AWS named Swisscom's Preferred Public Cloud Provider

Swisscom plans to use the forthcoming AWS Europe (Zurich) Region to provide its customers greater choice in storing and processing their data in-country, while enabling them to deliver real-time services with the lowest latency

Jun. 28, 2021-- Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, announced that Swisscom has selected AWS as its preferred public cloud provider for its enterprise IT. Swisscom is pursuing a cloud-first strategy and will use AWS to increase IT agility, drive operational efficiencies, and accelerate time to market for new information and communications technology (ICT) features and services. As part of its overall digital transformation, Swisscom will migrate to AWS a wide range of core applications that power its enterprise resource planning, operational support system (OSS), business support system (BSS), analytics, contact center, and communications provisioning workloads. Swisscom will also leverage AWS’s proven infrastructure and breadth and depth of services to explore how it can build a reliable, scalable, secure, and cost-effective 5G Core in the cloud that would enable rapid development and deployment of new 5G services for its customers.

Swisscom is the largest telecoms company in Switzerland and one of the country’s leading IT services providers. By transforming parts of its internal IT on AWS, Swisscom aims to reduce complexity, gain greater efficiency, and scale on demand to seamlessly deliver new innovations for its customers. Swisscom will use AWS’s comprehensive set of analytics, machine learning, containers, database, and storage services to modernise its applications. In addition, Swisscom engineers and developers will be able to automate hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups, as well as deploy new applications in minutes.

Across the company, Swisscom will evolve their current data pipeline into a cloud-based Data Mesh, making use of AWS’s advanced analytics offerings, such as Amazon Kinesis for scalable and durable real-time data streaming. The company will also leverage AWS Glue for a serverless data integration service that makes it easy to discover, prepare, and combine data for analytics, machine learning, and application development, as well as Amazon Redshift for data warehousing. By moving to an AWS-powered Data Mesh, Swisscom engineers can use the tools and interface that best suit each project, negate the cost and overhead of legacy solutions, and accelerate the time to market for new digital products, such as TV and online services that leverage AWS machine learning to deliver greater personalisation.

Through the collaboration with AWS, Swisscom will also explore migrating from a 5G network built on current infrastructure to a new standalone 5G network powered by a cloud-native 5G Core—the architecture that aggregates and directs traffic flow across the network. As envisioned, Swisscom’s 5G Core will run on a hybrid cloud infrastructure with Swisscom infrastructure, AWS Outposts, and in the AWS Europe (Zurich) Region launching in 2022. (AWS Outposts extend AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to virtually any on-premises facility, such as the factory floor or a 5G base station.) Running the planned cloud-native 5G Core will enable Swisscom to reduce operating costs, increase reliability and scalability by virtualising and automating network functions, and accelerate deployment of new features and applications to customers.

“AWS contributes to the technological foundation and agility we need to unlock new growth potential by transforming our IT services and delivering robust 5G communications that meet the needs of our enterprise and consumer customers,” said Christoph Aeschlimann, CTIO of Swisscom. “We expect 5G to open the door for a host of specialised services. Having AWS by our side, with their proven infrastructure and unparalleled suite of cloud technologies, will help us innovate and grow at a rapid pace. Leveraging AWS, we are able to quickly build and run the applications that underpin our organisation with low latency, reliability, and scalability, while meeting security and compliance requirements.”

“The telecoms industry is turning to AWS to build more flexible, agile, and cost-effective networks in the cloud, capable of delivering reliable services at any scale while continuously improving the customer experience,” said Adolfo Hernandez, Vice President of Telco Sales, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “We are thrilled to support Swisscom, Switzerland’s leading communications provider, with our proven infrastructure and industry-leading services to accelerate their digital transformation. Our collaboration with Swisscom represents our long-term commitment to Switzerland, and we look forward to driving broad industry transformations for more European customers when we open our new region next year.”