Futurum Tech Webcast

In this episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast, Cybersecurity Shorts series, analysts Shelly Kramer and Fred McClimans cover the goings on in the world of cybersecurity. This week's conversation includes the Facebook outage and (unrelated) claims of scraped data from 1.5 billion Facebook users available in a hacker forum, as well as a deep dive into the deets on the Twitch hack. They also covered the Syniverse hack that provided access to millions of text messages and customer information for a period of many years (and the impact on Syniverse's teleco customers), the Atos win of an R&D project with ESA, along with a new bill proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren given victims of ransomware attacks 48 hours to report payments to their hackers.

In this episode of Futurum newest webcast series, The 5G Factor, I'm joined by my colleague and fellow analyst Ron Westfall to explore and break down some of the most exciting news, trends, and partnerships in the 5G ecosystem. In this week's episode we covered some exciting 5G news, including:

The future of cloud gaming — it's powered by 5G. The future of cloud gaming is exciting, especially when powered by 5G end-to-end network slicing, which is revolutionizing cloud gaming services. We explore how this capability, the E2E network slicing, has been optimized for cloud virtual reality game streaming using Ericsson's networks, service orchestration, and monetization tools, all of which will be instrumental in enabling communication services providers (CSPs) to "get a slice" of the action and, more importantly, monetize their networks. Ericsson's E2E network slicing is definitely something to keep an eye on, as we know it will be a key enabler for innovation and opening up a myriad of 5G opportunities for CSPs across multiple industry segments, including healthcare, government, transportation, energy and utilities, media and entertainment.

Vodafone's Multi-Million Market NB-IoT Deal is, Well, Pretty Massive. Cellular narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) is in the news this week as UK-based Vodafone is reportedly on the brink of announcing its biggest ever IoT airtime supply deal outside of China. Carrier managed services can serve as a harbinger for how 5G and IoT can work on a mass market level – fleet management, transportation, warehousing, etc. where a mobile IoT is required. Our conversation covered why this deal is a big one and what it marks the beginning of.

IBM Partners with Telefonica for Cloud Native, 5G Core Network Platform. More exciting 5G news of the week is around IBM's partnership with Telefonica to help the telco implement its UNICA NEXT 5G core network platform. IBM's intelligent automation software and services will come from IBM's Global Business Services unit and our conversation uncovered why this is also a very big deal – for both IBM and Telefonica.

DISH Makes a Tasty Treat of its Greenfield Cloud-Native 5G Network with IBM as a Partner. In another win for IBM's Global Business Services unit, this new smart network will be agile, scalable, and fully virtualized, looking to benefit enterprise customers across a multitude of industry verticals.

Nokia addresses the alarming increase in DDos attacks. With DDos attacks that disrupt network traffic and servers growing by a massive 154% between 2019 and 2020, largely targeting financial services, telecoms, and government agencies, but now spreading out to target businesses of all kinds and all sizes, Nokia's move here to build network security into its latest gen silicon is an impressive — and much needed — solution.

In this episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast, Interview Series, my guest John Bruno, the VP of Strategy for PROS, and I are having a conversation about the ever-changing state of B2B commerce. Today's business customers are expecting more and more from companies in terms of not just product quality, but also customer experience. And a large part of customer experience is providing compelling offers in a way that is fast, consistent, easy, and transparent, and offering relevant prices to make the ordering process an efficient, hassle free one. That's a lot to ask at the end of a global pandemic. The good news is that smart technology solutions exist that can help.

Our discussion centered on the following:

• Trends in the industry, including our research in the 2020 B2B Digital Buyer's Journey, indicating that some 80% of B2B buyers have eliminated traditional buying cycles and 63% said their business and tech requirements would never go back to pre-pandemic levels.
• The shift in customer expectations over the course of the last eighteen months and how this has impacted what we're seeing in the digital buyer's journey.
• Challenges organizations face with their omnichannel ecommerce strategies.
• The nuances that organizations must navigate with their pricing strategies.
• The critical role that pricing plays in successful ecommerce strategy.
• How prices can prices be delivered so that buyers can have the best experience possible transacting via eCommerce
• The shift by PROS to SaaS offerings as part of their platform and how PROS Smart Price Optimization and PROS Smart Configure Price Quote are being used by savvy customers.

John shared some customer success stories as part of our conversation, illustrating the PROS platform in action and the specific ROI customers using pricing optimization technology are realizing.

Background research: https://futurumresearch.com/research-notes/pros-launches-new-saas-editions-of-pricing-platform/

Futurum PROS report: https://futurumresearch.com/research-reports/how-ai-price-optimization-can-play-a-significant-role-in-both-business-growth-and-customer-experience/

For this vignette of a recent episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast, part of the 5G Factor series, analysts Ron Westfall and Shelly Kramer examine a report from Vodafone and WPI Economics advocating on the UK government to accelerate the deployment of 5G and IoT technology to help meet zero emission goals by 2050.

Their discussion covered:

• The shrewd timing of Vodafone lobbying the UK government to advance nationwide sustainability goals after working with Ericsson to improve 5G network efficiency capabilities across the London portion of its network.
• How digital 5G and IoT technology can accelerate the attainment of UK net zero emission objectives (i.e., 4% reduction per annum) by targeting three verticals in particular: Manufacturing, Transportation, and Agriculture.
• Why Vodafone's proactive stance in working with the UK government to advance nationwide sustainability goals has society-wide benefits and not only telecommunications.

Ron and Shelly view Vodafone's approach to working with the UK government in offering practical 5G and IoT solutions across three key industry verticals to achieve nationwide zero emission goals is laudatory and merits emulation by other mobile ecosystem players.

For this vignette of a recent episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast, part of the 5G Factor series, analysts Ron Westfall and Shelly Kramer explore Nokia's digital twin technology and its potential to significantly boost European communications service providers (CSPs) a significant revenue boost.

Their discussion covered:

• Why digital twin technology is gaining broader market acceptance and is directly applicable to 5G network design and builds.
• The role of Nokia's digital twin solution for augmenting 5G network development in areas such as beamforming optimization and the selection of optimum bean sets in 3D recreated environments.
• The market impact of Nokia's assertion that for a European CSP, using a digital twin, Nokia's solution provides for 44% higher revenue than traditional methods.

Ron and Shelly see Nokia's digital twin technology has holding great promise for European CSPs as well as CSPs in other regions and can advance not only the technical demands of 5G network development, such as optimized beamforming, but also financial objectives (i.e., bean counting).

For this vignette of a recent episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast, part of the 5G Factor series, analysts Ron Westfall and Shelly Kramer examine Amdocs supplying the business support systems, including 5G monetization capabilities, for what Orange is touting as Europe's first 5G SA end-to-end experimental cloud network being built out in France.

Their discussion covered:

• Why Orange promoting its 5G SA network development as an experimental cloud network is a shrewd marketing move that aligns with pragmatic expectations for 5G SA rollouts.
• The expanding role of AI in assuring and accelerating the automation of business processes and operations in software-centric, cloud native environments.
• With Orange targeting the support of hundreds of users by the end of 2021, it will become incumbent for the operator to produce lessons learned and viable use cases at the beginning of 2022.
• How Amdocs gains a sizable marketing boost from its inclusion in Orange's multi-vendor implementation of the operator's experimental hybrid cloud 5G SA network.

Ron and Shelly view Orange's progress in rolling out its experimental 5G network as key to boosting its overall open 5G objectives, including Open RAN assimilation, and helping Europe keep pace with 5G SA deployments in North America, China, and Northeast Asia.

In this vignette from a recent episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast, part of The 5G Factor series, analysts Shelly Kramer and Ron Westfall discuss The National Science Foundation's (NSF) establishment of SpectrumX, a new center for wireless spectrum research in the U.S.

The NSF has earmarked $25 million over the course of the next 5 years for research. They're focused on developing new ways of sharing and managing radio airwaves, which of course is a finite resource. This is crucial research because, as Ron pointed out, 5G technology supports Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), which allows for operators to share both LTE and 5G within the same frequency band. This is an area covered very closely by Ron and Shelly, and in this short conversation, they shared insights on the exciting benefits they see coming from SpectrumX. These include:

• Increased collaboration with stakeholders, researchers, industry partners, and government agencies
• Ensuring the U.S. is positioning itself to lead the future of wireless technologies and systems
• How this research will support future network iterations including 6G.

All of the above have huge implications for the future of 5G. Ron and Shelly believe the research and collaboration possibilities with SpectrumX will open new doors and drive the field forward.

In this episode of The 5G Factor, a Futurum Research production, analysts Shelly Kramer and Ron Westfall discuss AT&T's partnership with the U.S. Military in a three-year R&D agreement focused on 5G experiments with the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), the Department of the Navy's applied research university.

In this Futurum Tech Webcast, Futurum Lead Analyst Shelly Kramer sits down with Gunter Appel and Jan Klockgeter of aconso for a conversation on digitizing HR documents and the difference this can make for enterprise organizations.

For this vignette of a recent episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast, Part of the 5G Factor series, analysts Ron Westfall and Shelly Kramer examine the implications of the collaboration between Ericsson and Qualcomm in completing what they tout as the first over-the-air 5G New Radio call on CBRS (Citizen Broadband Radio Service) spectrum in a recent trial.

Their conversation covered:

• Why the 5G NR call on CBRS can help drive Industry 4.0 and 5G private network use cases.
• The suitability and relevance of CBRS shared spectrum for private networks.
• Where 5G private networks can deliver improvements over LTE private networks and boost ecosystem adoption of private networks.

Ron and Shelly see the Ericsson and Qualcomm collaboration as boosting the adoption of 5G private networks, especially as 5G networks transition to standalone (SA) implementations that enable operators to take full advantage of 5G NR on CBRS capabilities.