MEC applications, architectures and go-to-market strategies
Mobile edge computing (MEC), particularly when combined with cellular connectivity, is seen as a new revenue driver for both operators and hyperscalers. In fact, market dynamics are pushing the two increasingly closer together in terms of developing, packaging and taking to market MEC solutions. To understand how this opportunity is taking shape, RCR Wireless News brought together executives from Verizon and Microsoft at the Telco Cloud & Edge Forum to share their thoughts.
Beth Cohen, a cloud technology strategist with Verizon, laid out the operator’s two-pronged approach to public MEC and private MEC. “We’re very horizontally focused,” she said. “We have a lot of verticals that we address, but we find the most interest in these types of services within the utilities, logistics companies and transportation, as well as, quite surprisingly, the retail space. Specifically she highlighted a deployment for the Port of Southampton in the U.K. intending to highlight the benefit of 5G over Wi-Fi.
“By going with a 5G strategy as opposed to private Wi-Fi…they were able to cut the number of access points down to something reasonable,” she said. “And so it benefited them, it actually was more cost-effective, as well as it was lower latency and more reliable to go that route for them. So they have been quite successful in deploying that 5G strategy for that particular application.”
Microsoft Vice President of Product Management Shriraj Gaglani described the cloud giant’s approach as based on partnering with carriers, ISVs, system integrators and other application developers. “We have a portfolio of edge compute platforms that range from a near-edge, carrier-based platform that can host these networks, to the edge compute platforms that can serve the public MEC or the private MEC capabilities, all the way to an enterprise edge platform…We essentially bring all of these products and we optimize them and we build the ecosystem, so that it’s easier for our partners to develop complete solutions for their enterprise customers.”
Both panelists discussed the importance of understanding the relevant market segments to develop a compelling value proposition while leveraging replicability but offering customization. Gaglani said the types of customers range from enterprises simply looking for connectivity and compute to serve a mobile device use case, all the way to cutting-edge internet of things applications that hinge on moving, processing and actioning sensor data.
Cohen said Verizon is seeing interest in both public and private MEC depending on what the particular businesses’ goals are. That said, “They are very, very different in terms of architectures and applications that are being used to create them.” She also noted hybrid approaches, like utilities collecting meter data over a public network then running applications that use the data in a private solution.
Is there a killer MEC app?
Gaglani said Microsoft has seen market traction around MEC applications coalesce around four broad categories:
- Robotics and AGVs—”Where latency is very important, but what’s even more important is very predictable network connectivity and performance…Robotics is a very fast-growing industry segment.”
- Video analytics—”Essentially everything camera-based…These are heavily optimized by industry and use case. So we are seeing a lot of adoption and trials right now.”
- Industrial IoT—”The ability to have huge numbers of sensors reliably send data usually across large areas where Wi-Fi connectivity is not prevalent or not practical.”
- Connected worker—”You can think of these modern devices that replace the ancient walk-talies or push-to-talk devices that have existed…Now with 4G and 5G, you essentially create a standardized version of these on an innovation platform that wasn’t really possible with these old proprietary LMR network.” Another example are the body-worn cameras used commonly in by law enforcement.
“We see these four categories being consistently adapted and customized across multiple industry verticals,” Gaglani summarized. “So you’ll see the same four patterns in manufacturing, oil and gas, agriculture, retail, except there’ll be a specialization of the vendor community because the industrial logic of each of these verticals demands a variation in how the solution is packaged and offered up to the enterprises in that industry.”
Cohen, calling back the idea of a horizontal platform that can be tweaked to address various vertical, noted that as MEC applications are customized for specific types of end users, many of the fundamental components remain the same. Some deployment scenarios call for low latency while others lean more toward network efficiency.
She gave the example of smart cities. “If you have a camera on an intersection and you want to county the number of cars that go through an intersection, you don’t want to take that high definition video and bring it back to the cloud to do the calculations…You really want to do that locally and just send a very tiny amount of data back to the cloud.”
