In his talk at PTC’21 on Monday Jan. 18, 2021 (1 p.m. Honolulu time, 6 p.m. EST), Jefferson Wang, Accenture managing director for network and connected solutions, will explain how 5G, artificial intelligence and the internet of things are directly related. (register here)
Viewing all three technologies--5G, IoT and AI--are building a platform for enterprise digital transformation, Wang sees artificial intelligence and edge computing mediating the interactions between the connectivity network and the sensing devices.
Basically, AI and edge computing orchestrate the interactions between networks, devices and analytics that provide the business value.
Perhaps more to the point, it is AI used by the controlling applications supervising the sensor networks and analytics that will do the mediation. As always, “value” is going to be differential.
The highest value arguably will come when the analytics are able to adjust devices and processes in real time based on the analytics. The role of 5G and other communication networks will vary. When ultra-low latency is necessary, communications between sensors and analytic functions might take place directly on the premises.
That might involve a private 5G network of some sort, without backhauling traffic to the public network. In such cases, the value produced by the public 5G network is lower. In other cases the edge computing functions will happen off premises someplace, in which case the 5G public network is more important.
The 5G public network arguably has greatest value when a network slice is invoked, allowing all end points and processors on the private network to operate with the lowest possible latency and with some guaranteed level of throughput and performance.
