For Jim Brisimitzis, that revelation came in the fall of 2018 when he read an early version of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project’s Release 15, the official document for the 5G new wireless standard.
Brisimitzis, who has more than 20 years of experience in enterprise software and has held leadership roles in Microsoft’s cloud developer relations and its venture organizations, heard all the hype around 5G and started asking questions about the nascent technology. I did. Although he had a background in technology and software, he didn’t know much about mobile phones and couldn’t get a clear answer about what 5G would look like. So he went straight to the source material.
“I ended up reading Release 15 of 3GPP, and through that release I started to realize that this was a turning point for our industry,” Brisimitzis recalled. At the time, a major frustration and fear of mobile network operators was the so-called dumb pipe, which meant that while new over-the-top applications could reap huge profits, they were unable to take advantage of network monetization beyond their broadband subscriptions. was. The telecom industry was suspicious of the developers Brisimitzis worked with.
What Brisimitzis saw at Microsoft in the early days of conceptualizing Azure and edge computing shaped his view of 5G as a tipping point. It is about reorienting the communications industry from monolithic, closed systems to cloud-native, open systems. Standards that give carriers a path to providing services to companies. And data combined with telco assets such as pipes, network access, and spectrum has created an opportunity for network operators to become platforms rather than pipes. “In the world that I grew up in, the world of platforms, if you don’t want to be stupid clouds, stupid pipes, whatever, you have to really create a platform that has value for developers. And on top of that, These are people who create value,” Vrysimitzis said.
But what he thought was lacking in that vision was that, outside of a few showcases, carriers had not yet gone deeper into developer relationships and collaborations with startups. Later in 2019, the company launched 5G Open Innovation, with the goal of building what he describes as “an open ecosystem surrounding carriers with innovation” and a wide range of partners, from start-ups to global technology platforms. Established a lab. , a global system integrator and enterprise, is working to unlock and advance the potential of 5G and what’s to come. Intel was his 5G OI Lab’s first contract partner, followed by T-Mobile. The list currently includes 17 partners, including AT&T, Comcast (he replaced T-Mobile US as founding partner), Accenture, Nokia, Microsoft, Dell Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, and Spirent Communications. . “People like to call us a startup accelerator because that’s what it looks like on the surface. But we’re really not that,” says Vrysimitzis. He prefers “innovation brokers.” The lab team uncovers interesting new technologies with market potential in enterprise, networking, applications, big data, AI, security, and more, and participating classes are selected based on priorities by lab partners (including CSPs) will be done. .
5G OI Lab is home to over 118 multi-stage enterprise startups that have collectively raised more than $2 billion in venture capital. Some success stories: Private network software specialist Expeto collaborated with Dell, Rogers and Ericsson on a private 5G network operating at a Canadian gold mine. Network observability startup MantisNet has partnered with Palo Alto Networks in a joint effort to avoid problems with how mobile networks are built to identify mobile devices and implement security policies. Most recently, Apple acquired Canadian startup DarwinAI, a participant in the 5G OI Lab, ahead of its expected foray into generative AI this year.
“The aim was not just to support these collaborations,” says Vrysimitzis. “The goal was also to demonstrate that what carriers have invested in building over the past years is truly a different platform, and to look at this opportunity from a different perspective. ”
Therefore, 5G OI Lab is not just stuck on the lab bench. The company has a field lab with a live network (a private 5G network built by the company) that is used as a testbed for use cases that serve specific industries. The most recent announcements are in the Tacoma Tide Flats port area, where improvements will be made in the supply chain from worker safety and worker communications such as push-to-talk capabilities to streaming surveillance video and faster data offloads. We support five companies with a variety of use cases, ranging from improved visibility to: Connection from ship to shore. Companies involved include Comcast, Dell Technologies, VMware by Broadcom, Intel, Expeto, Ericsson, and more.
Part of its success is the fact that so many companies are flocking to the 5G OI Lab, Brisimitzis recalls. That’s beyond what carriers are likely to see inside their own 5G innovation-focused labs. Brisimitzis doesn’t want to take the leap, but believes that approach has limited practicality and his ROI. “What we’ve seen is that these internally run accelerators and research labs, no offense to anyone, end up doing internal navel gazing. , because they’re just about the company, so the conversation is just about the company,” he explains. “Well, as big as Microsoft and Amazon and AT&T are, they’re part of a much larger ecosystem. And companies don’t buy from one company; they buy from an ecosystem,” Brisimitzis said. says that a big lesson he learned from his time at Microsoft was that working within an ecosystem gives you much greater reach than if you let the ecosystem come to you. Because he believes that not only do companies want to buy products from the ecosystem, -ups also want to be able to sell their solutions to the ecosystem.
So what does this mean technologically? First, according to Scott Waller, CTO of 5G OI Lab, it’s about which startups are smoke and mirrors and which companies have the potential technology. It means having the technical savvy in the lab to figure out what the technology is, and, importantly, how that technology can be applied to the world. Exploiting the market at a scale of interest to 5G OI Lab partners. It also means that you can do language translation between the carrier telecommunications world and the corporate networking world to understand the corporate problems you need to solve. With decades of enterprise networking experience, Waller says he does a lot of both language and technical translation. He understands how and why each of those worlds works and how they smooth out the rough edges where they contradict each other. .
Brisimitzis says the lab wants to go beyond just tire-kicking and testing and offer partners exciting possibilities to solve a wide range of problems, but Waller is a demon. We are working on every detail. A large private network sounds great, until a company discovers that the new rugged laptop they bought doesn’t have the right certifications or the right spectrum support, or actually has a video camera working on the core. No one knows if you can get it from Company Y and the radio from Company Y. Once you have your device, you will need to configure your network to stream video on the uplink. “Unless someone actually comes down and verifies it, as opposed to certifying it, everything is a problem,” Waller said. So when it comes to testing, he explains that functional testing in the form of sandboxing or early pilots is done first. A startup, for example, might join the 5G OI Lab with an orchestration platform for RAN, but could not access multiple radio types due to cost. 5G OI Lab can provide that in a living lab. “We’re not going to sit around all day and he’s going to do a POC, but what we’re really trying to do is early functional sandbox testing,” Waller says. “It’s like the SI behind the SI, or the innovation behind the innovation engine in a large company. They operate very fast and have a huge knowledge base and a lot of contacts in the industry. So you can quickly decide, “Here, here, this feature needs to be solved.” Then think about what happens next. ” What happens next means a delicate match between the startup’s expertise and where it fits among the various priorities and projects his 5G OI Lab partners are working on. To do. He points out that great startups are so focused on their solutions that they may not be aware of all the potential applications for their solutions in the market. Established communication partners often view some processes and approaches as untouchable. Sometimes just a conversation can reveal a new way forward, but sometimes innovation in that context means you need someone to push you to do it in a new way anyway. Yes, and in Waller’s words, a “glass-breaking drive” may be required in this sense. It sheds new light and recalibrates everyone’s sense of what is possible.
That sense of possibility is what Brisimitzis wants from the communications ecosystem, and it’s the sense he saw in Release 15 that 5G could be the tipping point. “I don’t think 5G will pose any technical problems for carriers,” Vrysimitzis said. “I think this is a problem with business modeling,” he continues, saying carriers can get stuck in his ARPU-centric view of subscriptions and SIMs. Brisimitzis sees the rollout of his 5G private network not as a lucrative deal in itself, but as a gateway to the enterprise and a strategic partner to enable an ecosystem of applications and solutions, not just a conduit but a partner. I hope you will see this as an opportunity. “5G is truly an opportunity for businesses,” says Vrysimitzis. “I’m trying to help this industry get into an area where huge amounts of money are being spent…but it requires them to think differently. This is not about where do you put your SIM card? No. This is a long-term view of who I, as a CSP, want to be as a valuable player for the enterprise over the long term.” From the 5G OI Lab’s perspective, this is a new solution. It means being part of an ecosystem that works together to bring innovation from the lab to the field and to market.
Interested in more test-related insights into the 5G landscape? Check out our editorial webinar featuring 5G OI Lab, Spirent Communications, and Viavi Solutions, and stay tuned for upcoming special reports.
