LONDON — NTT DATA and Ericsson has announced a multi-year strategic partnership to accelerate enterprise adoption of private 5G and unlock advanced edge AI and physical AI use cases. As organizations look to embed intelligence at the edge across global operations, the partnership will enable AI-driven, outcome-focused transformation.
By combining Ericsson’s Private 5G and Edge platforms with NTT DATA’s full-stack enterprise network services, wireless network expertise, IT/OT security and managed services, the companies will deliver industry-ready solutions that help enterprises deploy private 5G networks and deliver business outcomes at a global scale with confidence.
The partnership focuses on four priority areas:
- Global Private 5G managed services at scale: NTT DATA will act as Ericsson’s global system integration and managed services provider, delivering Private 5G as a fully managed service with consistent architecture, operations and security worldwide.
- AI embedded directly into enterprise connectivity: NTT DATA Edge AI agents will run on Ericsson’s enterprise Edge platforms, enabling real-time intelligence and autonomous decision-making where data is generated.
- Repeatable industry solutions: The companies will deliver proven private 5G, edge AI and physical AI use cases across manufacturing, mining, ports, airports, energy, transportation and smart cities, helping enterprises accelerate deployment and realize measurable ROI.
- Unified global go-to-market: Joint sales, marketing and delivery will give enterprises a single, consistent path to deployment, reduce vendor complexity and speed time to value.
“Private 5G is the backbone for scaling AI in production, where autonomous systems must operate reliably and at scale, but integration complexity often remains the final hurdle,” said Alejandro Cadenas, Associate Vice-President of Worldwide Telco Research at IDC. “The combined expertise of NTT DATA and Ericsson seamlessly integrates edge AI and physical AI with enhanced connectivity, overcoming operational, scalability and accountability challenges and accelerating the deployment of AI with confidence.”
“As enterprises adopt AI at the edge, they need partners who can bring connectivity, intelligence and security together in a way that actually works in production,” said Shahid Ahmed, Global Head of Edge Services, NTT DATA, Inc. “Together with Ericsson, we can deploy these solutions faster, operate them at scale and deliver outcomes. Private 5G gives enterprises the foundation they need to achieve real, measurable impact with edge AI and physical AI deployments.”
“Ericsson has been advancing enterprise connectivity for over a decade. This extends that capability to support edge AI and physical AI at scale across industries,” said Asa Tamsons, Senior Vice President and Head of Business Area Enterprise Wireless Solutions, Ericsson. “By combining our global platforms with NTT DATA’s engineering and managed services, industry expertise and AI-driven operations, enterprises can move from experimentation to always-on, production-grade operations.”
The partnership intends to focus on high-impact use cases across industries, including:
- Manufacturing: Automated quality inspection, predictive maintenance and real-time safety monitoring using sensor and vision data.
- Transportation, ports and logistics: Autonomous operations driven by real-time vehicle and asset data for dynamic routing, tracking and safety.
- Energy and mining: Remote and autonomous operations, intelligent inspection and AI-driven monitoring in complex and hazardous environments.
- Smart cities: Intelligent traffic management, public safety monitoring and real-time optimization of energy and municipal services.
