Cloud providers and major carriers continue to pair to take advantage of the benefits of 5G networks in order to expand the reach of cloud services – even to the edge – in a trend that’s common among most of these companies. Has the potential to develop into a broad partnership.
Recently, Verizon and Google Cloud announced a collaboration designed to deliver Google Cloud’s compute and storage services to mobile and connected devices at the edge of Verizon’s network. The plan is to take advantage of the higher speeds, lower latency and greater capacity that 5G networks provide to support emerging enterprise sectors such as autonomous mobile robots, intelligent logistics and automation in factories over 4G and LTE networks.
Both will combine Verizon’s private on-site 5G and private 5G edge networks with Google Cloud’s Distributed Cloud Edge to achieve greater productivity, security and efficiency for a wide range of enterprises in a wide range of markets, from retail to manufacturing. Can go
reach the edge
In a statement, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian – who has led the organization to expand its enterprise customer base since joining the company in 2019 – said that “by bringing intelligence from data centers to the network edge , [the companies] Will allow customers to create new cross-industry edge solutions, unlock new revenue models and transform next-generation customer experiences – from AI-powered in-store operations to live inventory management on the factory floor, possibilities spanning multiple industries Huh. ,
Verizon and Google Cloud are also developing a public 5G mobile edge computing solution that will enable enterprise developers to build and deploy applications on the edge of Verizon’s wireless network in multiple locations in the United States. Ericsson will work with Verizon to pilot 5G Edge, offering Google Distributed Cloud Edge as part of a proof-of-concept at its USA 5G smart factory.
The first use case for Ericsson will take advantage of Verizon’s sensor intelligence technology, which will involve attaching a camera to an autonomous mobile robot that will scan packages for inventory and location purposes in a warehouse. Using computer vision, the robot will send bar code and shipping label data over 5G networks and mobile edge computing to inventory management systems for real-time analytics.
Read also: Best practices for securing edge networks
Other 5G-Cloud Partnerships
The Verizon-Google Cloud partnership reflects similar collaborations that have built up over a year as 5G networks expanded. Cisco Systems is partnering with Dish Network and data center service provider Equinix, Microsoft Azure and AT&T are working in alliance with Verizon and Google Cloud with similar goals, and Nokia previously said in 2021 that it would support Azure. , is partnering with Google Cloud and . Amazon Web Services (AWS) is combining its radio access network (RAN) technologies with cloud services from three of the world’s largest providers.
According to Bob O’Donnell, principal analyst at TechAnalysis Research, such partnerships make sense, especially when the speed, latency and capacity benefits of 5G are taken into account.
“Everyone is talking about 5G and EDGE and AI” [artificial intelligence] All together,” O’Donnell told Enterprise Networking Planet. “Originally we were talking about all of these topics separately, but now it’s really about how to do edge computing to take advantage of mobile 5G networks, because there’s an understanding that there’s going to be big opportunities. … doing things that are really different and transformative, the general consensus seems to be that you have to do a distributed computing application that takes advantage of low latency, fast network connections and that’s what 5G provides.”
from centralized to distributed
In a rapidly growing multi-cloud world, which was a fairly centralized cloud environment – with infrastructure in massive data centers and organizations using one cloud for one workload and another for other applications. However, enterprises are pushing more workloads and data between multiple public and private clouds in a seamless fashion, and now compute, storage, analysis and AI capabilities extend beyond the cloud and to a rapidly growing edge.
5G networks not only offer 20 times the speed of 4G and more than 30 times the latency, they also offer much greater capacity, enabling more devices to run on the same network, including Edge and the Internet of Things (IoT). A significant advantage in the IoT) environment.
“The bottom line is there’s a whole bunch of factors that are coming together at the same time,” O’Donnell said. “You have an extension of the cloud to the edge and edge to you being mobile networks in this case. You’ve got the re-architecting of mobile networks that can take advantage of cloud computing. Then there’s this whole idea of figuring out how these two How to take advantage of a combination of things to create completely new business opportunities and then how and with whom do I market them. It’s really a combination of all those different factors at play. That’s also something I think That’s going to take a while to play because there’s a lot involved.”
Read also: Increases collaboration between 5G carriers, cloud infrastructure providers
a wide open market
This too is in its early stages. O’Donnell that would eventually end up being essentially a one-off pairing. Enterprises will demand it.
“Right now we’ve tied this cloud provider to this mobile company,” said the analyst. “In fact, we are going to see all cloud providers working with all mobile companies because we live in a multi-cloud world and we live in a multi-network world, which means different people. have different combinations of cell providers and cloud providers. You are not going to choose a cloud provider based on your cell provider, nor vice versa. People want whatever cloud computing provider they have, with whatever cell number they have Have the option of using a provider or mobile network.”
Collaboration between cloud providers and carriers will deepen even more, with each looking to take advantage of the benefits provided by the other. Google Cloud will want to explore how Verizon expands Google’s presence beyond the cloud to run applications and services, and Verizon will look to run parts of its network in the cloud, making Verizon a customer of Google Cloud.
In addition, similar capabilities in virtual network functions (VNFs) and software-defined networks (SDNS) will become important for 5G networks, O’Donnell said. This can be seen in efforts such as OpenRAN and vRAN, in which organizations use general-purpose compute hardware to run network tasks, which in the past have been run on dedicated networking hardware similar to other software-defined environments, which Will drive more efficiency. cost savings.
more competition
He added that ongoing changes in the enterprise IT world could lead to more competition between mobile operators and cloud providers. AWS last month announced a preview of its AWS Private 5G, a fully managed services aimed at enabling enterprises to deploy their own private 5G networks and tackle the integration that comes with a carrier’s product to upgrade their private 5G network. is helping to scale, CEO Adam Selipsky said in his keynote speech at the Re-Invention show. This move will put AWS in competition with mobile operators in the area of enterprise private 5G networks.
“It’s an intriguing potential threat,” O’Donnell said. “Many times in the past, you needed a carrier to get access to spectrum to set up a private cellular network. We all had LTE before. But now that you have the ability to use CBRS spectrum, which That kind of Wi-Fi sort of thing that’s freely available that uses a cellular connection, so you don’t need a carrier to get access to spectrum. You need a certain amount of devices – you have There are radio antennas and things like that only for transmitting and receiving cellular signals – but once those signals are sent or received, the ability to act on that data can be in a cloud computing environment. And becomes an interesting possible scenario.”
Read further: Going Beyond 5G: What to Expect from the 6G Future
