The new 5G standard and the advent of cloud-based solutions will change companies’ business models. Here’s how and what opportunities they offer.
The impact of new technologies, and innovation in general, on the business models of companies is becoming increasingly evident and widespread: from the primary sector to the tertiary sector, the profusion of the new 5G mobile communication standard and the advent of solutions entirely cloud-based computing, networking and storage are slowly sweeping away the classic technological solutions based on physical connections and hardware structures installed locally in company offices, so-called on-premises.
Start Magazine is collecting various contributions that mention the different impacts, direct and indirect, of the advent of the new 5G network standard: some concerning the implications on society, others concerning the strategies of the companies supplying the technology. At the same time, here we give voice to the possible opportunities companies can seize to adapt or change their business model.
The Interaction Between 5G And Cloud Network
Although two different technologies may appear, 5G and Cloud Networks not only start to go through various stages of development in parallel but, above all, they intertwine to allow companies to ground business solutions that, before now, no one had ever imagined. In recent years, companies have seen an increasing demand for flexibility from industries and the market.
The flexibility has often translated into resilience, or the ability to change operational plans on the run following particular positive or adverse events. The step that led from the request for flexibility by companies to the offer of services that, in the face of offers of “pay as you go” instruments or payment methods based on actual consumption, was short. Resources allow you to change corporate business models.
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Nowadays, every company that faces a market, be it B2B or B2C, has an internal IT department, which corresponds not only to a part of its value proposition but also to a part of its operating costs. So how would companies react if they were offered a solution allowing their developers to design applications without pre-provisioning all the hardware they need? And again, how would they react if they were also shown to work remotely, with the same security that one would typically have? 5G is offering an innovative proposal on the market, namely the possibility of bringing the same innovations to the enterprise networking sector that the cloud has brought to data centers.
Therefore, the case is to use an enterprise network service with the same ease and flexibility you have when buying a cloud-based IT service. Of course, the parallelism must be considered net of the critical structural differences and timing for the advent of the two technologies but what unites them is the security of the proposed solution, which, in the case of 5G, is ensured by its ability to create virtual networks. Isolated from each other and distinct from the core of the network. This, or network slicing, guarantees the required flexibility and security and makes 5G a pivotal technology for innovations in the coming years.
The Around Business Case
In setting up the business case of Around, the project I dealt with during my journey at the 5G Academy, for example, the issue of the possible creation of a private network based on public but dedicated resources was often addressed.
Faced with a potential investment in physical hardware, we have always believed that an optimal solution: on the one hand, because a company that starts from scratch needs flexibility and on the other because this also guarantees greater possibilities for scalability, which is a requirement that must be kept in great importance if one wants to rely on external financing.
This trend is also confirmed by the acquisition of Affirmed Networks by Microsoft, which, already with the creation of Azure, has shown a strong interest in the possible developments that 5G and Cloud can bring in the coming years. In this way, Microsoft will be able to offer companies solutions capable of guaranteeing cloud services to operators in the telecommunications sector, enabling the operation of their networks even in hybrid environments, thanks to network virtualization.
