5G campus networks: Opening new doors to innovation

The 5G campus network is positioned to be the future of industrial communications.

That may seem like a bold statement, but the advantages of a 5G campus are clear: They provide the best wireless experience compared to public networks, with high performance, low latency, control of data, and network security.

A campus network is a mobile private network (MPN) that is restricted to the people and devices that reside inside your campus – your factory, offices and plants. A campus network means that certain resources are only available to company-affiliated people and devices, sensors and machines.

Campus networks have been deployed in various industries to help keep control of their operations and their critical business data, while at the same time drive their business transformation programs. But, in the past, connectivity, bandwidth and compute power were traditionally restricting the use of campus networks.

With the launch of 5G across the globe, there are now some specific benefits in terms of technology:

1. Higher bandwidth and high density of devices in an area
2. (Ultra-)low latency
3. Better security
4. Flexibility in terms of quality of service

With 5G, the data center is the new unit of compute: It is means you have a data center where you need it, when you need it. This is truly the next revolution for enterprises deploying 5G campus networks.

Here are four reasons why 5G campus networks are transformational for enterprises:

1. 5G is engineered for the Internet-of-Things (IoT-) based economy. 5G campus networks incorporate new capabilities, like defined quality of service, massive machine type communications (mMTC) supporting large numbers of interconnected machines and sensors and improved mobile connectivity as an alternative to legacy Wi-Fi or cable-based solutions. From 4G to 5G, from “smart phone” to “smart everything.”
2. Application of ML/AI. A wider adoption of IoT in enterprise operations also drives the applications of technologies like machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), for instance through predictive use-cases and image recognition. AI thrives on data from sensors.
3. Augmented Reality and the low latency and compute power in these 5G campus networks make augmented reality (AR) applications a real options for enterprises.
4. Driving new enterprise use-cases. The combination of 5G campus networks, ML/AI and AR will make enterprise OT much more flexible and will open an array of new use-cases, like:
   1. In retail: Enabling autonomous stores and targeted advertising at PoS
   2. For industry/manufacturing: Collaborative robotics and new ways for human-to-machine collaboration
   3. For smart cities: Smart traffic management.

Stay on top of this and other technologies: Software AG’s Office of the CTO is continuously evaluating emerging trends and technologies. The Software AG Technology Radar for IoT and Integration makes a condensed version of the results publicly available.