Versatility is key for BCX, which needs to tailor a fixed set of technologies for seemingly infinite use cases. The team’s use of Google Cloud reflects that ethos. One of the first products they built was Echo, an adaptive framework that supports embedded visualizations, dashboarding, and user-friendly interactions with Cloud Storage through web-based interfaces.

“You could describe Echo as a reusable microservice delivery capability,” explains Smit. “Built fully with Google Cloud components, such as Firestore, Firebase, and BigQuery, it’s a powerful tool that enables our team to quickly deliver data visualization capabilities across different projects.”

Echo is a perfect example of BCX’s ability to balance internal and external work: internally, Echo serves as a powerful prototyping tool that can be quickly deployed to give users early access to collaborative projects that can later be put into production. Externally, the team has been able to use the same framework to deliver client solutions on its Google Cloud infrastructure. 

“We used Echo to quickly develop a web app for a roundtable event involving CEOs of major public entities from across South Africa,” says Steffen. “The app consolidated and showcased our analytics work from various entities, addressing issues like economic sabotage and infrastructure theft. This demonstrated our ability to deliver complex solutions rapidly and at scale with Google Cloud.”

Years later, the Echo platform has become a permanent fixture in BCX’s data projects. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, BCX worked with the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) to develop a platform to digitize data from wastewater testing, enabling earlier detection of the virus. “By using our Google Cloud-enabled Echo solution to collate data from testing sites across South Africa, we created a publicly accessible dashboard,” says Smit. “Here, people and health services can effectively track wastewater levels nationally, delivering valuable insights to help manage infections.”

Internally for the Telkom Group, BCX has used the analytics capabilities of Google Cloud to forecast network demand and optimize service delivery. For Telkom Consumer, a leading high-speed broadband and mobile services provider in South Africa, BCX has been deploying Google Cloud to enhance the resilience of mobile network infrastructure. “South Africa has issues with power stability, so we've focused on improving backup power solutions for our mobile towers,” explains Smit. “Using Google Cloud, we've been able to analyze the impact of load shedding on service levels and ensure that high-traffic sites have adequate backup power, boosting service reliability and preparing us for future power-related challenges.”

“By automating this process with Dialogflow, we could focus our attention on the customers who needed it, while saving approximately 40 million Rand ($2.1M) a year by optimizing our team's efforts.”

Another area where BCX is leading the way is speech recognition. They've been investing heavily in developing what they call South African Speech Services. This initiative is about creating and deploying internal solutions for automatic speech recognition (ASR) in local South African languages, a service not broadly covered by existing global solutions.

“We've used Google Cloud capabilities to train ASR models for South African languages, addressing key communication barriers in sectors like healthcare and education,” says Steffen. “This has been a crucial step in making these services more accessible, user-friendly, and relevant for local users.”

Accessibility is important behind the scenes of AI innovation, too. That’s why, as founding sponsor of the Explore Data Science Academy, BCX enables 100 students a year to participate in a fully-funded, aptitude-based data science program that’s open to anyone. With a monthly stipend, students first get training for eight months, followed by a four-month internship period where they can cut their teeth in real-life business projects.

Students use the capabilities of Google Cloud extensively during their internships. “Because students are with us for a limited time, we need to enable them to realize value as quickly as possible,” says Smit. “Google Cloud makes it very easy to provision and manage the necessary cloud resources, including budgets and guardrails. And once a project is finished, we can either put it into production or decommission the resources.”

“Explore Data Science really opened up the opportunity for getting data science training to people that would previously not have had that opportunity,” adds Steffen. “In fact, more than 70% of our Data Insights and Intelligence team started in the Explore Data Science program. And Google Cloud has become a crucial part of how BCX extracts value from these internships.”

“This ability to test and prototype new ideas quickly enables us to become even better at what we do best: delivering innovation at scale for the Telkom Group and our customers.”