Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020. Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Andreas Hegers, Head of Marketing,
Channels and Business Development at ECI
The Growing Conversation on Disaggregation, Gaming and a 5G Future
2019 was the year of 5G, with dozens of launches and many
more CSPs investing in 5G. That said, 5G is still in its infancy in terms of
technological and market maturity. The vast majority are focusing on the radio
and initial use cases. Yet our understanding of 5G use cases continues to grow.
The New Year promises to bring even more change and innovation to the telco
market as service providers race to adopt and adapt to the demands of gaming, smart
cities, IoT and more, while ensuring they have the infrastructure in place to
support these new customer demands.
Here are a few predictions going into 2020:
A New Era of Disaggregation and Openness in Optical
- Most carriers will tell
you they have many optical vendors in their network. Mostly a result of
history, mergers, and the longevity of the product life cycle, the
disaggregation trend is driven primarily by the need to spur price
competition amongst suppliers. Creating an "open marketplace" by
introducing disaggregation and openness are certainly too intriguing to be
ignored. Well thought out alien wavelengths features, and open
management/control interfaces are key to success. The natural consequence
of this, is that as Open Line Systems are more widely adopted, vendors will
be forced to think about new cost models.
400G ZR/ZR+ Will Change Networking
-
As optical technology continues to evolve, new
implementations of ZR optics and the upcoming, yet ill-defined, ZR+ are
expected to have a huge impact on optical networks, especially the
purpose-build DCI market. In theory, ZR optics allows one to plug coherent
optics in switches and routers without performance degradation as opposed to
standalone solutions, at least in simple network designs.
Gaming Becomes a Key Business Driver
-
As the popularity of gaming grows, ensuring low
latency offerings will become a key differentiator in how providers set
themselves apart from competition. This is true for both fixed and mobile
services, since no doubt, with 5G networks in place, mobile gaming will become
even more popular. Virtual Reality, the ‘hip' brother of today's gaming
consoles will become more popular due to the availability of more affordable
headsets and connectivity.
Virtualization Sneaks Further into Networks
-
Today's networks are still vastly based on customized,
well-optimized hardware, but the future might look different. In 2020, we will
see increasing adoption of virtualized infrastructure, where key network
functions run as software (VNFs) on commercial or bespoke computing platforms. The
closer to the access/edge, the more virtual it will get, partially since the
impact of the lower performance of COTS-based solutions is less relevant, but
also since there the flexibility of virtualized solutions can be utilized best.
Automation Becomes Reality
-
No longer a thing "of the future," expect to see
concrete concepts developed to change network operations (and many other areas)
with automation, ultimately making both operators and customers' lives easier.
Automation will contribute to optimization and workflow orchestration, so that service
providers can better design, deploy, manage and operate the service lifecycles
of all their services. BTW, this is an absolute prerequisite for automating (5G
driven) IoT service delivery.
Finally, A Real 5G Business Case (Fingers Crossed)...
-
The New Year will bring a better understanding
of 5G use cases beyond eMBB and FWA. In some cases, 5G will "only" support, for
others 5G will be the key enabler. Looking at the overhyped connected
cars/autonomous vehicles use case for example, very few expect 5G to be the
sole communication solution; it will likely be a mix of in-vehicle technologies
such as sensors/AI/C-V2X (Vehicle-to-everything) as well as public 5G
infrastructure. This will also drive real Edge Cloud and MEC deployments. We
should expect to see the first private 5G networks being built, with the role
of the MNO becoming much clearer. And while the 5G hype is alive and kicking, along
with the first 5G standalone deployments (for some, the REAL 5G), expect
to see discussions about 6G crop up.
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About the Author
With more than 25 years of experience in working in the
telecoms market, Andreas Hegers is ECI's Head of Business Development, Partners
and Marketing. He has made a career of advocating, explaining and selling the
values of telecommunication solutions.