Each application needs to be measured
against user need.
We think one of the most important
benets for IT managers who are seeing
company applications increasingly being
supplied through a cloud-based model is
application workow management.
One of the challenges facing service
providers, multi-site businesses and IT
departments is the ongoing role of MPLS
technology, recognising that legacy
WAN contracts may still be in place. e
opportunity to implement a hybrid WAN
solution model incorporating both MPLS
and SD-WAN provides the opportunity for
organisations to harness the best attributes
of both technologies and begin a phased
migration process from MPLS to SD-WAN
now, as Nick Sacke, Head of IoT and
Products, Comms365 explains.
“In a cloud dominated user environment,
the quality and reliability of the WAN
to deliver application performance has
become an essential component of IT
infrastructure design. e current consensus
is that traditional MPLS networks struggle
with the volume of Internet-based cloud
trac, the diversity of routing locations
(applications are delivered from multiple
clouds, not a single datacentre), and
ensuring application performance across
both MPLS and Internet-bearing services.
e impact of this is an increase in
the number of customers evaluating and
requesting SD-WAN solutions from their
service providers. Indeed, it would be hard
to nd an organisation today taking the
decision to go for traditional MPLS without
considering the SD-WAN alternative.”
Given the increasing commitment
to improving user experience and
enhancing the management of application
performance, it is the ease with which the
benets of the SD-WAN technology can
be utilised – from agility and rapid change
to multi-linked failover and application
prioritisation – that should be an essential
consideration.
And as such, the way in which
organisations decide to deploy SD-WAN
will be key. Right now in the UK it is the
Managed SD-WAN service model that
dominates the market.
5G
From the past to the present and now the
near future, 5G represents an opportunity
for business and channels. We have around
NETWORKS & OPERATORS
50 cities and towns already turned on to 5G
by the key network operators – ree, O2,
Vodaphone and EE, with many more in the
pipeline.
Each time that we move from one
mobile generation to the next business
opportunities expand, new entrants come
into the market with new ways of doing
things and new applications become money
spinners.
What does 5G oer over 4G?
ere are three main strands.
e headline change is the increase in
speed; up to 10x or 20x the maximum
being achieved by 4G – we are talking tens
of Gigabits per second. Whilst all those
headlines shout out the ability to download
full length feature lms in seconds, it is the
business benets that the channel will be
interested in selling to their customers.
Clearly multi-Gigabit speeds will be
great for real time applications such as video
conferencing, but you should look wider
than this.
20Gbps speeds will out-perform most
current xed line services so 5G will become
a serious contender at least for branch oce,
remote oce and homeworker connectivity
especially for access to UCaaS applications.
If you add into that mix the second main
benet – 5G has a latency of a mere 1ms
compared to 4Gs 20 to 30ms then 5G is
a contender for any real-time application
– many of which we don’t even know of
today.
e third strand in the benets stack is
the density of connectivity. 5G will support
up to a million devices per square kilometre
– again, ten times that of 4G. e obvious
application here is IoT but the truth here is
that IoT has failed spectacularly to achieve
anywhere near its own hype of ten years
ago.
In 2010 Gartner and other top-shelf
names predicted that by now we would have
50 billion devices connected to the internet
whereas we have globally achieved just 9
billion and the majority of those are mobile
devices.
5G could of course be the propellant that
IoT has been waiting for but that is unlikely
as it does not remove backhaul issues nor
the supply of edge equipment that also
bedevils the application.
Having said this, that increased density
capability is perfect for ‘smart city’
applications. e issue here is that smart
cities do not have channel suppliers on their
radar. Now smart campuses – that’s another
story.
www.commsbusiness.co.uk www.commsbusiness.co.uk C Chhaannnneel lP Prroofifileless 2 2002109 || 5577
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