Episode 19: An Edgy Conversation Not About The Edge

Inside LIving on the Edge episode 19, Jason and Dan discuss reality.

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• Google: Four ways CSPs can harness data, automation, and AI to create business value — According to a new study by Analysys Mason, telecommunications data volumes are growing worldwide at 20% CAGR, and network data traffic is expected to reach 13 zettabytes by 2025. To stay relevant as the industry evolves, communications service providers (CSPs) need to manage and monetize their data more effectively to: - Deliver new user experiences and B2B2X services, with the “X” being customers and entities in previously untapped industries, and unlock new revenue streams. - Transform operations by harnessing data, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) to drive new efficiencies, improved network performance, and decreased CAPEX/OPEX across the organization. Here are four key data management and analytics challenges CSPs face, and how cloud solutions can help. 1. Reimagining the user experience means CSPs need to solve for near-real-time data analytics challenges. 2. Driving CSP operational efficiencies requires streamlining fragmented and complex sets of tools. 3. Leveraging cloud and automation can help CSPs reduce cost and overhead as data volumes continue to rise.
• Google: Five do’s and don’ts CSPs should know about going cloud-native — Do: Leverage cloud-native approaches to simplify networks Don’t: Just take legacy operational processes with you to the cloud Do: Recognize that operators will continue to own and control their networks Do: Build scale and simplicity into your data platform to unlock a whole world of use cases Don’t: Fall into the habit of architecting separate infrastructure for virtualized and containerized workloads
• Edge spending on track to hit $176 billion this year — In geographic terms, IDC said the US is expected to be the biggest spender at $76.5 billion this year. By comparison, Western Europe and China are expected to spend $30.6 billion and $20.8 billion respectively. As for use cases, these vary according to whether you are an enterprise or an edge services provider. IDC reckons the two biggest use cases for edge services providers in 2022 will be content delivery networks and virtual network functions. Combined, these two use cases are predicted to generate $26 billion of the $38 billion of expected service provider spending on edge this year. When it comes to enterprise use cases, the discrete and process manufacturing sectors are expected to spend a combined $33 billion on edge in 2022. Retail and professional services will spend more than $10 billion. “Edge computing continues to gain momentum as digital-first organisations seek to innovate outside of the data centre,” said Dave McCarthy, research vice president, cloud and edge infrastructure services, IDC. “The diverse needs of edge deployments have created a tremendous market opportunity for technology suppliers as they bring new solutions to market, increasingly through partnerships and alliances.” BT is one such company hoping to capitalise on the opportunity to help those so-called digital-first organisations. The telco has established a new division within its enterprise arm called ‘Division X’. It has been tasked with scaling up and commercialising BT’s 5G private networking, IoT and edge computing solutions.
• Oracle Sparks Cloud Contrasts in Telecom Market — “Oracle Cloud for Telcos redefines the market,” he claimed. “In addition to our public cloud regions, we offer entire cloud stacks — inclusive of hardware, scaling, refresh, patches, and upgrades — in an opex model.” The company also claims the cloud control plane resides with network operators in the public or private scenario, and all data and metadata stays within the carrier’s environment. “We expect a mix of deployments, depending on locality to a public cloud region, level of cloud adoption, as well as the customer’s compliance requirements,” Leung explained. “We believe that telco IT, OSS/BSS, and some network functions are the most likely to move to public cloud today.”
• BT appoints MD of advanced enterprise comms division, inks ABB contract — UK telco BT has appointed Marc Overton as managing director of its newly created Division X unit, a part of its enterprise business established to commercialise the development of unique customer solutions including components such as 5G private networks, internet of things (IoT) and edge computing. “Division X is set to be a key growth engine for BT’s enterprise business, moving it from a telco to a techco by expanding into adjacent services that go beyond traditional calls and lines,” said Overton. “I am really excited to be leading a unit that will act as an innovation hub for our enterprise customers. We will be focused on turning emerging tech like 5G, IoT, edge and AI [artificial intelligence] into solutions that we can scale, sell, and which will drive sustainable growth.”
• Former AT&T exec takes COO job at RingCentral — “I look forward to working with the team to build on RingCentral’s core strengths of trust, innovation and partnerships to continue our leadership position in the exciting $100B+ cloud communications opportunity." Katibeh said in a statement. The AT&T Office@Hand service is based on the RingCentral Office platform, allowing employees to work “virtually anywhere” and enhance their ability to connect with their customers. They expanded their collaboration in 2018. AT&T announced last year it was giving “plain-old-telephone-service” (POTS) a makeover with the help of RingCentral.
• After ruining Android messaging, Google says iMessage is too powerful — Even if Google could magically roll out RCS everywhere, it's a poor standard to build a messaging platform on because it is dependent on a carrier phone bill. It's anti-Internet and can't natively work on webpages, PCs, smartwatches, and tablets, because those things don't have SIM cards. The carriers designed RCS, so RCS puts your carrier bill at the center of your online identity, even when free identification methods like email exist and work on more devices. Google is just promoting carrier lock-in as a solution to Apple lock-in. Despite Google's complaining about iMessage, the company seems to have learned nothing from its years of messaging failure. Today, Google messaging is the worst and most fragmented it has ever been. As of press time, the company runs eight separate messaging platforms, none of which talk to each other: there is Google Messages/RCS, which is being promoted today, but there's also Google Chat/Hangouts, Google Voice, Google Photos Messages, Google Pay Messages, Google Maps Business Messages, Google Stadia Messages, and Google Assistant Messaging. Those last couple of apps aren't primarily messaging apps but have all ended up rolling their own siloed messaging platform because no dominant Google system exists for them to plug into.
• Aptiv Acquires Wind River for $4.3B — “All the CEOs, CIOs are realizing that the next wave is operational technology, but in order to do that I have to bring all the investments I’ve made from IT and then bring them into the OT world. Not build from scratch — bring cloud native to the OT world,” CEO Kevin Dallas told SDxCentral in an August 2021 interview. Wind River claims its software touches more than two billion edge devices across more than 1,700 customers globally, and said it generated about $400 million in revenue in 2021. Aptiv said it plans to use Wind River Studio to develop software-defined systems for the auto industry, and continue to invest and develop the platform for other industries it serves, including telecom.
• JOHNSON CONTROLS ACQUIRES FOGHORN, EXPANDING LEADERSHIP IN SMART AND AUTONOMOUS BUILDINGS — "Value is increasingly being created by applying intelligence at the edge-device level to create real-time, secure, actionable insights," said Johnson Controls CTO Vijay Sankaran. "By pervasively integrating Foghorn's world class Edge AI throughout our OpenBlue solution portfolio, we are accelerating the pace towards our vision of smart, autonomous buildings that continuously learn, adapt and automatically respond to the needs of the environment and people."