Digital assistants are clearly more than just a fad with Microsoft actively working on Cortana, and Google making its Assistant the selling point of its flagship devices. It was reported earlier this month that Nokia was going to join the rather crowded race with a homegrown solution. However, it now appears that the company has no plans to rival these well-established players in the consumer space and instead, its assistant will be customized for telecommunications operators.
Nokia"sMulti-purpose Intuitive Knowledge Assistant (MIKA) is designed in a way that helps engineers save time and resources by making critical information available to them via voice-interaction powered by Nokia"s AVA cognitive services, and will be accessible to operators via the web and mobile agents. It also provides suggestions for problems it has seen in other networks with the help of many important documents and data sources available to it. Nokia details:
MIKA combines augmented intelligence with automated learning to provide access to an extensive range of tools, documents and data sources. These include the Nokia AVA knowledge library, a repository of best practice gathered from Nokia projects around the world. Using the knowledge library MIKA can provide recommendations based on similar issues seen in other networks. MIKA is available via a web interface and mobile agent so that engineers can tap into its knowledge base, wherever they are
The head of Global Services at Nokia, Igor Leprince explained:
"Finding the right information is a daily challenge for telco engineers tasked with boosting network quality. MIKA taps into the power of the Nokia AVA platform to provide quick and accurate answers, avoiding time wasted on fruitless searches. MIKA is customized to support the specific needs of telecoms, and can deliver recommendations based on experience from networks around the world."
It is important to note that this is Nokia"s network division that works on technologies such as 5G, Internet of things, and not the Nokia brand licensed to HMD global that is slated to release highly anticipated smartphones later this year.