In The Arena by TechArena - 5G Service Delivery at the Edge with Ribbon

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

TechArena host Allyson Klein chats with Ribbon’s Matt Hurst about the opportunity of 5G services at the edge and how they’re reshaping business.

Welcome to the Tech Arena, featuring authentic discussions between tech's leading innovators and our host, Alison Klein. Now let's step into the arena. Welcome to the Tech Arena. My name is Alison Klein, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Matt Hurst, Senior Director of Global As-a-Service Solutions at Ribbon. Welcome to the program, Matt. Hi, Alison. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me on. Why don't we just start, Ribbon's new to the Tech Arena, why don't we just start with an introduction of the company and what your role as that global as a service solutions director is? Yeah, absolutely. So Ribbon Communications has been around for a few years now. Now,

some of your listeners may not be too familiar with the name Ribbon, but it's a combination of a number of companies that have come together. Some of the big names that your listeners may be familiar with are Sonos and GenBand. And we provide a range of security, software services, appliances for both enterprise and telecom providers. And that spans everything from packet optical infrastructure, providing that secure connectivity from the enterprise edge all the way through the core service providers network, and also applications that run on top of that infrastructure that help enable that higher degree of security for both enterprises at the edge, but also importantly, the service providers core network to make sure that the transactions are trusted and the voice applications,

the video applications, unified communications that transit those networks and the edge devices are trusted and secured. Thank you so much for that. The topic for today really is around edge computing. And we've been talking as an industry about the opportunity of edge computing across industrial, retail, media use cases for years. It appears that 2023 is a year that edge is going to break out into massive growth. I love your perspective on how this vast market is shaping and where you see the largest near-term opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. It's a really interesting time in our industry, to be honest. I think what we're seeing is a number of factors coming together.

More and more real-time applications are starting to drive the need for latency-sensitive and also geodiverse data versus traditional core and hub models. So where historically you may have had network infrastructure with the data set and the information held in the core of the network, we're now seeing that that's not up to the task for delivering that sort of expectations of users of real-time latency-sensitive applications. As more and more moves into the cloud, enterprises are shifting from non-time sensitive applications such as data backup, email for example, to things that are really latency sensitive, so video voice applications. Enterprises are moving more and more things into the cloud. That's in turn driving up the data uses, so data-intensive applications. And you can no longer kind of route that all the way back

into the core of the network. It's got to be served at the edge. And I think we're also seeing enterprises overcome their sort of initial concerns and challenges to do with data and security sovereignty. So that's kind of pushing more and more things to move into the cloud. And that is really driving this kind of shift in the network.

And I think that's where we're going to see that explosive growth on edge computing from 2023 and into the future. The expectations of the young generation, if you've got children of teenage years like I have, they have that expectation of instant latency-free access to everything. And some of that is really high data rates and high density applications. So they've kind of got to be moved and served more from the edge of the network.

Now, you deliver solutions to both service providers and enterprises across infrastructure, software, optical networks. What are the first one is some really advanced optical networking solutions that are going to help us handle that explosive data growth and that latency-sensitive apps that are really being pushed more and more into the mobile arena. So we hear about things in the 5G infrastructure and IoT, the Internet of Things, more and more smart devices, again, with that need for real-time response to inquiries and probes. And also things like chatbots, they've been hitting the headlines quite recently, and that is going to grow more and more in terms of that's something that's, again, data intensive. So I think the fundamental networking capacity and growth and efficiency is one aspect.

I think the second one is cloud optimized as a service solution to be able to deliver that sort of dynamic scale and secure managed services for both enterprise and operators. Because, as I say, everything's moving to the cloud. We've overcome those security concerns we put the first of all the networking infrastructure in place then we optimize all of the applications to be cloud ready they're the first two and i think the final one is one of the most critical important and that's actionable data insight so this is analytics to really look at it provides operators and also enterprises visibility of what's happening so they can both enhance their operations but also I think more critically for operators to be able to understand and know their customers in a far greater depth and to be

able to upsell value to those customers. I always sort of say that data is king, but data is only king when some intelligence can be applied to it and you can get some extra insights out of it. So I think that third pillar is really that sort of data insight and analytics piece. As you look at enterprise edge implementations, you're employing both fiber and private 5G networks. And I've been talking to many companies about private 5G and how this seems to be a great year of growth for this technology. I wanted to get your perspective. Delivering a trusted communication foundation with both technologies, what drives technology choice for the customer? And where are we as an industry in delivering private 5G as a reliable alternative in your perspective?

So yeah, driving technology choice for customers. I think we're kind of out the other side of the pandemic, hopefully not going to see that again. But I think what we experienced through that pandemic period is technology adoption was really driven by the urgent operational needs of of enterprise and customers there was not a great deal of thought went into the best way to do things it was the most urgent way in the class this way to do things so i think what we're seeing now is a more considered approach to that. And it really is now focused around primarily how operators can enhance customer value. How can they enhance customer experience? It's all around that differentiation amongst all the other players in the market about how we can differentiate from the competition, gain that insight into the customer and what's happening with the customers, what's happened with the network. Operational efficiencies, they obviously play in, but I don't think they're the prime driver. It's really about how the information

can be used to enhance the customer experience and differentiate. And I think 5G, private 5G in particular, I think it plays a very important part in helping to deliver those terms that I've described and managing the access and kind of a last mile piece. But it is only a part of the overall sort of architecture. And it'd be interesting to see how it pans out over the next couple of years, really. So it looks like an area of complete opportunity, but I know that you've had some successful deployments in this space with customers. Can you provide some glimpses of the early use cases that their new cloud as a service offerings for the enterprise edge and for enterprise collaboration. There's a lot of work going on. There's a lot of interest in this space because I think it's one of the low hanging fruits for operators around the globe.

So we're working with a number of them to help them move into expanding their offers into that new cloud world and those as-a-service offerings. We're also working with a large tier one operator in the India APAC region with our analytics portfolio, as I mentioned before, to really help them provide that critical insight using the data sets around their mobile network and their mobile users to be able to then improve the efficiencies in how they operate, but also to be able to then target usable

and valuable services for their customers. And then finally, we're working with a lot of global enterprises, large global enterprises, and in particular critical infrastructure, so rail, water, gas supplies, for example, on helping them secure their network edge and helping them deliver for the next generation solution that doesn't only increase their data throughputs on optical infrastructure, but it also supports

their move to what's called SASE architectures, which is secure access service edge architectures, which is Secure Access Service Edge architectures, to kind of build on top of what they're offering today to help their customers on the ramp into public cloud services in a secure way. You just described use cases from the gamut of industries. What really speaks to the opportunity in this space? We're recording this at Mobile World Congress and Ribbon seems to be everywhere in Barcelona. What are you most excited to see at the show from the industry and what are the top areas for continued edge innovation that the industry must prioritize in 2023?

So I'm particularly excited to sort of see how the 5G use case or use cases that have been talked about for a few years, how they're starting to mature and how IoT is starting to find its place in the world. Because I think there's, from my experience, there's been a lot of hype around 5G. And I think there's been a lot of confusion around how 5G is going to improve and enhance our lives. And I think we need to see a little bit how that's maturing, how it's been adopted by operators, and then how IoT fits onto that, because I think the two work very, very closely hand in hand. So I'd like to see how that's shaping up and also what innovations are starting to happen that are going to support that overall shift in enterprises in general, moving from a more traditional on-premises model with everyone in an office working day in 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, to a mobile-first world, which is, I think, where we're at post-pandemic. that's really critical for me about how that enterprise shift is being supported in the operators mobile networks and also how mobile data coverage is being enhanced with edge computing

as we talked earlier to build in those new architectures to help us deliver on those expectations of the real time applications that the next generation quite honestly they take for granted because that's all they've grown up with. So it's how do we enhance on that? Matt, thank you so much for spending time with us today. I know that I've learned a lot

and I'm sure our listeners have learned a lot as well. Where can folks find out more about Ribbon? As you mentioned, you have a long history in the technology space, but you are a new brand to everyone. Where can they find out more, learn about your solutions and engage with the team? Sure. So if anyone who's listening here is with MWC, please come and visit us.

We're around stand 2C42 in hall 2.1. Otherwise, we can be found at rbbn.com and also on all the social media platforms as the tag Rivencom. Fantastic. Get to engage with people. Thanks so much for being on the show today, Matt. It was a real pleasure. Thanks, Alison. Thanks for joining the Tech Arena.

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