MWC 2024: Lenovo takes AI to the Edge

At Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona this week, Lenovo unveiled a range of solutions that help enterprises go beyond the data center to harness vast bodies of data at the far edge for transformative AI applications, at scale, while reducing energy consumption. 

The innovations are part of a comprehensive pocket-to-cloud portfolio of Lenovo hybrid AI solutions.  The solutions are attracting new customer collaborations with industry leaders, like Telefonica, to unlock the power of AI anywhere data is created and deliver it to businesses at the far edge in real-time.

As the telecom industry continues its dramatic evolution to enable the rollout of 5G and an AI-powered future, innovations in IT networks, cloud infrastructure and edge computing are critical to connecting today’s digital economy. Edge computing allows businesses to analyse data in real-time, enabling faster actionable insights for more efficient operations and services.

To support the massive amount of computing moving to the edge, a powerful lineup of new Lenovo Integrated Edge AI Solutions for Telco is on display at MWC in Barcelona with Lenovo’s ecosystem of partners. Highlights Include (as supplied by Lenovo):

• New multi-cloud edge computing architecture with Telefonica tackles mission critical applications for smart cities, making it simple to leverage data throughout city streets in a wide array of AI use cases, including using video analytics and computer vision to identify smoke and fire, support public safety and improve emergency response times. Leveraging its own Telco Cloud with the range of Lenovo ThinkEdge servers and Motorola’s push-to-talk technology, Telefonica is demonstrating via a proof of concept the capabilities of multi-cloud at the edge, AI and computer vision to alert public safety officials of danger. The new solution orchestrates the entire edge-to-cloud ecosystem, seamlessly weaving infrastructure, connectivity and applications together to reliably support public safety and enhance emergency response with real-time AI.
• Expanded joint innovation partnership for telecom and cloud services helps Orange Group bring high performance, availability and energy efficiency to telco clients worldwide. In support of continued telecom advancement, Orange and Lenovo are also extending the partnership for three more years and launched a shared Sylva project validation center, addressing telco and edge use cases. The program will cover areas critical for future-proofing telecommunication infrastructure, including supporting operational efficiency, new open radio access and automation. Together, the companies will help worldwide telecom providers support sustainability targets and improve services.
• Jointly validated end-to-end deployment and orchestration for Open RAN with the Lenovo ThinkEdge SE455 V3 demonstrates the proven delivery of a cloud-based, software-defined networking approach that accelerates modern telecommunications and will contribute to a reduction in Time-to-Market (TTM) for introducing new features in telco networks. As the industry invests in Open RAN to reduce costs and improve innovation, the Lenovo ThinkEdge SE455 V3 server demonstrates lower total cost of ownership at the edge, achieving new energy efficiency breakthroughs with double the orchestrated workloads per socket and more than a 50 percent reduction in overall ORAN power consumption based on third party testing.
• Infrastructure solutions support cloud services with speed and simplicity. Based on rigorous testing performed by Orange Business, Lenovo infrastructure solutions are reducing power consumption of , helping to bring high performance, availability, and energy efficiency to Orange Business clients.
• Transformation to cloud-based voice telephony for Deutsche Telekom’s next generation NIMS project leverages Lenovo and a wide ecosystem of industry partners. Through cloudification and automation, new functionalities in the voice network can be introduced with the click of a button. The transformation supports over seventeen million customer connections.
• Intel’s Edge Platform with Lenovo ThinkEdge enables enterprises to develop, deploy, run and manage edge applications at scale with cloud-like simplicity. Leveraging the Lenovo ThinkEdge SE350 V2, SE360 V2 and SE450, the platform helps to remove key barriers to broad edge AI adoption across vertical markets and incorporates Intel’s learnings from over 90,000 edge deployments to help businesses build and scale vertical-specific AI workloads. Intel’s Edge Platform provides specific optimizations built in for easy training of AI models and fast inferencing to proliferate new AI workloads across any industry. Leveraging Lenovo’s Open Cloud Automation (LOC-A) software, developers can deploy worldwide AI applications at the edge in a matter of minutes with one-touch provisioning from a single device, such as a PC, smart phone or tablet. Together, these capabilities overcome remote computing complexities to accelerate time-to-scale-deployment of AI workloads for enterprises at the edge while improving total cost of ownership.
• The Telco Cloud and Orchestration Solution with Lenovo and Rakuten operates with the award-winning Rakuten Cloud Native Platform to help quickly orchestrate and deploy applications at the edge, reducing operating costs and complexity while accelerating time to delivery for a lower total cost of ownership. The solution delivers more power to securely automate large stateful edge workloads for telecom service providers, such as computer vision, voice AI and generative AI. 

Combining AI-optimised infrastructure with its ecosystem of partners, Lenovo’s comprehensive range of far edge-to-cloud solutions go beyond the data center to enable key service providers to quickly deploy an entire network of high-power computing to drive revolutionary efficiency and intelligence for their own customers and beyond.

With purpose-built AI-ready infrastructure that goes beyond the data center to the edge, Lenovo is accelerating the new era of AI and helping businesses securely unlock the power of their data.

“Lenovo is focused on driving a new era of Hybrid AI and delivering an AI-powered future now by unlocking the power of data anywhere it is created,” said Charles Ferland, vice president and general manager of ThinkEdge and communication service providers in the Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group. “The ThinkEdge portfolio innovations are ushering a new era of edge automation that enables our ecosystem of partners and customers to simplify their path to AI and harness it for revolutionary applications.”