Vitria's Chris Menier Explores How Arrival of 5G Turns Wireless Network Service Providers into Indispensable Players in the IoT Market

The arrival in 2019 of 5G wireless wide-area networking technology promises to leave an indelible mark on any industry that stands to gain from the rapid evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), and will place network service providers in an ideal position to serve this market, says Chris Menier, Vice President and Transformation Strategist at Vitria, in an audio interview for journalists.

"We've been talking about 5G for a bit of time now. And we have been talking about the Internet of Things (IoT) for an even longer period of time. What we are going to see now, in dramatic fashion, is what happens when these two technologies come together," according to Menier.

5G NSPs Now Front and Center in the IoT Game

Network service providers (NSPs) that provide 5G services will be in an entirely new position to add value and generate important new streams of revenue by blurring the lines of distinction between public and private data networking environments at both the operational technology and information technology levels. As a result, NSPs now have a major role to play in bringing IoT applications to market.

"For a number of years now there has been this concern among many NSPs about becoming a dumb pipe provider. NSPs that are involved with 5G are no longer just providers of connectivity with low level services over the top. They now have an opportunity to build important new business-to-business relationships that leverage the capacity and intelligence enabled by 5G to offer a broad range of sophisticated managed IoT services," says Menier.

"Unlike other overly hyped technologies that have made headlines before, we are already seeing some very impressive use cases emerge -- especially in the IoT space -- that are moving from the drawing board, through the labs, and now finally to the market very quickly. What I can tell you is that 5G is going to be one of the technologies that really accelerates the value that industry can derive from its IoT investments," says Menier.

Network Slicing Adds Smarts to 5G's Brawn

One of the major technological advances 5G offers to the IoT equation revolves around "network slicing" -- an application of virtual network architecture that is behind technologies like software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV).

"This is a functional category that we have not been able to exploit in previous generations of wireless infrastructures. By being able to slice the network, you can apply different qualities of service -- even different capacities -- across the network in an intelligent and intuitive manner. You can bring the right networking capacity to the right place at the right time. It will introduce efficiencies and functionality that were not economically -- or technically -- viable in the past," says Menier.

Vitria's Role in Supporting IoT Deployments by NSPs and Enterprises

Vitria has a long history of helping NSPs and enterprises manage the complex issues that surround real-time digital operations from a customer experience standpoint. The company has developed deep expertise in leveraging the exploding volume of disparate data assets to enable effective automation by bringing to bear the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

"Our platform, VIA, is designed to make sense of a myriad of data sources so that Vitria can provide accurate, real-time insights that offers clear visibility into the operational realities of network and business activity. From a scale perspective, we realize that the game is not just about mastering the huge volume of data, but also reconciling the great variety of data that is generated," says Menier.

New technologies -- like 5G and NFV -- are going to generate a need to track and monitor an unprecedented number of variables that affects operational performance and business outcomes.

"We are working with NSPs and enterprises to simplify this process by associating the array of logs, stats, counters, scores and telemetry into the basic, fundamental layers of activity that are critical to delivering a service. Once the data is brought together, Vitria works with NSPs and enterprises to make sure that the right people have the right access and the right context to do their jobs better. We are leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to rapidly understand and act on the insights presented by the data that is generated every day, every minute, every second."

To listen to the entire interview with Vitria's Chris Menier, visit:

http://www.vitria.com/arrival-of-5g-turns-wireless-network-service-providers