Digital is reshaping how business is done. We are at the cusp of a completely new age in global economics with enterprises, regardless of size and heritage, redefining their activities and their sectors based on digitization. Organizations are leveraging their digital strength to reshape their own business models and how business is done within and across entire sectors, including automotive/mobility, healthcare, finance and media.
Globally, we now see a very high demand for digital applications, and these are becoming crucial for enabling business and private life to function. This highlights the general trend that, as our economy becomes more global, as our planet becomes home to more and more people, and as more regions need to be enabled in terms of communication, the only answer can be digitization. Because otherwise it won’t scale or won’t work in the long run. But even the best application cannot perform if the underlying digital infrastructure is not as solid, resilient and secure as possible.
As they become digital, organizations are needing a new interconnection service regime customized for their needs. New and transformative technologies like IoT, artificial intelligence, and 5G, are accelerating the pace of change in markets around the globe. These disruptive elements will serve as a digital interconnection triangle of future innovation, in turn creating still further interconnection needs at the edge.
THE HEART, HAND AND BRAIN OF FUTURE INNOVATION
Interconnection at the edge requires a new way of handling data streams, and a new way of interconnecting players within an ecosystem. The key factors that influence edge interconnection—the heart, the hand and the brain of future innovation are:
5G (the heart): 5G enables the management of a lot of different frequencies, and enables the transmission of multiple data streams. Designed primarily for maintaining data from a huge number of sensors, 5G represents the foundation for the future evolution of the Internet of Things.
IoT (the hand): IoT represents function in the digital interconnection triangle. In a 5G-enabled environment, it will be possible to connect an enormous number of devices within a physically limited space. This will open the way to more digitalization of what’s currently a purely mechanical processes. But managing the enormous number of sensors and data streams that will result in the Internet of Things in the future will not be possible without the support of artificial intelligence.
AI (the brain): AI is essential in this mix to create the logic management and maintenance of data streams for innovative use cases and the respective ecosystem involved in this specific environment. This is the only way that the interconnection of millions of sensors in the Internet of Things can be managed efficiently. The solution is intelligently managed software-defined edge interconnection.
Each of these factors is dependent on the other two. It is only when they are interconnected that they can drive digital evolution. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.