Kenmei Technologies: Transforming Mobile Operations Through Network Intelligence and Automation

With the explosive growth of data and the need to make sense of it all, many operators are preparing to ingest their data sources into a Big Data architecture. Whatever stage the operator is at today, this will need to happen eventually. Vendors and suppliers of various products will need to prepare their solutions to be either Big Data ready or will need to redesign their solutions from the ground up with Big Data native architectures.

Observing the above trends, Kenmei Technologies assembled a team with a unique mix of expertise in telecoms, software development and data science that allows it to deliver an AI-based Big Data native platform to help mobile operators automate many tasks in network operations and implement data intelligence to improve the customer experience.

ADELE (Autonomous Decisions and Learning) is a cloud based platform that processes and correlates most of the existing mobile operators' data sources to bring actionable use cases for improving customer experience while reducing network expenditures.

The Trailblazers of Kenmei

Kenmei Technologies was Co-founded in 2018 by Vicent Soler (CEO), Javier Grau (COO) and Javier López (CTO) who as a team have worked together for over 15 years in mobile network technologies. This is the team's second company launch after founding Ingenia Telecom, a specialized company in optimization services that was internationally recognized for having a leading and innovative solution based on call traces.

Kenmei has recently announced adding Ali Wansa as EVP Sales to their leadership team bringing with him a successful track record of international sales and business development experience.

Together, the Kenmei technologies team are convinced that by combining AI-based techniques and Big Data, valuable use cases can be implemented for their customers bringing a disruptive approach and solutions to the market.

Benefiting Customers with Intelligent Services

With the evolution of Big Data architectures in mobile operators, there exists a new range of possibilities in terms of automation, prediction and network intelligence. Kenmei Technologies is probably one of the first European companies making use of native Big Data solutions to implement machine learning algorithms that automate part of tasks in network operation.

The benefits to its customers emanate from the automation of many manual tasks and the reduction of network investments by forecasting the evolution of the network. Likewise, mobile operators save in both Operational Expenditures (OPEX) and Capital Expenditures (CAPEX).

Automating Network Operations with AI

Mobile networks are suffering from an explosion in data traffic implying massive infrastructure growth. With the advent of 5G, another layer of complexity will be added on top of existing 2G, 3G and 4G networks. Therefore, there is no solution other than using AI to automate most of the existing network operations of mobile operators.

The impact of AI within the mobile operators' networks ranges from automatically identifying existing network issues to the prediction of traffic growth and next best investments. This not only provides benefits from analyzing the network behavior in the past but also from predicting what is going to happen within the network in the future.

Leveraging Industry Knowledge Provides Edge

The mix of knowledge in telecoms and software is a unique differentiator of Kenmei Technologies allowing it to develop innovative ML algorithms really focused on addressing some of the network operational issues.

Vicent has always believed that having a close relationship with highly regarded research centers will help Kenmei Technologies to be ahead of competitors and become a market leader. This is the reason that last year, it signed a research collaboration framework with the Universitat Politècnica de València, one of the leading worldwide universities with research in 5G technology. Aside from bringing very valuable knowledge in cutting-edge research projects, the collaboration is also helping Kenmei to attract uniquely qualified talent, which is critical for innovative companies.

Achieving Business Excellence

The fact that Kenmei's ADELE solution has already been successfully deployed within the Big Data lake of one of the largest group operators in Europe reflects the market recognition and the value of what Kenmei has to offer.

Despite implementing some of the most advanced techniques, Kenmei Technologies customers have been impressed by the simplicity, ease of use and flexibility of its platform. This has been a powerful differentiator from other solutions on the market normally requiring months of deployment and a usually high level of complexity.

Challenges Along the Way

Vicent feels that having a native Big Data solution proved a challenge when approaching some operators that were not ready yet. Nevertheless, the added value of Kenmei use cases and the similar vision it had with its customers for the future allowed the company to deliver those use cases today in alternative ways via professional services or SaaS for example, with a Big data native platform that can be used when the mobile operator becomes ready.

"Of course, as with any other startup, Kenmei Technologies has also faced the challenge of being a small company in a market dominated by huge multinational companies. However, having innovative solutions has allowed it to overcome those challenges and to become one of the leading companies in this market," he added.

Looking Ahead

Commenting on the future, Vicent said the market is still in its early stages. Despite having delivered interesting use cases, there are many other areas where AI will be used to help operators deal with increasing network complexity.

He believes that the company will see a continuous growth of AI solutions for automating more tasks within mobile operators, especially having into account the short-term deployment of 5G networks and the growth of the IoT market.