By guest contributor, Hugh Ujhazy, Vice President, IDC Asia/Pacific
5G networks hold great promise: Higher connected device density, lower network complexity, and the potential for networks to enable edge computing. Organisations, however, are struggling to figure out how 5G applies to their industry, and more importantly, to their own organisation. The nascent nature of pervasive 5G networks has created multiple challenges, including the identification and quantification of 5G use cases.
Although it would be much simpler to implement a 5G-only solution, organisations also need to consider their existing devices and application investments, a combination of wired and wireless technologies, as a part of their ICT ecosystem. Hence, while 5G networks theoretically present a compelling technology solution, the reality is that enterprise connectivity will most likely be a hybrid model combining the best of 3G, 4G LTE/LTE-A, legacy Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6, and 5G.
As such, organisations will need to answer tough questions like: Why 5G - does the use case 'need' 5G? What will be the ROI on my investment and what will be the total cost of ownership of the 5G solution? What kind of a vendor/partner ecosystem do I need to bring this together?
Organisations are most likely grappling with these questions as they consider the merits of their use cases. IDC recommends that organisations consider the four dimensions below to evaluate a use case. Justify your 5G aspirations and ensure that they don't just become another high-speed connectivity solution, where 4G or traditional Wi-Fi would have been good enough.
Category 1: Economics
Build comprehensive cost models, considering the cost of proof of concepts, full-scale deployments, management, integration, hardware and operations. These cost models will help you evaluate the potential solution’s total cost of ownership and support your ROI justification. It will also help you outline the investment milestones needed and expected financial commitment to see the project through.
Category 2: Business Outcomes
Examine the criticality of a use case to the business, and business outcomes, such as security and scalability, that are required to deliver the value of the data arising out of the use case back to the business.
Category 3: Performance
Evaluate workloads and the kind of data traversing the network for the particular use case, and if they require the mobility, latency and capacity that 5G provides.
Category 4: Operations
Consider the broader ecosystem required to derive the maximum value out of your investments not just today, but also to thrive in the longer term. Bringing together a 5G use case is more than just connecting endpoints to some location. Requirements around network and endpoint management, and redundancy/failover must be considered to continually increase the value of the solution to the organization.
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