Network Management, Network Security
Article | July 17, 2023
Something revolutionary that solves problems becomes a product or service with many trade secrets you cannot afford to let loose in the market. All small, medium, and large businesses worry about how vulnerable they are to threats as far as data sharing within the organization is concerned. This is where a private network comes in.
Every business wants to take a technological leap for scalability. Two of the factors that private networks address are independence from commercial carriers for the network and maintaining the privacy of trade secrets. This helps achieve long-term goals to scale your business.
Powering your enterprise private network with the futuristic speeds of 5G can help your business achieve two goals at once. Take a look at why 5G has now started to matter even more.
Why 5G?
By 2026, the 5G market will reach $667.90 billion, with a CAGR of 122.3% from 2021 to 2026. It is estimated to go beyond $1.87 trillion by 2030. This massive technological transition will forever change how we communicate, process information, and connect with the cloud. A boost in turnkey research and development is one of the vital benefits of 5G that will help your business be one step ahead in the market.
What Makes the 5G Enterprise Private Network Ideal for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses?
A private enterprise network is VPN, LAN, WAN, or cloud-based. High-speed internet and low-latency data sharing or transfer are achieved using fiber optics in a 5G EPN. Expect superior service security, network slicing, enhanced service quality, and no risk of network congestion. Design your 5G EPN as per the software integrations required for your small and medium-sized business. This will allow seamless integration for present and future needs.
5G is about 100 times faster than 4G, leading to incredible speeds and unlocking many never-seen-before possibilities accelerating the speed of research for your enterprise. The network efficiency and the traffic capacity it can handle are 100x. Connecting and sharing data in almost real-time is made possible with 5G.
This means, a private 5G network can reduce the infrastructure needs of relatively more demanding managed wired networks for small and medium-sized businesses supporting 5G ecosystems. But it will keep up with the most advanced wireless technologies of the future and stop supporting older ones. In addition, 5G supports lower power consumption than 4G during data transmission. This means enterprises get better battery life on devices running 5G, including 5G IoT devices.
How Secure is a 5G Enterprise Private Network?
The 5G enterprise private networks are integrated or hybrid EPNs (enterprise private networks) and independent EPNs. It depends on whether your business wants to lease 5G spectrum from the government or a mobile network operator (MNO) and whether you will use a hybrid or independent EPN.
• Integrated 5G EPN: A small business can lease a private 5G line from an MNO. A public 5G network backs a virtual private network (VPN) for medium-to-small businesses. On the other hand, MEC and UPF from a public 5G network are used to set up a local network for large businesses.
• Independent 5G EPN: This is the most secure type of 5G EPN, the independent 5G EPN. It is independently built for your enterprise, owned, operated, and managed by you. You will be handling the RAN, core, edge computing nodes, and the wireless spectrum reserved for your use. These are mostly the goals of a large business that sends and stores data that needs to be very secure.
An independent 5G EPN is the best solution for large enterprises looking for the most secure private network. Also, it applies to businesses dealing with massive amounts of data.
Why Use the Cloud for Storage and Retrieval of Data in 5G EPN?
Access computing resources, data storage, development tools, and applications across the internet with the help of the cloud. The combined features of 5G and a private enterprise network create a healthy environment to implement cloud infrastructure. When thinking about using the cloud to store and get data in a 5G EPN, keep in mind the good things about it.
Interconnected, shared resources
5G speed
Improved reliability
Increased data accessibility
Better privacy and security
Efficient connectivity
Now that we have learned networking fundamentals for a better 5G EPN are resolved with the help of the cloud, let us discover how it can help your business scale.
How Can Your Small, Medium, or Large Business Scale up With a 5G EPN Network Easily?
You can use a 5G enterprise private network, or EPN, to get the most important benefits for a small business.
Speed to promote an industrial digital transformation
IoT readiness
Better control over digital assets.
Improved security
Reliable coverage
Network slicing
Ultra-low latency
Improved bandwidth
Improved quality of service (QoS)
You will have complete control over configuring and customizing your EPN, managed independently by your in-house 5G networks. Explore the future avenues of 5G private networks in detail.
The Future of 5G Private Networks and Wi-Fi with Industrial Use Cases:
According to a study by RAN Research, by 2028, private 5G networks will generate about $23.5 billion, with 19% usage in the manufacturing industry and 12% of the network in the healthcare industry. The deployment of the 5G network and upgraded Wi-Fi standards will likely be saturated by 2024. Most of the investments would be towards upgrading the infrastructure and maintaining the network.
The goal of fierce competition among telecom network operators will be to gain rapid market share, bringing down the cost of usage. The new service providers will garner competition from telecom giants, while 5G private networks from different enterprises will still be dominant and mainstream in providing security, privacy, and data isolation.
Leading Industrial Use Cases
Healthcare: A revolution in healthcare benefiting from 5G technology is bound to happen with their transition to a cloud-native architecture. The need for high-speed and reliable connectivity will arise sooner or later, and 5G private networks will perfectly meet the requirement. The driving forces for healthcare to adopt 5G private networks include the shift to demographics, value-based and patient-centric care, and emergency healthcare. In addition, the use of big data analytics, the internet of medical things (IoMT), better wearable medical technology, hospital remote monitoring systems, e-Health and more will need the speed that 5G offers.
Manufacturing: The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) uses private 5G networks. Depending upon the software-defined implementation of the 5G network, 5G does not just allow remote monitoring of production lines; it also regulates maintenance and device lifecycle while powering industrial automation. 5G is also finding its way into implementing augmented reality for troubleshooting electronics, additive manufacturing and 3D printing, automated guided vehicles, camera-based video analytics and more. Collaborative robotics, supply chain optimization, and maintenance using a digital twin are a few other things that are worth mentioning.
Supply Chain: Due to near-shoring, manufacturing and distribution will decentralize. Due to Internet of Things (IoT) devices with sensors, supply chain and shipping logistics companies will be able to reduce delivery times, have better control over warehouse and transportation environments, and offer great asset management services.
Final Thoughts
Finding the right 5G private network type for your enterprise is easy. It offers enhanced security while connecting to the cloud, IoT and more. This would allow the development of futuristic products and services, touching multiple industries, with healthcare, manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics among the top. Keeping trade secrets and the latest research and development secure and enhancing the capabilities by integrating future technologies will improve with a 5G EPN. With a 5G private network for your enterprise being used on a large scale, the future of networking looks bright.
FAQs:
What is the difference between a public 5G network and a private 5G network?
A single location or several locations of the same institution, business, or organization are the focus of a private 5G network. On the contrary, the public 5G network is nationwide with millions of subscribers without being dedicated to serving a single entity. Because of this, 5G EPN infrastructure solutions will probably be used on college campuses, in factories, hospitals, military bases, transportation hubs, and other places.
What is a private 5G network and what are the benefits of a private 5G network?
A 5G private network offers low latency, high bandwidth and multiple connections with access control, which are perfect for business applications for small, medium and large enterprises. Furthermore, 5G private networks allow you to tailor them to your business requirements, making them an excellent investment for your business. Again, while diversifying your business as per customer and market demand, it is crucial to have a networking infrastructure that can adapt to your changing needs. Therefore, a private 5G network becomes even more critical.
How does EPN help in centralization and business continuity?
When implementing business continuity planning and centralization of your organization, a 5G EPN can provide several benefits over a public network. It makes integrations easy, provides high-quality services, improves access control and reliability, and lets your business share resources in the best way for its current and future needs.
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Enterprise Mobility
Article | June 15, 2023
For communications service providers, questions still loom over how 5G will be monetized. Many have voiced the view that the enterprise segment is where 5G will make its money, with potential use cases across a breadth of verticals including the automotive, manufacturing and utilities industries to name a few. However, if service providers focus more on delivering 5G business use cases to small and midsized enterprises (SMEs), this market segment could prove to be a fruitful source of revenue.
As 5G deployments continue to roll-out globally, CSPs are focused on deriving value from projects and partnerships with large multinational enterprises. And they are eager to do so quickly to assure payback from their $1trillion investments in the next generation network. However, are CSPs blinkered in their approach to generating ROI from 5G? Are they limiting themselves by focusing too much on a small segment of the enterprise market, that to date has limited CSPs' involvement in early 5G projects, reducing them to mere providers of connectivity?
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5G
Article | September 28, 2023
Transparency, explainability and trust are big and pressing topics in AI/ML today. Nobody wants to find themselves at the receiving end of a black AI box system that makes consequential decisions (e.g., about jobs, healthcare, citizenship, etc.), especially if those decision are unfair, biased, or just plainly not in our favor. And most organizations agree that consumer trust and confidence that AI is being used ethically and transparently are key to unlocking its true potential.
And while there are literally hundreds of documents describing and prescribing AI principles, frameworks and other good things, last year there was no practical tool that could help with implementing transparency. And this tool is AI registers…
The Cities of Helsinki and Amsterdam jointly announce the launch of their public AI registers. The two registers were developed in collaboration with Saidot.ai, a Finnish company which specializes in “bringing transparency to consumer services” and which, to the best of my knowledge, is the only vendor in this space.
The idea for the company grew from the personal frustration of its founder and CEO, Meeri Haataja, who was “seeing how important transparency of AI is for the future of each one of us, and not being able to find too many meaningful ways to act on it.”
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Network Infrastructure
Article | June 7, 2022
Applications and workloads have been moving to the cloud for some time. This transition has been putting a lot of pressure on IT organizations to support the trend by extending their networks to support cloud connectivity.
Cisco SD-WAN enables your hybrid connectivity to the cloud
We at Cisco have innovated on multiple fronts to help our customers with this transition by providing a deep level of integration with many of the leading cloud service providers (CSPs), including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Here, we highlight one key aspect of this innovation that allows private cloud links to be available as part of the SD-WAN network, enabling hybrid connectivity to the cloud and multicloud. Now our customers can benefit from all the rich features that our Cisco SD-WAN solution offers including application-aware routing, intent-based path selection, and security policy enforcement.
Private direct cloud connectivity to CSPs such as AWS Direct Cloud Connect, Google Cloud Interconnect, and Azure ExpressRoute are becoming popular lately, as they provide customers with optimal connectivity similar to what MPLS did in the past, but in a more agile and on-demand fashion. The only problem is those services are normally acquired separately and customers must determine how to manage them as part of a larger WAN solution including configuration, monitoring, and so on. The on-demand nature of these circuits provides customers with major savings, but also turns automation into a key requirement for management.
Enter Cisco SD-WAN release 20.6
Beginning with Cisco SD-WAN release 20.6, a Cisco SD-WAN customer may use Cloud OnRamp for Mutlicloud to automate and simplify cloud connectivity across private and public transports. What is great is this task, that used to require hours and days to setup, now only takes minutes as outlined by the following integration documents for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud respectively:
Configure AWS Direct Connect as a Transport with SD-WAN in a Click
Configure Azure Express Route as Transport with SD-WAN in a Click
Configure Google Cloud Interconnect as a Transport with Cisco SD-WAN in a Click
Once a customer implements such connectivity, they will have the ability to steer any type of traffic through it with a customizable and flexible SD-WAN policy. This solution also allows customers to eliminate some limitations imposed on them by the CSPs, such as restricting the number of prefixes advertised via BGP over private links, thus providing better scalability and control.
For customers who already use Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Interconnect at middle-mile POPs, such as with Equinix or Megaport, rolling out this solution as a test can be extremely simple given the automation discussed above. The best way to find out how easy this solution is, is to try it.
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