Network and edge

5 ways to harness AI for business innovation

Article 24-Feb-2025 Read time: 1 min

By Salomé Valero, Innovation Director at Kyndryl

While AI is helping organizations worldwide improve operations and services, it is also helping with another business goal: innovation.

AI is revolutionizing nearly every industry, and telecommunications is at the forefront of this transformation. In today’s fast-moving business world, innovation drives economic growth, leads to new products, enhances customer experiences and helps separate companies from their competition. AI can help telecommunications companies boost business innovation by generating and assessing ideas, performing detailed analyses and improving decision-making processes.

As the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider, Kyndryl is at the forefront of AI innovation, enhancing AI readiness to help give businesses a competitive edge and accelerate value realization. We support this through network optimization, creating AI-driven environments to test and deploy workloads effectively. Our AI experts help customers navigate regulatory compliance and build robust IT infrastructure, trusted data foundations and AI models to maximize business potential.

Five steps every business can take to drive AI innovation

1. Enhance AI readiness

The ability to innovate rapidly and effectively sets companies apart in today’s dynamic business environment. While 92% of telecommunications leaders are confident their IT infrastructure is best-in-class, only 43% of those leaders say their IT infrastructure is ready to manage future risks, according to Kyndryl’s Telecommunications Readiness Report. This highlights the need for businesses to not only invest in AI but also to plan and manage AI and machine learning technologies strategically to unlock their full potential.

2. Leverage AI with existing strengths

According to the Kyndryl Readiness Report, telecom industry leaders lag behind other industries in reporting positive returns on their AI, machine learning and generative AI investments. To turn this around, companies must establish deeper partnerships with public and private sectors and capitalize on their strengths in 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT). By doing so, businesses can explore micro-industry verticals and offer specialized services that bring AI to the edge, which drives innovation and growth.

Take, for example, a successful public and private partnership that leverages AI and 5G connectivity. Kyndryl has tested a prototype with wildland firefighters in Catalonia that uses 5G, IoT sensors, a mobile device, cloud technology and AI-powered analytics to distill data into a health status that can be monitored with a dashboard, showing data collected during wildfires, urban fires and in industrial environments. This started as a Kyndryl-led technology project, and as the initiative has grown, we have brought on Kyndryl alliance partners like AWS, the Spanish government and the European Commission for further funding.

What began as a mission to safeguard the health of frontline responders has evolved into a broader effort to enhance safety for industry professionals and enable early fire detection in urban areas prone to wildfires. This innovation underscores Kyndryl’s commitment to harnessing technology — not just to react to crises but to anticipate and mitigate risks — empowering smarter decision-making for a safer future across industries.

3. Tap strategic services and alliances

It’s vital for businesses that want to modernize and integrate AI technology into their current IT estate to find a trusted technology partner whose services focus on enhancing cybersecurity and maintaining data integrity. Kyndryl leverages its key services — Kyndryl Consult, Kyndryl Bridge and Kyndryl Vital — along with partnerships with industry leaders like NVIDIA and Cisco to fully empower businesses to integrate AI into their operations.

With our services and alliances, we’re well equipped to enable efficient data transfers and strategic workload placement across hyperscalers and edge data centers. Our AI and data expertise allows us to support scalable IT infrastructure, handling dynamic AI workloads with high-performance networking that prioritizes data sovereignty and privacy.

4. Focus on R&D processes

AI is revolutionizing research and development operations, speeding the timeline from concept to market-ready solutions. This acceleration helps meet the diverse and changing needs of a global customer base, ensuring that products are both cutting-edge and relevant. By streamlining the integration of new technologies, AI can enable businesses to quickly adapt to market demands and maintain a competitive advantage while delivering solutions tailored to specific customer requirements.

5. View AI as a catalyst for growth

AI is more than just a tool — it’s a catalyst for ushering in a new era of business growth and improved customer satisfaction. By harnessing AI, businesses can drive innovative solutions that significantly impact operations and success. In Spain, Kyndryl collaborated with Ingesan, the leading subsidiary of OHLA’s Services line — it works in the areas of cleaning, maintenance and energy efficiency of buildings, personal care and urban services — to use AI in improving its energy services. Together, Kyndryl Vital and Ingesan developed LumenIA, an advanced AI-powered platform designed to optimize the management of energy service contracts. By leveraging AI, LumenIA enables better trend forecasting, operational optimization and efficiency maximization, positioning Ingesan at the forefront of contract management innovation.

AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data in real-time allows businesses to make more informed decisions, anticipate market trends and personalize customer experiences at scale. AI is improving existing business models and enabling entirely new business strategies and previously unimaginable opportunities, setting the stage for a future where AI-driven companies lead the way with innovation.

Attending Mobile World Congress?

Join Kyndryl at MWC 2025 to discover how we are leading the charge in digital transformation, empowering businesses to seize tomorrow's opportunities today.

Meet Kyndryl at MWC 2025

Join Salomé Valero at MWC for a panel discussion on the reasons why AI is the new frontier of corporate innovation, held March 3 at 12:30 pm at Agora Stage, Hall 8 – 4YFN & Partner Theatres.

Join the discussion