While much of the discussion around 5G has centered on consumer devices, enterprises are looking toward the impact the technology can have on their ability to serve customers and the bottom line, according to a new survey by Oracle.
Not only are most companies aware of the benefits of 5G, but they are also already planning how they will take advantage of this next generation of wireless connectivity to power core business initiatives from new services, to IoT and smart ecosystems, the survey found.
The new study “5G Smart Ecosystems Are Transforming the Enterprise—Are You Ready?” gathered responses from 265 enterprise IT and business decision makers at medium and large enterprises globally to find out how businesses are thinking about 5G today and its potential significance moving forward.
Born in the cloud, 5G will have the ability to enable enterprises to provision or “slice” core pieces of their networks to power mission-critical new offerings and smart ecosystems. This can range from anything to providing the highest speed connections for life-saving 911 services, to enabling autonomous vehicles to communicate with each other quickly; to ensuring IoT devices in smart factories are providing real-time information on the health of machines and assets.
Respondents also believe 5G will have a widespread impact across their business, including increasing employee productivity (86%), reducing costs (84%), enhancing customer experience (83%), and improving agility (83%). Business decision makers are most focused on quality of experience the technology will bring, while IT is concerned with network speed and resiliency.
Unleashing the Promise of 5G Ecosystems in the Enterprise
When it comes to 5G, enterprises are most focused on:
- Unlocking the potential of IoT: Beyond initial benefits such as speed and quality of experience, 84% of respondents feel that 5G networks will be transformative and have a lasting impact on the way their companies do business. Another 73% agree the IoT will be revolutionized by 5G networks and 68 percent feel it will be transformative to their customers.
- Monetizing new services: Eighty-percent expect 5G to generate new revenue streams for their business. Forty-one percent of the respondents would deploy new monetization solutions specifically for 5G services alongside existing systems, while thirty-four percent say they would replace their existing systems with a single, converged solution for all services. Just about one in five (22) said they will utilize and extend existing monetization solutions with 5G.
- Experience and efficiencies: Eighty-four percent of respondents agree that 5G networks will be transformative and have a lasting impact on the way their companies do business. While business respondents are focused on the quality of experience improvements made possible by 5G, IT respondents care more about the network technologies and the internal efficiencies 5G may enable.
- Security: While excited about the potential of 5G, both business and IT respondents cited security as a top priority. 51% of respondents ranked security as their highest concern.