We are rapidly growing into a society driven greatly by technology, with spending on digital transformation (DX) in 2022 projected to reach 1.8 trillion U.S. dollars, growing to 2.8 trillion in 2025. The shift to leveraging digital devices and applications is rapidly re-shaping the way business is done and the way companies interact with each other, as well as with consumers.
Through digitalization, technology can help businesses increase operational transparency by providing a single source of truth that all functions can access and trust. This allows for better decision-making, more effective business processes, and a more robust overall company culture. Digitalization also helps create new markets for revenue, with whole new industries springing up thanks to the rise of technology. The most notable of these young industries being the SMART technology industry.
The word "SMART" refers to "self-monitoring, analysis, and reporting technology," which is a technology that uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data analysis to provide cognitive awareness to objects that were in the past considered inanimate. SMART technology itself has a wide variety of applications across nearly every industry.
For example, Smart Buildings can showcase an integrative and differential proposal for buildings based on different technological solutions, capable of increasing efficiency, reducing costs, promoting sustainability, improving user experience, and increasing security. Or for consumers, Smart Homes include fast connectivity, streaming entertainment, energy management, and security along with improved experiences for gamers and breakthrough augmented and immersive reality applications.
One of the most important drivers in making visionary ways to live, work and play lies in 5G's increased connectivity. In addition to a higher speed to upload and download data, 5G ensures very short latency times and the ability to connect multiple devices at the same time.
This week, Telefónica and Pente Networks, a developer of a revolutionary enterprise cellular 4G/5G platform, announced they are working on a managed 5G Cloud service to enable advanced transformation use cases for enterprises and organizations, including the support of smart city projects. Telefónica and Pente are looking to democratize the delivery of advanced industry transformation through a managed 5G Cloud service using Pente's packet core solution.
The two companies have developed products together in the past, initially focusing on "industrial strength" use cases, whereby Telefónica combines 5G connectivity with a new generation of hyperscaler OnPremise and Edge platforms fused together into edge and cloud turnkey solutions.
With their latest collaboration, enterprise customers are accessing the full range of hyperscaler services and reaping the benefits of the cloud to build, manage, and scale local applications using familiar hyperscaler services and tools, which work in perfect harmony with the Pente connectivity platform.
"The same fully secure and private 4G/5G network supports highly available, high-quality real-time communications, including voice, messaging, and video, to data networking at the edge, important to edge computing and Industry 4.0 solutions," said David del Val, CEO of Telefónica I+D. "Telefónica can now spin up private networks in hours or days, not weeks or years, and can manage them through a single pane of glass using Pente's advanced administrative console with its intuitive, IT-friendly experience. An internal team effort that is being developed jointly by Telefónica's Innovation team and the IoT and Big Data division of Telefónica Tech".
The service follows a cloud-first approach to create a 5G Cloud service that leverages the full potential of the cloud to automate integration delivery, operations, and integration with services on top - all wrapped with a simple digital view of the service for customers.
The result is a more replicable end-to-end product that shortens the delivery time from weeks to just a few hours. At the same time, this massive automation coupled with a simple user interface designed by Telefónica reduces the cost and complexity barriers for enterprises willing to embrace 5G and Edge computing services.
Current Private 5G Edge implementations are mostly based on a special project approach, requiring much engineering effort to integrate devices, connectivity, cloud, and applications. Telefónica has developed a platform that uses CI/CD tools to automate the integration of the different service components, including the core Pente network. This platform enables the generation of an operational model that maximizes automation in the testing, deployment, and operation of applications on top of the platform.
Pente offers a perfect complement to the company's "API First" approach, which provides a programmatic integration between the Pente Core and Telefónica's platform for lifecycle control and to integrate with services on top. Activities cover the deployment of Pente Core on a hyperscaler infrastructure, integration with Telefónica's platform, and end-to-end service automation.
"5G and Edge are bringing a new wave of transformation, in the same way as mobile broadband and the cloud did some years ago. Telefonica is in the perfect position to create services combining 5G Connectivity, cloud edge, business applications, and devices," del Val added. "By using cloud-native principles, we have transformed how the services are delivered to generate turnkey services. Now we can spin up private networks connected to apps on the cloud edge in hours or days, not weeks or months, and abstract most of the underlying operational complexity of current 5G networks. This will enable us to reach more client segments and industries in the coming years."
Edited by
Luke Bellos
