And That’s a Wrap – Big 5G Event

Well the Big 5G Event in Denver has come to a close for this year. Cisco was the Diamond sponsor at the Big 5G Event in Denver this week. This event is a merger of Light Reading’s Big Communications Event and Informa’s 5G North America. This event focuses the industry conversation on the needs and solutions for 5G. The event began strong with the Leading Lights awards dinner. This was a fun event including “5G Man” and some fun videos about 5G. Light Reading also shared their “hall of fame” video which focused on people who made an impact (or the news) in our industry.

Winning two of the most important Leading Lights awards was Rakuten Mobile whose CTO Tareq Amin carried home awards for the “Most Innovative Telco Cloud Strategy by an operator” and “Most Innovative Automation Strategy by an Operator”. This was also a big win for Cisco as we have a significant role in design, equipping and implementation of this groundbreaking network and its automation. You can read more about this in my earlier blog“Leading Lights Awards – Industry recognition for Rakuten’s 5G Reimagined Network.”

As the Diamond sponsor Cisco had the keynote address on the first full day and several panel sessions. Ian Campbell, CTO for Cisco Mobility Business Group, was the keynote speaker on the topic of Monetizing the Instant Network. Aeneas Dodd-Noble, Principal Engineer and Architect also of Cisco’s Mobility Business Group presented on a panel for 5G services in a multi-cloud world. Michael Dennis, Business Development Manager for Cisco Umbrella Security discussed how Umbrella can be monetized. Aeneas also spoke on a panel about public cloud for 5G network functions.

For those who missed this event and the sessions, Ian Campbell’s keynote was “Monetizing the Instant Network – 5G: Addressing the Long Tail”. He addressed the potential for 5G to enable new monetizing opportunities where the mobile operator can help enterprises with their digital transformational needs. These are called the “long tail of 5G use cases” and are not addressable in 4G networks. Ian provided examples of the new enabling capabilities including network as a service, slicing etc. Ian also noted that the Cisco 5G architecture and our broad enterprise eco-system work together to enable 5G monetization.

Aeneas Dodd-Noble held a breakout session  on “5G services in a multi-cloud world”. During this session, Aeneas discussed multi-cloud use cases and how we can leverage 5G software-defined networks to better position services at the edge. How the cloud-native core plays a critical role by positioning key microservices closer to the end user. Applications in the cloud can be hosted on operator- hosted public or self-build virtual infrastructures. Operator functions like user plane and control plane need to move to the public cloud to provide connectivity, unified operation and ease of deployment across hundreds of sites.

Michael Dennis, Business Development Manager for Cisco Umbrella Security, participated on a panel discussing The Truth about AI and Security. He discussed how Cisco Umbrella is a cloud security platform that provides the first line of defense against threats on the internet wherever users go. And because it’s built into the foundation of the internet and delivered from the cloud, Umbrella is the simplest security product to deploy, delivering powerful, effective protection.

Cisco also had a presence on the exhibition floor where our experts demonstrated and discussed 5G solutions for service provider and for enterprise.

Service provider demos included:

• Cisco 5G Architecture – a cloud-to-client software-defined network that is designed to be open and multi-vendor.
• Ultra Cloud Core – the industry leading cloud-native 4G/5G mobile core
• Unified Domain Center – a new cloud-native solution that enables the service provider to give their enterprise customers what is arguably the “5G killer app” – Enablement. The enablement to extend the control to create and manage their LAN across the mobile wide area network.
• Beyond the City – show use cases from the 5G Rural First project in the UK including autonomous agricultural, ship-to-shore connected experiences and more.
• Trust and Secured networks – showing how you can assure a secured network from the microchips on up with crypto-keys and knowing your supply chain. That a trusted network is the foundation to a secure network.

Enterprise demos included:

• The Cisco enterprise 5G roadmap for enterprise WAN connectivity
• Planned 5G capabilities
• 4G products with greater than 1Gbps downlink
• Last mile connectivity use case
• SD-WAN

Conversations with customers were very engaging and the customers were enthusiastic about what we shared with them. . Our guests included established mobile operators, emerging mobile operators and municipalities interested in what 5G can do for them and how Cisco can help them.

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