Hybrid private networks extend the controls and policies of IoT devices in local 4G and 5G networks into wider macro coverage. In other words, they enable IoT devices registered on private enterprise-owned networks to roam securely off-site on public carrier-owned infrastructure. They effectively stretch the safety and security net provided by disconnected local-area private cellular ‘island’ networks outwards into the wild of traditional public mobile infrastructure – so IoT devices stay connected under the same terms to applications in central or local cloud servers.
This is the great promise of hybrid private networks, which will come to dominate how IoT services are provisioned in enterprise sectors, particularly for tracking and monitoring goods in and out of global supply chains. Where private 4G and 5G got earned its stripes in all-edge industrial deployments, as a powerful new infrastructure to network critical assets in factories and plants, the market has started to look outwards at how to connect local applications to the cloud, to draw on centralised efficiencies of hyper-scale computing, and also how to track assets into the field.
Unlike most private networks today, where all IoT devices and data are generally retained on site within the boundaries of a local connectivity-and-compute setup, hybrid private networks allow for IoT devices (and their data or signalling) to go beyond the jurisdiction of the local-area cellular network. Controls and policies can be applied to extend the security and management of the devices, applications, and data – to ensure the original private-network security shield is effectively extended even as enterprises track their assets on carrier-owned public infrastructure.
But the architecture is different, clearly. Typically, standalone private 4G and 5G networks retain both the data and signalling within the confines of a locally-owned network geo-fence. This allows for two key benefits: neither the data nor the signal can be intercepted by the outside world; and their local provenance invariably means lower latency, just because they are not required to make the return trip all the way to a central cloud server. Everything – all the componentry, all of their controls, all of the data – is kept on site.
Whereas hybrid setups allow for some machine data or network functions to link with the cloud. Indeed, the core network itself may be hosted in a centralised public or private cloud, away from the site itself. Enterprises with multiple sites, managing multiple private networks, may prefer to retain a common control-plane via a hosted core network in a central data centre; others with multiple sites / networks may choose to run the user plane for managing data and applications off-site in the cloud. These are common options, anyway.
Which also makes hybrid integration with public network infrastructure for mobility cases a more natural and familiar choice for many enterprises. The sticking point, as always, is security. The single biggest challenge for IoT is security (of data, devices, networks), with 50 percent of enterprises citing it as an obstacle to their IoT investments, says an Omdia survey. At the same time, the single biggest benefit of fully-private 4G and 5G networks is security, says the same crowd; 60 percent cite security, and a further 52 percent cite local control.
But US carrier services company Syniverse, offering a hosted core and global roaming for hybrid private network use-cases, says it has solved security for hybrid private networks, as well – so the same policies and controls translate to macro coverage when IoT devices roam outside of private host networks. Syniverse claims unique capabilities of its own, in conjunction with “unmatched solutions” from trusted solution vendors and integrator partners; namely, its Secure Global Access solution secures the northbound channel on macro networks.
Kathiravan Kandasamy, vice president of product management at Syniverse, explains: “Secure Global Access offers a network entirely isolated from the public internet that enables businesses a full-scale solution that avoids cyber threats. It bypasses the public internet, shielding the exchange of sensitive data from potential threats, and further reducing the attack vector for critical IoT deployments. When combined with strong embedded device-side security from IoT vendors, enterprises have a powerful end-to-end solution to address their security concerns.”
The key market for hybrid network infrastructure is, as always, the transportation and logistics industry. Syniverse suggests a scenario, very familiar, where a logistics company manages a collection of hybrid 4G/5G networks in distribution centres across a country in a centralised core network in the cloud. Data is collected from sensors and vehicles across its warehouses; the revelation, says Syniverse, is the company can impose the same policies and controls, and retain the same private security, at all sites, and all-roads in-between its suppliers and customers.
