Five Key Sectors That Will See A Transformation With 5G Technology

 

By Mr. Preetham Uthaiah, EVP - Marketing and Strategy, Saankhya Labs

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a long lockdown, which has spurred a digital transformation in the economy. Education has gone truly digital with the advent of online classes and exams, doctors are providing consultations online, meetings are being conducted via video conferencing platforms and even international trade exhibitions have shifted to online webinars and events. As a result of this digital transformation, internet usage has surged extensively putting immense pressure on existing communication networks. A reliable and robust 5G communication network can help industries maximize this digital transformation. The SLA’s (service level agreements) and QoS (quality of service) that need to be met for some of the time-critical applications can be accommodated using 5G technology with some of its advanced features such as ‘Slicing’ and low latency communication that ensures that real-time communication happens without getting affected by the traffic loads.

Here are some key sectors that are bound to benefit from a 5G driven digital transformation -

1. Healthcare

The healthcare industry will immensely benefit from 5G networks. With increasing use of online consultations and tele-medicine, a reliable and faster connection is critical to effectively deliver remote healthcare services. The low latency and faster speeds which are a main feature of 5G will help in time critical telemedicine applications such as remote surgery and remote patient monitoring etc. Hospitals also transmit large amounts of patient data including large files like CT Scans and MRIs. Some hospitals like King’s College Hospital, UK; Sinchuan University Hospital, China and Samsung Medical Centre, South Korea are installing private Enterprise 5G solutions to support their IT networks.

2. Agriculture

In this emerging technological world, scientific farming techniques are being used to boost productivity in farms. These include use of Agri-IoT sensors for soil monitoring, water management, smart irrigation, crop health monitoring, drone-based farm management etc. Deployment of 5G networks will provide added benefit to manage these drones and get real time data from the sensors by effectively using the 5G networks

3. Construction

The real estate sector, which has for long been known for its offline operations, is set to transform itself with the advent of 5G technology. In its new avatar, virtual property tours using AR/VR technologies, as well as 3D printed models of homes will be a reality in aiding digital marketing and sale of properties. Powered by stable and fast networks with lower latency, 5G will also ensure the smooth functioning of various stages of the design process to include 3D architectural visualization and collaborative meetings with various stakeholders.

4. Auto

5G brings with it unprecedented speed and connectivity to make autonomous, or self-driving cars a reality. An autonomous car is expected to produce up to 25 GB data per hour. Current networks will not be able to handle such large volumes of real-time data. 5G networks will allow faster-than-ever communication and real-time data processing between vehicles, networks, infrastructure and even pedestrians.

5. Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector is becoming more and more autonomous. High speed connectivity is needed to monitor and direct robots working on the factory floor. Additionally, many factories are becoming more “smart” with IoT sensors being installed across the factory, sharing real-time updates to a central server. 5G technologies can provide network characteristics that are vital for the manufacturing industry. This technology will allow for increased flexibility, lower costs, and smaller lead times for layout changes and alterations at the manufacturing units, factory floor production reconfiguration etc. Large organizations like Worchester Bosch, Siemens, Ford Motors etc. are deploying enterprise 5G networks to streamline their operations. 5G is poised to aid manufacturing/production operations, helping them become more efficient, while also refining security and reducing maintenance and operating costs.

Hailed as an upcoming tech revolution, 5G promises advantages that will touch every aspect of our lives, from healthcare to education to products and services we buy and beyond!

L&T Technology Services Expands Collaboration with Microsoft to Offer Solutions for Workplace Transformation

L&T Technology Services Limited (BSE: 540115, NSE: LTTS), a leading global pure-play engineering services company, today announced that it has expanded its collaboration with Microsoft Corporation and launched its latest and enhanced version of the state-of-the-art i-BEMSTM solution on Microsoft Azure to transform buildings into future-ready smart campuses.

With growing digital transformation, there has been a clear impetus on the need for organizations to revamp their office premises to be eco-friendly, taking into consideration sustainability aspects including greenhouse gas and carbon emissions. Another important aspect for office and facility administrators today is to find balance in their buildings to ensure health, safety and wellbeing of their workforce.

LTTS’ award-winning Intelligent Building Experience Management System i-BEMSTM is a system-of-systems solution that focuses on creating digital experiences and intelligent space management. The cloud-based smart buildings/campus/spaces solution helps monitor and manage building operations and optimize business metrics leveraging advanced IoT based Edge Analytics and machine learning algorithms.

i-BEMS™ uses advanced energy analytics and fault diagnostics for energy savings, and net-zero energy compliance. i-BEMSTM has enterprise-grade security features and can create a digital twin to test changes in a virtual build of the building.

LTTS has earlier collaborated with Microsoft to develop a smart campus in Israel for a leading technology company. The two companies have also partnered to leverage  Azure IoT platform for Sustainability solutions and connect with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service to enable real-time optimization, improve ROI and employee productivity for Facility Management and Operations globally. In 2018, LTTS furthered their working relationship with Microsoft by setting up a Digital Industrial Transformation Applied Innovation Centre for shared enterprise customers.

The current expanded collaboration leverages Azure to enable i-BEMSTM to act as a Facility Information Broker, unifying data from all systems making the building/campus a single entity rather than a heterogeneous collection of systems focused on employee health and safety and preservation of the immediate environment.

Experts from LTTS and Microsoft also shared the latest best practices on the holistic approach for enterprises planning eco-friendly and safe smart buildings, which can be read here: Smart buildings: From design to reality.

Alind Saxena, Chief Business Officer - Transportation & Alliances, L&T Technology Services said, “With digital transformation, enterprises are also increasingly focusing on finding sustainable ways to grow, while protecting the planet and its resources. Another important determinant for companies is maintaining employee safety and wellbeing within a building by reducing resource usage and improving operational efficiency. i-BEMS covers the best practices from designing to construction to operations for enterprises planning environmentally friendly and socially responsible smart building projects. We are excited to further expand our partnership leveraging Microsoft Azure IoT & Edge technology to serve enterprise customers with industry-leading solutions.”

Sanjay Jacob, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation said, “As a leader in engineering solutions for smart and sustainable campuses, LTTS’ Smart Building solutions enable modern workplaces by leveraging cutting-edge Microsoft Azure IoT, Edge & AI technology. Employee safety, energy-efficiency and sustainability is the need of the hour and LTTS delivers an integrated, advanced Azure based Smart Building solution for global enterprises to deploy smart and sustainable campuses. The whitepaper provides an excellent template with the most current best practices for enterprises to go from design to reality of their smart buildings.”

About L&T Technology Services Ltd

L&T Technology Services Limited (LTTS) is a listed subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Limited focused on Engineering and R&D (ER&D) services. We offer consultancy, design, development and testing services across the product and process development life cycle. Our customer base includes 69 Fortune 500 companies and 53 of the world’s top ER&D companies, across industrial products, medical devices, transportation, telecom & hi-tech, and the process industries. Headquartered in India, we have over 16,600 employees spread across 17 global design centers, 28 global sales offices and 51 innovation labs as of June 30, 2020.

Google Cloud, Netmagic Partner for Center of Excellence in India

Netmagic Solutions (An NTT Company) a leading managed hosting and multi-cloud hybrid IT solution provider in India, today announced its partnership with Google Cloud to create a Centre of excellence (CoE) that will enable their customers to accelerate their hybrid cloud journey by modernizing their mission-critical IT infrastructure and applications that leverage the advanced capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Analytics at scale.

The CoE will serve as a multi-disciplinary customer showcase hub to develop and deliver solutions, leveraging Google Cloud’s modern application platform, Anthos, for consistent development and operations experience across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

“We are extremely pleased to partner with Google Cloud to enable our customers to enhance their digital experiences capitalizing on the capabilities, value and benefits of an open, collaborative and secure cloud platform,” said Sharad Sanghi, MD and CEO of Netmagic (An NTT Company). “This partnership reinforces our commitment to our customers with an integrated approach to hosted infrastructure, connectivity, security and managed support – helping them derive greater value while delivering business outcomes.”

Karan Bajwa, Managing Director of Google Cloud India said, “We’re excited to partner with Netmagic and help businesses make a smooth transition to the cloud. The CoE will help businesses leverage Google Cloud’s leading infrastructure, platform capabilities and industry solutions to  build for the future; and Netmagic, as a managed hosting and hybrid cloud IT solution provider, is uniquely positioned to help customers along this path.”

Through the strategic partnership with Google Cloud, Netmagic will be able to help organizations in their cloud journey, from strategy and design, to implementation and management of their hybrid architecture, which includes capacity and billing management, comprehensive support across cloud adoption through logical data center extension and getting a unified view of their entire hybrid cloud ecosystem.

By leveraging Google Cloud Partner Interconnect program, Netmagic customers can also securely and privately connect to Google Cloud’s global network. This will enable them to run a wide variety of mission critical workloads, including bare met al solutions to GCP-native managed offerings and help reduce their operational overhead and drive innovation and agility. This logical extension will also provide low latency support for other workloads such as on-premise to GCP migration, disaster recovery, and burst capacity for existing Netmagic customers.

About Netmagic

Netmagic, an NTT Company, is India’s leading Managed Hosting and Multi-Cloud Hybrid IT solution provider serving more than 2000 enterprises globally. Headquartered in Mumbai, Netmagic also delivers Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) services to various enterprise customers globally across Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific region. The Company was the first in India to launch services – Cloud Computing, Managed Security, Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) and Software-Defined Storage. Netmagic has been recognized with 8 awards at the CIO Choice 2020, and 2 awards at the Datacenter Dynamics India 2019. To learn more, visit us at: www.netmagicsolutions.com

About NTT Ltd.

NTT Ltd. is a leading global technology services company bringing together 28 brands including NTT Communications, Dimension Data and NTT Security. We partner with organizations around the world to shape and achieve outcomes through intelligent technology solutions. For us, intelligent means data driven, connected, digital, and secure. As a global ICT provider, we employ more than 40,000 people in a diverse and dynamic workplace that spans 57 countries, trading in 73 countries and delivering services in over 200 countries. Together we enable the connected future. Visit us at our new website https://hello.global.ntt

Nutanix and Veeam Simplify Data Protection Provide Automation and Robustness

Enterprise cloud OS leader, Nutanix and Veeam Software have announced a comprehensive data protection and management solution to support most storage environments. It will see Veeam’s Backup & Replication software embedded with Nutanix Mine, providing a robust and automated response to help companies protect and access their data during these turbulent times.

The comprehensive data protection and management solution includes all the software, and any hardware components, required to support multiple storage environments and enables data recovery for mission critical applications. It also provides a foundation for  longer-term data retention solutions.

Data is now a key asset for many businesses and protection and back-up of business data as well as  ensuring continued access, availability and integrity is vital for business continuity and survivability. With Covid-19 continuing to sweep across Asia Pacific, sustainability and survivability remain top of the mind for business leaders as routine datacentre and critical infrastructure operations are affected due to restrictions on staff movement and access to facilities.  So it is timely that Nutanix and Veeam have developed this joint solution.

Nutanix Mine already integrates secondary storage operations with Nutanix Enterprise Cloud, delivering a comprehensive solution for both primary and secondary storage within a private cloud environment[1]. The platform eliminates the complexity often found in traditional data protection solutions and removes the usual time consuming and manual processes, such as archiving of devices like tape drives.

Combined with Veeam, Nutanix Mine is further enhanced to make integrated data protection and cloud data management easier, providing performance, web-scalability, and intuitive back-up simplicity. The product comes with a newly-designed dashboard that highlights the status of both Nutanix and Veeam infrastructure and includes a standard number of Veeam licences for easy procurement.

Some of the benefits include:

Fast Time to Value - Better customer experience for ordering, deployment, sizing, management, scaling, agility and support.

Unified IT Operations - Integrated management operations from deployment to day-to-day data management. Eliminates overhead.

Drop-In, Scale Up and Scale Out - Full-stack hypervisor, hardware, platform OS, management, storage, and support.

The solution comes in two form factors: Each optimised for performance and customer requirements. Customers can begin with small or medium solutions, specifically designed to support up to 250 virtual machines (VMs) or 500 VMs[2] respectively.

Both options allow systems to be easily added for up to a maximum of eight nodes. This helps customers meet their growing business needs by increasing their data protection with minimum disruption to the business as it grows.

Customers can quickly deploy Veeam Backup and Replication integrated with Nutanix storage management via a turnkey solution that reduces the time and complexity of data protection across the data centre and cloud. The solution delivers fast time-to-value, unified IT operations, and the ability to easily drop-in and scale up or scale out to meet the needs of today’s modern datacentre.

Consolidation, BC, Virtualization Top the CIO List

A survey commissioned by HP said that majority of technology decision makers are currently implementing or planning to implement in 2009 consolidation (95 percent), business continuity (93 percent) and virtualization (91 percent) projects.

Today s CIOs are challenged to control costs and achieve returns on technology investments. According to the study, respondents named reducing operational costs (31 percent) as their top driver for 2009 DCT spending. Enhancing security (29 percent) followed as a close second.

However, in both cases decision makers said that technology needs, more than business needs, are prompting the investments. This may limit their ability to achieve both short-term and long-term business benefits such as reduced costs, mitigated risks and accelerated growth.

CIOs who approach DCT initiatives with a focus on business needs can significantly reduce time to value for today s technology investments while laying the foundation for future growth, said John Bennett, worldwide director, Data Center Transformation Solutions, HP.

Most organizations are transforming their data centers through independent projects instead of taking a broad, integrated approach. The new research indicates that 20 percent of technology decision makers are initiating a complete transformation, while the remaining 80 percent are implementing individual transformation projects without an overall DCT strategy.

When asked to indicate what projects they would implement independently to achieve specific technology goals, respondents named the following:

# Automation 64 percent
# Green IT 60 percent
# Operations management 59 percent
# Virtualization 59 percent
# Business continuity 58 percent


All of these projects have the potential to also achieve business goals. By taking a comprehensive approach and aligning these autonomous projects to an overall DCT strategy, an opportunity exists for CIOs to maximize the value of their transformation initiatives, the survey said.