As in every recent year, this year Ciena participated in India Mobile Congress 2020<\/a> (8th to 10th December 2020) to bring our expertise to the table for all three days of the event via leadership talks, round table discussions, fireside chats and more, as we celebrate the milestone of 15 years of Ciena in India. This edition’s hot topics were Industry 4.0<\/a>, 5G, Telco Cloud, Smart Devices, Smarter Network.
Ciena participated in various key sessions at IMC 2020<\/a>, with a frontal focus on the current trends around Telco Cloud and 5G. Read on to know more.
One of the most discussed topics in the telecom industry<\/a> right now is Industry 4.0, which is the fourth industrial revolution brought on with automation and technology. This innovation seeks to deploy large-scale machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity for real-time monitoring, analysis, and rectification. Data is the key for the next-gen revolution of automation, IoT, and M2M connections. From automated crop quality analysis to automated cars and automated operational processes, Industry 4.0 use cases require data collection, data processing and data storage with low latency. Large data requires more compute and storage capacities, which is challenging with physical data centers. Several Telco players have now migrated to Edge Cloud, which is proving to be a successful model for data collection and storage.
Digvijay Sharma, Senior Director, Global Carrier Sales, Ciena, shared key points during a panel discussion at IMC 2020.
“As India embarks the Industry 4.0 journey, managing data will play the key role in creating smart industries powered by automation. There are 5 points we must look at – 1) Hardware, 2) Software, 3) Connectivity, 4) Security, 5) Data storage & processing. Hardware plays the frontal role in automation intelligence by capturing and computing data. Cost optimization is also heavily dependent on the hardware. Software is the decision-making engine for the data collected. The next crucial factor is connectivity, which will connect devices at various locations and send real-time information from point A to point B. Amidst the data collection and process, the gateway must be highly secure and encrypted end to end. Finally, a decision on a centralized storage platform such as the Edge Cloud will enable consolidation and meaning of the data collected.” – Digivijay Sharma, Senior Director, Global Carrier Sales, Ciena speaking at the India Mobile Congress 2020, on the topic ‘Industry 4.0 – Smart Workspaces<\/a> and Industries, the Automation way’
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While Industry 4.0 is already a work in progress with 4G, experts are advocating how 5G will add more value to this proposition. Speaking on 5G as an extension for Industry 4.0, Girish Bhatia, SE Lead, Ciena, said, “5G will give voice to every machine. We have to improve on data points and manage them to ensure seamless transmission.\" Girish spoke on the topic ‘5G Use Cases + IoT – Innovation for the Generation of Mobile Technology’.<\/em><\/strong>
Key factors driving a smarter, secure and sustainable network
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With great technology comes greater responsibilities. Enterprises and industries must connect on a smart, secure and sustainable network. Vikram Anand, Senior Director, Sales, Ciena, participated in a fireside chat with program moderator Aditya Rath and shared key insights into what new age Telcos must look out for in today’s digital transformation for enterprises.
1. <\/strong>Automation is the key for today’s network infrastructure management, allowing an opportunity for better network slicing and KPI management.
2. <\/strong>Telcos already own network real estate. With the help of SI partners, Telcos can cloudify their sites, enabling low latency services which are secure and reliable - critical for key enterprises
3. <\/strong>The human factor will remain critical in building a smart, secure, and sustainable ecosystem. This will require extensive trainings and adoption with various stakeholders such as SI partners, tech partners, and OEMs.
4.<\/strong> To go beyond consumer voice and data offerings, Telcos can enhance their enterprise offerings, which could be done by them or as an ecosystem with technology OEM partners, SI partners. Go-to market strategy, right business models and cost structures will remain imperative for the success.
“As Telcos transform to Digicos, Telcos have their own digital transformation story. Commendably, cloud adaption is already a trend – Telcos have all the expertise to bring the transformation to the market. What we need to keep in mind is – for example – if I am the CIO of the enterprise in question, I would look at a connectivity partner with very good SLA’s. However, now, to be at the forefront of technology, I will also look at the capabilities of my SI partner – whether their current infra will be able to manage the new age services or use cases or not? While choosing a service provider (SP) for an enterprise, between a Telco SP and a cloud SP – I would choose a Telco for the low latency. However, the Telco agility may pose a challenge. And this is exactly where we come in to help.” – Vikram Anand, Senior Director, Sales, Ciena, speaking on ‘Enterprises Connect - Smart, Secure, Sustainable’ at IMC 2020
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How will large volumes of data be managed to make Industry 4.0 a success?
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As digital services and consumption continue to rise in India, a distributed cloud approach with low latency, becomes critical. Indian service providers (SPs) initially leveraged the Telco cloud to support their internal network function virtualization (NFV<\/a>). But now, SPs are looking to find ways to monetize this due to the rise in their customers’ consumption of cloud and OTT services<\/a>.
The key challenge for cloud service providers is to manage network and application resources efficiently and intelligently for these Edge Cloud data centers during peak periods of usage.
Ryan Perera, Vice President & General Manager, Ciena India, shared riveting insights on how cloud-like architecture will take the Indian Telco industry by storm while speaking on ‘Telco Cloud: Frontier for Network Transformation’.
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“When we talk about Telco cloud in India, we must understand this from two perspectives. The first is ‘content to content’ where India is doing commendably well with connected data centers pan India. While India started with metros, now we see long distance to subsea connectivity. The second perspective is ‘user to content’ and this is where strategy, growth and innovation is required for enterprises and end consumers alike.
‘User to content’ Telco cloud strategy has potential by streamlining different levels of quality of service (QoS) by deploying technologies such as Segment Routing (SR) for intelligently managing traffic data. We must look at Telco Cloud as a way of cost reduction, and not monetization. Today, approximately 70% of OPEX for Indian Telcos is run on RAN infrastructure. Deploying cloud strategy will help in reducing this humongous cost.” – Ryan Perera, VP and General Manager, Ciena India, addressing India Mobile Congress 2020
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Lastly, Nihar Panda, Lead, BD and Solution Architecture, presented the current trends in Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) for building smarter networks for resilience and efficiency.
Talking about building smarter networks for resilience and efficiency, SDN and NFV are currently the most disruptive technologies, transforming and simplifying physical network management. SDN and NFV help customers transition to software-defined networks based on commodity hardware and open software to lower costs and avoid vendor lock-in, while improving its ability to scale and adapt technological change.
“SDN and NFV are here to stay. Network manifestations will keep evolving based on use cases. However, the end goal will remain the same – better network management with scalability, precision and efficiency while keeping targets under control. Disaggregation in mobility and transport, cloud native, closed loop network automation will be the driving trends for building smarter networks.” – Nihar Panda, Lead, BD and Solution Architecture, speaking on ‘SDN + NFV - Building Smarter Networks for Resilience and Efficiency’ at IMC 2020
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As India leapfrogs towards a new epoch of network transformation, there are several challenges on the way – primarily related to data (compute and storage) and network traffic management (scalability and programmability). Automation is the key while we continue with legacy systems. Ciena leaders and R&D professionals are working with India’s largest telecom operators to make this dream realizable, and the journey has already begun, with many successes. We share our expertise from time to time with industry platforms such as India Mobile Congress. This year was a spectacular wrap, and our teams look forward to bringing new insights to you – everyday.
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