals, but see significant challenges with implementation, primarily in data quality and regulation.

The results from the survey showed that there is a clear understanding among 90% of CSPs of the profound impact GenAI will have on business goals. However, deployment of GenAI is still in its preliminary stages, with just 22% of CSPs having already implemented GenAI solutions, 32% running proof of concepts (PoCs) and 29% looking to explore it in the next twelve months.

Summary Of The Research Findings

1. CSPs expect significant changes with GenAI: Most respondents expect GenAI to have a high impact across a variety of domains, such as software development (84%), data management (82%), monetization (82%) and network operations (81%).
2. Specific benefits are expected: Generating new enterprise revenue (51%) and reducing time to market (40%) were leading use cases, followed by improved employee productivity (39%), new consumer revenue opportunities (35%) and improved customer experience (34%).
3. Automation is an area of critical importance: 75% of survey respondents expect that integrating GenAI with operational systems will expand the range of automated actions and tasks that operational systems can perform.
4. However, GenAI implementation is a struggle: 84% of CSP Data, AI and IT organizations say they face great challenges in acquiring the capabilities they need to deploy GenAI successfully. 81% consider GenAI integration with business processes as the largest challenge they face.
5. Most CSPs consider data quality, LLM (large language model) training and regulatory compliance as being the most challenging hurdles to overcome: Almost half (45%) of CSPs said alignment with compliance, privacy and security regulations were the biggest challenge, followed by training LLMs with telco specific data (43%), and access to high quality data (40%).
6. The path forward: Almost three-quarters (74%) of respondents are exploring what it takes to build their own GenAI platform. Further, 42% are using professional services providers to implement specific telecom use cases. Additionally, 84% of CSPs are expecting to deploy GenAI as an embedded feature via a vendor’s B/OSS applications.

“Some CSPs are even implementing or considering building their own large language models (LLMs). However, building these platforms internally can be slow and costly, especially when skills and resources are scarce, at this point in the market, These CSPs will have to undertake the training and fine tuning of these models for the telecom environment on their own and this can present challenges if they do not have the required skillset in-house,” said Adaora Okeleke, Principal Analyst, Analysys Mason. “Adopting a specialized telco-focused LLM platform from a single vendor that consolidates capabilities from multiple LLM providers can accelerate adoption. Once generative AI becomes an integral part of core business processes, it has the potential to bring additional value and can transform CSPs’ performance, speed, and operating costs.”

“GenAI relies on a vast array of web data, but it lacks access to the data associated with the telecom technology ecosystem, creating a crucial gap and lack of context. To address this challenge, expertise is required to unlock access to pertinent telco data sources, comprehend the intricate telecom taxonomy, and draw necessary, correct conclusions,” said Gil Rosen, Chief Marketing Officer at Amdocs. “Through Amdocs’ amAIz TelcoGPT platform, CSPs can seamlessly incorporate GenAI to enhance network efficiency, elevate customer service, and drive overall business improvement. Additionally, they can effectively manage costs, security, scalability, and efficiency while optimizing use of tokens.”

Amdocs recently unveiled new capabilities of its GenAI platform, amAIz, which combines carrier-grade architecture, leveraging hyper-scalers and open-source technology with large language models embedded into monetization, experience, business, and operational systems. This enables CSPs to benefit from the immense potential of GenAI, including telco-native copilots, innovative use cases, and business efficiencies, along with flexibility, security, and compliance.

As the telecommunication industry further evolves its AI strategy and invests in modernizing its machine learning AI infrastructures, Amdocs is well positioned given the amount of customer data residing in their systems. Now augmenting this vast reservoir of data, powered by GenAI, productivity gains based will easily hit 20 % productivity improvements, and some optimists believe we will hit 50%. This remains to be seen.

What is critical is CSPs must start to develop clearer AI strategy roadmaps and ensure that leadership has depth in AI, and that integrated thinking and trustedAI are architected into the early foundations of GenAI. Given the incoming regulatory environment, there are good reasons to focus on the challenges in data quality and building sustaining AI value realization practices more rapidly.

“Our broad portfolio of platforms and services empowers service providers to accelerate their digital modernization and automation journeys, 5G deployments and move to the cloud,” said Anthony Goonetilleke, Group President of Technology and Head of Strategy at Amdocs. .. In 2024, we are excited to continue growing our market leadership and infusing our portfolio with the latest in GenAI innovation.”

Research Notes:

1. Amdocs commissioned Analysys Mason to carry out the research titled: “GenAI Challenges and Opportunities.”
2. Research Survey Scope: 114 CSP leaders in North America, Europe, and Asia, who are responsible for their organization’s plans and deployment of GenAI.
3. Analysys Mason recognized Amdocs as the global leader in overall monetization platforms (product and professional services) for the 16th consecutive year, with an estimated market share of 14 per cent.
4. Omdia ranked Amdocs first for market share in BSS software and services.
5. Appledore ranked Amdocs as the global leader in digital enablement systems. Appledore also acknowledged Amdocs as leader in overall monetization with an estimated market share of 21%.