Note, this article is continued from a previous entry, under the title: Pragmatism, partnership, progress – private 5G pipe ‘doubles’ for Verizon. Go here for the first part.
As written, and to recap… Jennifer Artley is in charge of the fast-expanding ‘5G acceleration’ team at Verizon Business, tasked with composing enterprise solutions out of the firm’s disparate networking expertise in low- and high-power IoT, plus localised edge computing to make it all tick. She joined three years ago from BT, and the new team has been running in earnest for about 18 months. “We are focused on private networks and edge, including IoT. We were like little bits of this and little bits of that, [and so we] brought [them] together under one leadership team – with the intention of accelerating the market for private networks specifically,” she says.
Within the structure, Artley has formalised a sales team (“basically an overlay team”), an ecosystem team (“working with systems integrators and cloud hyperscalers, plus hardware and software vendors”), and specialist teams variously to handle strategy, governance, and product management. She explains: “That is all sort of in one team, as an incubator for private networks and edge [solutions] within Verizon Business – so we can move faster, in a more agile manner.” Arvin Singh, who sits next to her in an MWC meeting room in Barcelona, was recruited internally as global head of 5G solutions and innovation (as “sales solutions architect”) in late 2022, as the division limbered up.
Singh says: “Telcos have been doing networks for decades, and private networks in some form for a decade at least. But the hygiene wasn’t there. And Jen’s team, the practice, had been looking at all these complex areas – all this manufacturing with robotics, and so on. Which is exciting. But there is a roadmap and a sales cycle, and a whole ecosystem that goes with it. So frankly, Industry 4.0 has lagged two-to-three years behind the hype on private networks. And the number-one mission Jen tasked us with 18 months ago was to land-and-expand – without losing sight of those horizon-two/three possibilities. The question was: what can we do now to get in the game?”
Again, as written, Verizon Business has ‘landed’ as much business already in 2024 as it did in all of 2023. Which might, of course, be four-times not-very-much. But the headcount in Artley’s ‘acceleration’ unit stands at 250-odd, up from about 150 in early 2023, and Verizon Business is in the game – mostly, perhaps surprisingly – via the US “middle-market”. In other words, even as deep-pocketed global enterprises kick the tyres on complex Industry 4.0 integrations, as a precursor for mass-market adoption, Verizon Business is switching on light-touch 4G (LTE) and 5G in small- and mid-sized firms (SMEs), in shared-access CBRS airwaves and localised tranches of its own spectrum.
In the end, the SME market is the mass market, so far as business goes; it is the engine room of the global economy. The statistics are hard to judge, but the Small Business Administration says SMEs make up 99 percent of private businesses and 47 percent of the private workforce in the US; the numbers tell the same story in most ‘industrial’ nations. But the mass market is supposed to follow the early market, and the early private-5G market was supposed to be about production-line pyrotechnics in Industry 4.0. “Honestly, we’d written-off this part of the market. We just didn’t think the SME sector was the right target for private networks,” says Artley.
“That view has changed tremendously over the last three years, as we have started to see success – in farms and zoos, and music events.” Of course, most private 5G deployments are not really about AI whizz-bangery in Industry 4.0, either; the early value, as well as the initial return, is mostly about reliable connectivity for workers, and sometimes orchestrated mobility for machines. Issues of timing (industrial upgrades, cellular capabilities) and trust (hard-won in critical enterprise) mean not much else is possible just yet, beyond proofs and trials. But the perceived cost of private cellular has also meant private 5G has been mostly a rich company’s plaything.
This is the thing that Verizon Business has managed to turn on its head in the US enterprise market – to “get in the game” – by answering the question of cost by demonstrating the value of connectivity. Actually, it’s the same connected-worker story that gets told about most Industry 4.0 victories, except it takes place at a patchy point-of-sale, rather than a remote point-of-maintenance. Artley talks about connecting a tulip farm in New Jersey in picking season (“the selfie spot of the East coast”) – where the gramers hog the public 5G network. “The point-of-sale was so slow that the flowers would just get abandoned; the farmers would watch their inventory [disappear] on the ground.”
Artley explains: “We deployed a private network and they saw a return within a month – just because they could suddenly manage their operations separately from the macro network, which was bogged down by all the visitors.” Some of its mid-market installations are permanent, as with the flower farm; others are temporary portable drag-and-drop affairs, such as at concerts and events. The point is its enterprise portfolio – comprising network solutions from Nokia, Ericsson, Celona, and network spectrum in licensed and unlicensed bands – is agile enough, now, to cater to them, variously, says Singh.
“We saw early on how Wi-Fi is challenged in these environments – where sales terminals struggled with interference because all the guests were on the network. We have different arrows in our quiver – to segregate different networks for business-critical operations, back-of-house operations, the guest experience.” It’s not just Wi-Fi, though; as per the tulip example, sometimes the discipline is to unburden the public cellular network of the private enterprise traffic. Singh makes reference, also, to the “robust ecosystem” that has grown up in the 3.55-3.7 GHz CBRS band in the US; as written, the message is that the team-play of ‘digital’ enterprise sales is being embraced at Verizon Business.
We will come back to some of that; but what about the big-ticket Industry 4.0 opportunity with global enterprises, beyond these “mom-and-pop affairs” in CBRS spectrum? Because they can’t be the focus for Verizon Business, surely – when there is a chance, suddenly, to set up as a 5G provider to businesses in any market (spectrum permitting) in the world? “Not at all. We run the whole gamut,” responds Artley. “We’re finding applications for more basic CBRS deployments, but the most exciting opportunities are in global enterprise.” She offers up its multi-core installation at an Audi test track in Germany, to duplicate global network conditions at a single site, as an example.
Artley says: “Think about the innovation cycle with the R&D team at Audi – I mean, that was a long development cycle because we were working together to see what was possible. And what’s possible is pretty phenomenal.” There is more about the project here; but the conversation at MWC skips to other (unnamed) references, and to how the ‘land-and-expand’ motto translates to large enterprise. She says: “In the mid-market, it means volume – getting lots of wins on the board. In global enterprise, it is about location – so we sell the first location, the first network instance, and then expand the use cases on top, depending on the device ecosystem, or else we sell to more locations.”
Verizon Business sold its first private LTE / 5G (probably LTE?) network to an oil and gas refinery in August, she says; it sold five more to the same customer in October, and seven more in December. “They see the benefit, and want more of it – and so it scales geographically.” Similarly, she tells how a pharmaceutical company, another industrial ‘first’ for the team, has recently taken a private LTE / 5G network from the company, and returned “two months later… with a much more complex brief”.
She says: “It is a more complex network, and a more complex solution – and more complex than the oil and gas example. It is 15 million square feet and 30 buildings; 1,800 radios and one network. It is the whole campus, expanded from a small-scale setup at a different location.” Are those deployments in America, or in Europe or elsewhere? “They are in the US. But that pharmaceutical company, for example, wants to know how to expand to the 80 countries it is in – because it wants one [network] topology, consistently.” Which, in a market that has found scalability generally difficult over the last couple of years, represents two-way ‘expansion’ (scalability), at least.
She adds (without prompting): “We are active in 11 markets; we see another three or four coming in the second quarter, and a few more after that. But the conversation internally is how can – based on what we know, maybe even together with large customers like this – have influence globally, where governments are still reluctant to offer enterprises the right spectrum.” As clarification, the market-count (11) refers to countries that have made spectrum available for local enterprises to run private networks. (Verizon Business is in 150 countries, selling IP networks, security services, and whatever-other enterprise services.)
But it still sounds funny (though it shouldn’t) to hear an operator – and even an operator-owned enterprise systems-and-services business, at a remove from its national operator parent-group – pressing for more liberal spectrum policy. Singh explains: “Once the country makes the spectrum available, the enterprise acquires it or the system-integrator partner acquires it, and then we come in and drop in the private network expertise. We’re doing this in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa – so that’s the 11 countries, or so; and then, yeah, another three-to-five will come online.”
It is as if, suddenly, after all the blame about the lack of industrial 5G devices in the market and industrial 5G capabilities in the network, and the lack of industrial knowhow in the 5G ecosystem, that none of this matters very much; that the enterprise market is rangy enough that 5G can find its mark in enterprises of all types and sizes, in all places (if not for spectrum regulation in lots of them). There’s a slight pause; is the team surprised, at all, at how its strategy has worked, and how the market has developed? “Surprised? I don’t know. But we are pleased with the momentum. That’s for sure. It proves the value of what we’re doing, and helps to justify the investment in it.”
Singh explains again how private 5G has found its feet as a straight connectivity fix outside of a strict Industry 4.0 footprint: “In most cases, to start with, it’s a coverage need, getting into the basics and starting with a small footprint. And then expanding [use cases] in the same physical environment or expanding to multiple sites. So we have the confidence now, with the kind of successes we’ve seen in 18 short months.” And so, even as Verizon Business scales “horizon-two/three” projects in oil-and-gas production and pharmaceutical manufacturing, plus in a whole bunch of ports, are many of these new ‘land-and-expand’ gigs in what you might call ‘carpeted verticals’ – in retail parks and offices and venues?
He responds: “Yes. It’s less of a rugged conversation, more of a carpeted one. There are lots of corporate sort-of next-gen campus networks [to start with, in industry, too]. But you deploy once and it’s modular – so you start adding capabilities all the time.” The point, as well, is these industrial 5G devices and capabilities are in the works, and will come available, and gain sufficient trust that hard-nosed industrial clients will scale serious-minded Industry 4.0 systems over time; and meanwhile, there is good business to write. The other thing, which the conversation suggests, is that the cultural approach within operators to selling digital-change has shifted.
Asked if closer alignment of its 5G, IoT, and edge componentry in its new structure has helped Verizon Business to better-design enterprise solutions, Artley responds: “It’s less about that. I mean, it’s a lot about that. But it is really about this outcome-based conversation. We’ve gone from selling technology to having conversations that bring OT and IT together. And that’s a skillset; that’s a unique skill-set that a lot of general core [network] sellers don’t have. The ability to engage with customers in a different kind of conversation – that’s what has accelerated this.”
This “outcome-based conversation” is being held with partners, too, and notably with system integrators, she says. “The ecosystem is critical – being able to go to market with the global systems integrators – and in some cases enabling them to sell through. Not all systems integrators are created equal; they have different strengths and priorities.” So who’s the best? “That’s not a fair question,” she laughs. “But the importance of the ecosystem can’t be understated. The telco who wins will be the one who is easiest to do business with. So being able to modularize the conversations enough – so we bring in this player for push-to-talk, this one for a 5G torque tool; to put the right players together in a solution – is a game-changer for us. It is different from how we’ve ever done business before.”
Again, talk about ‘priming’ enterprise sales is old-hat; the message is Verizon Business will go to market any-way it can. Artley closes: “We’re open to both models. We have a specialised selling team, and we have an edge ecosystem team, driving the practice work with system integrators. And we have tech partners with Industry 4.0 incubation labs, working with 40-odd developers on solutions for critical industry. But quite frankly, the goal is to enable enough capability so the ecosystem flourishes even when we’re sleeping. Right? We will be agile in this market, and I reserve the right to flex and move as the market shifts. We’re in a very different place today than we were a year ago.”
