AI is driving innovation in Infovista’s VistAI agentic AI framework and VistaOne AI-enabled platform for network and CX intelligence
Infovista CEO Rick Hamilton sat down with RCRTech principal analyst Sean Kinney to reflect on the company’s 30-year evolution and the constants and shifts that are redefining it. With AI enabling a confluence of customer and network intelligence that was traditionally very difficult, it’s possible to accelerate decisions and drive clarity in how networks affect customers, and how customers can influence network decisions.
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Infovista made two significant announcements about VistAI, an agentic AI framework for autonomous network operations, and VistaOne, an AI-enabled platform for network and CX intelligence. In describing the new solutions, Infovista CEO Rick Hamilton espoused a renewed focus on integrating four key domains – planning, testing, network management / observability, and CX – into a single AI-driven platform.
“We are combining network experience intelligence and customer experience intelligence – something the industry broadly talked about for a very long time, but that was very difficult to do until now,” said Hamilton, noting that AI is enabling KPIs that network engineers consider important to be correlated to customer experience (CX). “The industry traditionally thought about the world in two different spaces, with network experience revolving around questions like ‘is the network working, what’s it costing me; and how can I do more with less to optimize my capital’?” That focus on efficiency and optimization can now expand to include impact on customer experience,” he explained, with AI enabling network performance and CX views “to be one in the same.”
Hamilton believes that past attempts to integrate or combine the customer view with the network view failed because “they were fundamentally different in structure and in how information could be derived from data.” Now, integration does not have to be forced, because AI enables different systems to leverage specific data for targeted use cases. In other words, planning, assurance, testing and observability do not have to be viewed in a siloed way, as data can be extracted and crystallized according to what a customer wants to know, either in real time, or in a specific moment in time. Whether the use case revolves around planning, optimization, monetization, or CX, AI is allowing Infovista customers to mix and match data from different domains to address different use cases.
“You can’t deliver great experiences without understanding your network and you can’t understand your network unless you know what customers want to do with it,” said Hamilton, noting that VistaAI’s agentic framework allows BSS data to overlay with network performance data to “help customers understand things like, ‘who are our top paying mobile customers, what’s their experience and where are they geographically, and how are their buying behaviors being affected?’”
From procurement to ecosystems focus
When asked what he expects over the next two to three years, Hamilton said use cases will continue to expand, and the focus will shift from procurement to ecosystems. “We have some very large customers around the world that are driving advancements in our AI frameworks and toolsets, so we think the AI phenomena will force the industry to be ecosystem rather than procurement driven,” with Hamilton noting that competitors are working together in ways they didn’t have to in the past, as with Infovista’s partnership with CSG, which combined network and BSS expertise to help customers improve what they could do with their data.
“When it comes to the hype around AI, it’s important to be very specific about how data can be used for pragmatic and meaningful use cases. AI will not solve everything for everyone,” said Hamilton. “We won’t go into the weeds with AI capabilities, but rather, we will focus on how data can bring clarity and let our customers create the unique use cases that will make the data useful.”
