Wireless connectivity has grown so ubiquitous, it can feel like just the background of modern life. Need to get to the web or important cloud applications? Just flip open your phone or laptop, and there they are. You barely need to think about it. Except, that is, when businesses have connectivity needs that current cellular and Wi-Fi networks can’t meet.
In the past, organizations with these kinds of requirements had few good options. Now though, there’s a new option that brings together the best of Wi-Fi and public cellular networks. It’s private 5G, and it’s coming to an enterprise near you.
If you’re part of a service provider organization, system integrator (SI), or other business selling connectivity to enterprise and industrial customers, you’re going to want to pay attention. Because private 5G is a huge business opportunity, and HPE can help you make the most of it.
The growing need for new kinds of networks
Private 5G promises a more reliable, flexible, and deterministic kind of wireless connectivity to fuel digital transformation in the enterprise. It’s not a replacement for Wi-Fi. Rather, it augments Wi-Fi with 5G cellular services that are more secure, more reliable for delay-sensitive applications, and more effective at connecting complex and hard-to-cover spaces. Since it’s “private,” enterprises can bring the security and coverage benefits of 5G to their business operations, but in a way that they fully control. And, assuming they choose the right partners, they can blend private 5G with existing Wi-Fi networks and enjoy seamless interworking across both.
What can your enterprise and industrial customers do with private 5G? Things like:
- Connect huge numbers of edge devices, at higher bandwidths, to support new Internet of Things (IoT), telemedicine, and artificial intelligence (AI) applications
- Provide ultra-low latency and seamless indoor/outdoor mobility for robotics, autonomous guided vehicles, drones, and other Industry 4.0 applications
- Provide highly portable, highly secure, self-contained networking technology to cover remote sites with no access to traditional cellular networks and limited onsite technical staff
Those are just some of the private 5G use cases that enterprises are now exploring. And we’re at the very beginning of this story. Industry analyst Technology Business Research, Inc. forecasts enterprise spending on private 5G will grow at a 71% CAGR through 2025, representing billions of dollars across every major vertical.
Capitalizing on Private 5G
With so much customer interest, major stakeholders across the industry are already racing to meet the growing demand. If you’re part of a telecom business services team or SI working with enterprise and industrial customers, HPE can help you craft a private 5G offer that stands out from the crowd.
HPE has a long, proven track record of innovation and leadership in both cellular and Wi-Fi networks. We were the first to bring a fully cloud-native 5G core network to market with the groundbreaking HPE 5G Core Stack. We continue to be a top choice in Wi-Fi for enterprises around the globe with Aruba Networks. And, unlike some vendors in this space, we can enable seamless interworking across your customers’ private 5G and indoor Wi-Fi networks today, with even deeper integrations on the horizon.
HPE’s private 5G offer consists of the HPE 5G Core Stack—to deliver open, agile, highly automated 5G core networks—and 5G radio technologies from our industry-leading partners. You can use pre-integrated radios from Airspan or JMA Wireless that have been validated for the HPE 5G Core Stack, or any other vendor you choose.
When you work with HPE, you can bring flexibility and capabilities to your customers that other private 5G offers will be hard-pressed to match. That includes:
- Fast, easy deployment, with the ability to automate most of the setup and management of customer networks via HPE Service Director, and enable customers to get their private 5G networks up and running quickly, even without onsite technical expertise
- Low risk and minimal upfront investment with pay-as-you-go pricing based on HPE Greenlake and Aruba Network-as-a-Service cloud offerings
- Deployment flexibility from edge to cloud, with options from ruggedized, self-contained “5G in a box” configurations, to hybrid cloud implementations where high-performance/low-latency network functions are deployed at the edge but managed centrally
- Multi-tenant capabilities to manage customer networks, including a self-service enterprise portal, service provider admin portal, and agile configuration and change management
- Multi-vendor openness with a solution that works with 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) systems from our partners, and is both standards-based and open, so you can use alternate 5G network functions as needed.
Tomorrow’s digital enterprises have ambitious plans. With new digital transformation initiatives, they aim to unleash mass-scale IoT connectivity, fully automate factories, bring state-of-the-art cloud and edge applications to places they’ve never existed before, and much more. Private 5G will be a core enabler for many of these innovations. And customers are already surveying the marketplace for the right partners to help them achieve their vision.
Are you ready to bring the performance, reliability, and flexibility of private 5G to your enterprise and industrial customers? Let HPE help you tap into the potential of this huge and growing market.
To learn more, see the press release or download the private 5G brochure. And, for more details about how HPE is helping service providers advance their 5G vision, visit www.hpe.com/5G.
Andy Bryant
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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AndyBryant
Marketing leader for HPE's telco solutions, working the strategy across our telco software, telco services, telco grade infrastructure, and Aruba at the enterprise edge.