Note: sign up here to join the RCR Wireless webinar on how to scale private 5G in Industry 4.0 (‘balancing customisation and simplicity in private industrial 5G networks’) on October 10, featuring speakers from Ericsson, EXFO, Verizon Business, and others.
This article is continued from here.
The big question with all of this – its redefined operations, its reformatted portfolio, its remade strategy – is how much is about Ericsson getting its enterprise-ducks in a row, and how much is about it shooting them down. Because make no mistake, arch-rival Nokia has made most of the running in the private 5G field over the last few years. So does all of its work, as presented at its big analyst day in Boston earlier this month, put Ericsson in the game, or ahead of the game?
But this question should be rephrased, actually. Because Ericsson has always been in the game, clearly; it consistently takes blue-riband public 5G deals in Europe and America, and it consistently ranks near the top of the table for private 5G sales in the same markets. But on the second score, which is what matters to us, it never actually ranks top; Ericsson trails Nokia for private cellular by a length, at least – in terms of sales and products, plus also messaging and ‘mindshare’.
So the question is whether Ericsson is on a level with Nokia, even, or whether it has leapfrogged the Finnish firm – which has positively sparked with ideas in the wild ranges of the Industry 4.0 market, even as it has struggled in comparison with Ericsson to land work with mobile operators in its traditional heartlands. So what’s the answer? Well, Nokia will have its opinion, and enterprises, integrators, and analysts will have theirs; but for its money, Ericsson is ahead, now.
Except it says nothing so vulgar as that. Instead, Manish Tiwari, in charge of private networks at Ericsson, is robust and diplomatic; he walks through the Swedish firm’s points of difference, in both its heritage carrier solutions and its reworked enterprise propositions, explaining how they will combine to create the “world’s best enterprise network”. At the same time, he acknowledges that all of its augmentation and integration aligns with efforts by rivals, and that the work is not finished.
He deals, first, with a question about whether Ericsson’s revised three-tier private 5G portfolio (actually comprising two private 5G propositions and a neutral host offer) is a match for Nokia’s five/six-tier setup, which runs the gamut from backpack-sized units, through ‘compact’ and ‘campus’ systems, to juggernaut macro-sized networks for utilities and cities. “What you see in this space historically are offerings that cater to different sizes and complexities,” he explains.
“So on one hand you have large-scale mission-critical networks, which afford a certain scale on the radio and core networks; and on the other, you have smaller distributed systems, which might require only a couple of radios per site, but which need to be managed together as a single network across a whole set of sites. And we have those covered.” It sounds like a simplified view, in comparison, except that Tiwari proceeds to explode the final point into a total crusade.
This point – about managing networks together, as one – is the thing that sets Ericsson apart, the message goes. From Nokia, Samsung, HPE, Cisco, Celona; from Huawei too, presumably, whatever it is up to in its unrestricted markets. “The realisation, based on feedback, is that these products have to evolve beyond just cellular networks. They have to be like enterprise networks. That’s the journey we are on. That’s how we are thinking about it – from the ground-up,” he says.
Tiwari flanks Åsa Tamsons, in charge of Ericsson’s whole enterprise business, on the call with RCR Wireless; where Tamsons explains the corporate vision and the semi-backwards integration of Cradlepoint, the US-based enterprise networking outfit it acquired in 2000, which developed the original NetCloud system at the heart of its pitch about unified network management, Tiwari gets into the weeds about how it all differs, and also how it doesn’t – from Nokia et al.
“The [NetCloud] platform reimagines how the [whole system] is built – by starting with what 5G offers, with its inherent security, mobility, and latency characteristics, and building the enterprise stack on top. Which has an implication for how the local-area network (LAN) is built, how the wide-area network (WAN) is built, and how security is thought about and policy is enforced. And on top, again, there are new capabilities like public/private roaming, which were not possible before.”
Does that mean that Ericsson has already rearchitected its private 5G proposition – to the point its offering is unique, now, among tier-one vendors? Tiwari’s response goes to the heart of it; its rivals will prick up their ears. “Yes, absolutely,” he responds. “Combination of the world’s most powerful RAN and seamless [IT integration] is a unique differentiation… We’ve invested so our products integrate seamlessly – so security and compliance teams feel good about adopting private 5G.”
This is important for both Ericsson’s story and the wider narrative. Can you simplify, and say more? Tiwari splits this spring-heeled enterprise stack into three layers, where a new base-level cellular system, replete with Ericsson’s own radio pyrotechnics, is interleaved with an existing software networking system, to command a developing device ecosystem, orchestrated by familiar software policies. “There is an Ericsson advantage,” he says of the first part, “which goes beyond just 5G.”
He explains: “5G brings an inherent advantage in that first radio layer – which 4G and Wi-Fi do not. Part of that is the latency, and part is just the kinds of frequency it uses. But we have this unique split radio architecture, as well, to separate the front-end from the backend – to create larger cell sizes than with a typical picocell. Which reduces the number of handoffs for an AGV on a factory floor, for example, and brings more deterministic performance. That is the Ericsson advantage.”
He goes on: “At the next layer, a lot of the ’customer transport’ is already in place. The enterprise wants to use their existing routers and firewalls. So we have to integrate into that transport – whilst keeping the deterministic performance we bring. [Which is the same] at the policy level, this third layer, where active directory comes in, and user and device authentication; all these granular policies about what can and can’t be done on the network, regardless of where a device is.
“Many customers have multiple facilities, and devices that move between. They don’t want each of their networks to operate as an independent entity, where they have to manually configure access for every site. They see it as a single enterprise network, across tens or hundreds of facilities. Which is the work we are doing with this single pane-of-glass management in NetCloud – to make it easy for enterprises to operate this [distributed architecture in a coherent and consistent way].”
All of which sounds like what the IT command-and-control within Industry 4.0 has said for years. Most memorably (in these pages), the IT team at Volkswagen, in charge of deploying and managing new 5G systems for its OT staff, took to the (5G) stage at the Hannover Messe industrial (OT) fair last year to remind Industrie 4.0 that IT is in charge, ultimately. “5G [is] just another technology to access the central IT network; [it] is a small part of a complete network,” it said.
So is the line from Ericsson that it has this sussed, finally? Are you saying that Ericsson is unique in the private 5G space? Or is every vendor on the same path, actually, and that it is just that – a journey; but one that Ericsson leads? Tiwari responds: “No, we are not the only ones. Every vendor trying to scale private 5G will come to the same conclusion – that you can’t have a black-box network that an enterprise IT department has no visibility or control over.”
He goes on: “Which is how cellular networks have mostly been built so far. The whole industry is trying to make it easy for enterprise buyers to adopt 5G – and to troubleshoot it with their existing tools, and secure it with their existing policy infrastructure. It just makes it easier for security and compliance teams, accountable for securing the network, to adopt it, and for IT folks, accountable for fixing the network, to deploy it. But the journey doesn’t just stop.”
Which is a diplomatic position to take. It rather undermines Ericsson’s big talk about differentiation; but then Nokia, at least, has never presented IT integration in quite such forceful terms. Neither have most others, actually – even as Athonet and Celona, for example, have presented theirs as IT-native / IT-friendly systems by comparison. Tiwari expands the view back the other way, too, to explain that, with its integration work, IT desks get control of IoT/OT devices on public 5G, too.
“The unique thing with 5G is its mobility inside and outside, and between buildings. Which is where our integration with [public] networks and operators is powerful. Because we can enforce the same policies on macro networks when devices leave private networks. It is an unsolved problem – until now. Smartphones, say, use MDM (mobile device management) to sort-of enforce policy when they leave IT networks; but MDM doesn’t work with IoT devices – so you have to rethink that.”
He adds: “We are doing a lot of work to bring these net-new capabilities – which have not been possible until now with cellular networks of the past – to enterprises.” But back to this IT/OT bungle; it seems striking that, while the OT brigade has been increasingly well engaged by 5G channels to scope use cases and business cases, the IT crowd – in charge of buying, provisioning, scaling, fixing private 5G systems – has been rather left out, possibly. Is that correct?
“Yes, that’s absolutely right. [The market] started by solving the connectivity problem, and there were a set of verticals where the connectivity problem was so acute that a new technology that solved the problem immediately gave customers enough ROI to invest in the technology. Which is why there has been such early and strong adoption in the mining sector, for example, where no other technology offers the bandwidth and range that is required. So that’s where it started.
“But customers want to deploy this at scale, now. Some are now transmitting more traffic on their private 5G and neutral host networks than on their Wi-Fi networks. Which is pretty amazing. It shows that, when everything is available, they automatically migrate to 5G – because it’s more powerful on the radio layer, and because it’s easy to use. But [to scale across sites], it also has to be better integrated with their IT networks, IT policies, IT ways-of-working. That is the journey.”
The other difference for Ericsson (versus Nokia; or for Nokia-versus; or for Nokia/HPE-versus) is how private 5G aligns with parallel edge infrastructure requirements. Nokia is bundling non-cellular Industry 4.0 componentry with its so-called MXIE play – in the form of industrial servers and applications. Bar some intrinsic positioning and pilot AI apps, mostly, it is really a sales exercise with partners, based on logic about how the edge is reorganised in chicken/egg fashion with 5G/AI.
But it is a clear marketing position for the Finnish firm, as well – which shows the company is pushing research and boundaries in Industry 4.0, but also suggests it is meddling in the broader Industry 4.0 ecosystem. Prompted, Tiwari responds that Ericsson will work with partners on everything else – which is not directly related to its core cellular expertise. “For us, it is a partnership play,” he says. “There are very strong and good partners out there [for those things].”
He goes on: “They bring important and useful capabilities to enterprises already. If we can build a network that makes those capabilities work for the applications enterprises are trying to enable, then we will have a strong and defensible position – in a partnership-play. If we tried to do it ourselves, we would be taking on too much – given the investment and evolution just to make this network the mainstream network for enterprise.”
It is the company line, clearly; the same, basically, as when it said it would only sell to enterprises via its operator customers. Its acquisition and integration of Cradlepoint – and just time-passing, as an unfamiliar market has become a more familiar one – has rendered its old talk about total allegiance to mobile operators rather meaningless, of course; it claims to have a well-oiled two-tier distribution network with Cradlepoint, with 3,000-odd channel partners of various stripes.
But at the same time, its ancient loyalties seem good, suddenly – as certain mobile operators have got the bit between their teeth, and square up to the enterprise market in a more measured fashion. Certainly, the likes of Verizon (Business), for example, arguably the leading operator in the private 5G market, sound like they are reading off the same hymn sheet – about integration and security. And so maybe the company line, a little modified in the channel, is the right one.
Tiwari says: “In the end, we want to build the world’s best enterprise network, with 5G at its heart – both on the LAN side and the WAN side. But to do that, we have to enable this, what I would call, ‘network-attached’ security and policy. Because without that, it is going to be hard for enterprises to deploy at scale. And so we have to own all of that. But beyond – beyond the network – we will partner with industry leaders [in each domain]. We will enable their applications on our networks.”
Suddenly, as written before, the whole picture zooms-out, and Ericsson ties its niche enterprise play into its master-plan with mobile operators – and the whole 5G industry. Tiwari comments: “Which means we will build APIs, and allow their applications to program the network, and take advantage of the unique capabilities that 5G brings to enterprises.” Tamsons rejoins, like the whole conversation has suddenly revealed the definitive narrative driver for the Swedish outfit.
She says: “So many players know how to fix problems and optimise processes in industrial environments. You know, they’ve spent 140 years to understand how mines work, say. And they will invest in those areas, and we will partner with them. We’re not trying to eat their lunch. Our job is to make sure they have the right network capabilities and network exposure – to access data, impose security, build solutions. That’s where the value is.
“And it is exactly the same with the whole strategy around network APIs – which is in another part of the house, but in the same house, ultimately. Because, as we scale this, it’s not just about managing handover between different networks, but about delivering applications across all of them. That’s where we have a real play, and an opportunity to change how networks are used in an application-driven, software-driven world.”
Sign up here to join the RCR Wireless webinar on how to scale private 5G in Industry 4.0 (‘balancing customisation and simplicity in private industrial 5G networks’) on October 10, featuring speakers from Ericsson, EXFO, Verizon Business, and others.
