Ok, let’s say there’s a group meeting, and that group will decide all the critical issues of enterprise networking for decades to come. There are vendors there, pushing things to their benefit. There are telcos there, too, hankering for traditional carrier-think supply-side initiatives. Who’s not there? You.
Of 544 enterprise tech executives who offered comments on important initiatives in networking over the last two years, none listed telecom standards. Not only that, the average enterprise networking type actually knows less about the progress of telecom standards than a typical tech enthusiast. This isn’t something new, either; enterprises have never made participation in telecom standards a priority. And despite the fact that these standards may be the single most important thing in their future IT planning, they still don’t see a need to drive them, participate in them, or even watch them. They should, and I’ll give you five reasons, all related to the in-progress 6G standard.
Reason No. 1: Support for IoT
The Internet of Things is a broad term used to describe network connections to sensors and controllers that report on or influence real-time, real-world, systems. Current transactional computing has done a lot for the productivity of office workers, but roughly 40% of workers aren’t at desks; they’re out in the real world doing things. IoT is essential in understanding that real world, what these workers are doing, and how that can be optimized.
IoT is also essential in building autonomous systems to drive real-world processes. You can hardly look at a tech publication these days without reading something about new “digital twin” applications. A digital twin is a computer model of a real-time process, synchronized with the real world via IoT sensor events. Its effectiveness is determined by just how synchronized you can make it.
Enterprises often say that 5G and 6G improve IoT support, but whether that’s meaningful is another matter. Network standards normally, as 5G does, focus on improving IoT service quality in general and latency in particular, but network latency is rarely the major source of delay in IoT applications. The real issue is where you host edge processing, including digital twin and AI components. 5G did not provide any standard way to couple edge hosting to the IoT network, and 6G won’t either, unless enterprises speak up and drive the initiative.
Reason No. 2: Fixed wireless access (FWA)
For almost every enterprise, the cost of extending their VPN to remote sites like branch offices, particularly those in less developed areas, is far higher than the cost of connecting their major sites. The reason is the access portion of the connection. Typical business VPN services rely on specialized carrier Ethernet or other high-speed facilities that may not be universally available, and when they are offered, they’re expensive. Cellular radio standards already allow a single tower to support not only mobile devices but fixed sites, and often at speeds that easily satisfy business needs. They do not normally support traditional VPN carrier Ethernet, however, and while consumer broadband FWA can be pressed into VPN service via an overlay VPN or SD-WAN technology, there is no standard to ensure that the various vendor strategies would interwork, forcing enterprises to rely on one vendor or self-integrate.
Cutting access costs by supporting VPN-over-FWA or standardizing SD-WAN interconnects could save enterprises as much as a quarter of their VPN costs, but neither is provided in 5G or assured in 6G. Enterprises could change that if they applied appropriate pressure.
Reason No. 3: Satellite, private mobile, public mobile, and wireline convergence
One of the barriers to a universal model of VPN connectivity for enterprise sites is that no single technology can cover them all. Another is that VPN availability requirements often require a backup access technology, but switchover to such an alternate is not a feature of the services, and it requires equipment and operations intervention by the enterprise.
One proposed 6G feature is a convergence of wireless, wireline, and satellite, which could in theory address both these points, creating a virtual-access service that could be mapped to all the available options. But whether the 6G standard would cover all the issues is not clear. For example, enterprises and some network vendors have pressed for an open model of public and private wireless, but whether that will even be addressed and how it might work is unknown. Lack of enterprise input in this area is already clearly limiting the chances of an optimum solution.
Reason No. 4: Security
Yes, security is critically important to you. Yes, your company spends a boatload of money on it, and yes, there’s still a perception that risk levels are too high. Why not welcome any 6G security? Because there’s no guarantee that, whatever it is, it will reduce your risk or your own security spending. You can bet that there will be some rubber-stamp salute-the-concept element of security in 6G, but how exactly would network access security improve your own security?
This is a topic that would really benefit from an exchange of views between enterprises and standards-writers. Should 6G improve “intercept” security? Encryption does that. Should it provide authentication? What wireless network doesn’t authenticate users to bill them? So what should, or could, 6G do? Good question, one that requires some back-and-forth to answer.
Reason No. 5: Openness
Yes, standards are supposed to be open, but when 5G standards emerged, it was quickly realized that they didn’t truly open all the elements of 5G infrastructure, which gave rise to the Open RAN movement. Not only that, the “open” goal was aimed more at the network operator than at the network service consumer. In 5G, Open RAN advanced openness to help enterprises deploy private 5G, but should 6G also provide an open model for edge hosting of applications, one that enterprises could adopt in the form of an edge computing service?
At least one enterprise I’ve heard from has built their own edge extension on an Open RAN application, but that’s a solution only for those with a need for private 5G. Even this company is looking for a partner to take the edge platform national. Why not make this a standards mandate? Enterprises could make that happen.
Collectivization required
Hopefully this convinces you to take telecom standards development in hand. If it does, then how do you go about it? There are several options, but they all involve a single point—collectivize. A single enterprise can’t hope to influence telecom standards, but a group of them can, if they act in unison and within a framework that already has a path of influence to the key standards activities. Telecom standards groups won’t admit enterprises, but there are related groups that do.
The IEEE has a number of 6G-related activities, but they don’t seem involved with all the issues essential to enterprise interests. There are a number of regional groups like the IMT-2030, Next G Alliance, and 6G Industry Association, but regionalization is compartmentalization not collectivization. The Next Gen Mobile Network Alliance (NGMN) has pretty broad membership categories, but they don’t explicitly include end users. The fact is that your seat may not only be empty, it might be nearer the meeting-room door than the table.
The cloud providers, your cloud providers, are the furniture movers here. Why? Think about those four reasons you should be involved in telecom standards. Every one of them is a good reason for cloud providers to want you to be involved, because every one could help them boost their profits. You might expect this would have given them the motivation to push these points on their own, but think on this; if you’re fighting a boxer, you box. They’re thinking of being a telecom competitor, so they’re thinking like telcos. They’ve let themselves be fenced into a limited mindset, and you enterprises are the ones who can break that pattern.
Talk to others in your vertical, join and talk about all this in any cloud provider users’ groups you can identify. Lobby….no, push. The others in the standards game have a head start, a home field advantage. But you have a secret weapon. You have the wallet, and the profits of the future have to come from it. So before you sit in that meeting, stand tall. You’re the buyer.
Source:: Network World