Insights on 5G
by Andrew Der
At Verizon Ventures, we look for technologies and products with the ability to integrate with our strategic mission to pioneer 5G technology. Our portfolio companies are already thinking ahead to how the future implementation of 5G will help their core business expand and reach a second level of potential. In this “Insights On” blog post, we asked three of our portfolio companies, CloudBees, Lumina Networks and The Fabric, for their thoughts of how 5G will impact their industry, what they’re most excited to see from 5G and their predictions where we’ll be in a year.
How will 5G integration help propel your industry to new heights?
“With software eating the world, 5G is critical to sustain that transformation and enable some of the most advanced use cases, such as IoT, edge computing and will most probably play a great role in accelerating the learning associated to AI (such as self-driving cars).”
- Sacha Labourey, CEO and co-founder of CloudBees, a hub of enterprise Jenkins and DevOps, providing companies with smarter solutions for accelerating software development and delivery
“As essential capabilities of a 5G-enabled network, application placement and transport network automation will improve efficiencies and empower a new breed of on-demand, customizable services. These new services will change the communications landscape and enable new ways to communicate, work and consume content.”
- Andrew Coward, CEO of Lumina Networks, an open source networking company which enables end-to-end service automation while optimizing network utilization
“We are excited by the advent of 5G as it will create new opportunities for disruptive infrastructure innovation driven by new devices, new applications, and new mobile infrastructure deployments. 5G integration will enable cloud-based applications and infrastructure services to be delivered in new ways, with much less dependency on premise installed equipment.
We expect the mantra of ‘5G and go’ to take off, whereby end consumers, small businesses and campuses can avail of cloud-delivered services with just a 5G links rather than complex installations. When The Fabric co-created Velocloud, we felt flexible, software-delivered wide area network services (SD-WAN) would rev up the migration of infrastructure services and applications to the cloud. We think that 5G integration will further accelerate that trend, also expanding opportunities for The Fabric co-created companies.”
- Prabakar Sundarrajan, Chief Strategist and Co-Founder of The Fabric, a pre-Series A startup foundry designed to co-create, fund and accelerate companies in the cloud and IoT infrastructure space
What aspect of 5G is your company most excited about?
“For our customers, 5G is as much about automation and virtualization as it is about the radio network. Open source software and SDN are the key to this transformation because they unlock innovation and new services such as network slicing. This excites us because the shift to 5G will really demonstrate the power of open source to capture new value and new revenue for service providers, free of traditional vendor lock-in.”
- Andrew Coward, Lumina Networks
“The Fabric is most excited about the improved last mile performance provided by 5G. The reduced latencies, increased bandwidth and the ability to finely slice and assurance bandwidth channels will enable The Fabric companies to deliver new services and also significantly improve delivery of existing services. The specific area that is most exciting is how 5G will enable applications and services to escape the shackles of data centers and cloud and be liberated to be delivered from the edge and serve ultra-mobility.”
- Prabakar Sundarrajan, The Fabric
Where do you see 5G in one year?
“Lumina Networks expects more 5G trials to complete in the next year lending to market segments beyond residential. Powered by a more efficient, more agile, and more automated network, service providers will then be able to refocus on new, context-aware service creation — enabling a new world of digital life experiences.”
- Andrew Coward, Lumina Networks
“We feel that the initial opportunities driven by 5G will be in the deployment of 5G infrastructure itself — the edge data centers, and security and performance of virtualized infrastructure services. Within one year, we feel there will be opportunities for 5G enabled edge delivered enterprise and managed services, including those for small businesses. We think we will also see the advent of the earliest availability of 5G equipped mobile devices, drones, etc. which will enable the early experimentation and R&D for disruptive innovations, which may take additional time to be matured and deployed.”
- Prabakar Sundarrajan, The Fabric
While we know 5G is still in development and its full use cases will not be implemented in the short-term, it’s clear 5G will disrupt all industries. We’re excited to see our portfolio companies prepare for 5G integration with tangible processes and we encourage all startups to do the same to ensure they are ahead of the game.
