Ericsson has named Erik Ekudden group CTO as of July 1. Ekudden steps into the position formerly held by Ulf Ewaldsson, who continues as head of Ericsson’s digital services business unit. Ekudden will return to Ericsson’s headquarters in Stockholm after spending the last seven years working for the Swedish company in Silicon Valley as CTO for the Americas region.
“Erik has broad experience from the technology area, most recently from seven years in Silicon Valley,” said Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm in a statement. “He is uniquely qualified to support customers and partners prepare for the opportunities and challenges of the next wave of technology shifts around 5G, IoT, and digitalization.” Ekudden is already deeply involved in 5G standardization work, and spoke on the topic earlier this year at the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference.
“5G will provide a common network platform – one physical network with multiple logical networks on top of it – that is dynamically set up in a secure way to give industries what they need,” Ekudden wrote earlier this year. “It will be able to connect any industry with any end point, whether a device, sensor or automobile.”
Ekudden takes on his new role at a critical time for Ericsson. The company is racing to adapt as more elements of wireless infrastructure migrate from hardware to software, and it is focused on establishing leadership roles in 5G and the internet of things. Ericsson is paricipating in 5G trials with Verizon Wireless, Etisalat and Telstra, among others. Ericsson is also a leader in the development of infrastructure to support IoT connectivity on cellular networks. The company has developed a narrowband IoT radio, and has been chosen by SoftBank to support the Japanese carrier’s IoT network rollout.
Ericsson said Ekudden’s areas of focus will include open networking, gigabit low-latency access, management, orchestration and monetization built on articifial intelligence and machine learning. The executive is charged with building a new network platform to enable new business models.
The appointment of Ekudden as group CTO follows a simplification of Ericsson’s executive structure implemented earlier this year by president and CEO Börje Ekholm. The move streamlined the company’s two-tiered leadership structure under one team, and consolidated its ten geographic market areas into five.
