John Marcus – Senior Principal Analyst, Enterprise IoT, Mobility, Private Networks, and Service Innovations.
Summary Bullets:
• In January 2024, GlobalData predicted that the business services units of mobile operators would begin promoting 5G network slicing in 2024, educating enterprise customers about the technology being enabled by their rollouts of 5G standalone (SA) technology.
• Even with some progress on 5G SA rollouts around the world (and a handful of commercial trials), it’s already clear that this prediction was premature.
The potential with slicing to create multiple virtual networks within a single physical infrastructure – each tailored to specific needs – is still very much there, but a number of challenges must yet be addressed before operators can successfully launch 5G network slicing solutions for enterprises.
Recently Microsoft announced a feature for its Windows operating system called Recall. Designed for ‘AI PCs,’ Recall saves all of a user’s activity by taking screenshots of every window, every five seconds. It performs OCR to extract text from images and all other on-screen text. Then it saves it all in a local database. AI indexes the data, making it easy to find.
• Salesforce is leveraging generative AI (GenAI) capabilities to address customer pain points such as processing unstructured data and unlocking the value in this data creating unified customer profiles.
• Salesforce Data Cloud will be available on Hyperforce in the UK in July 2024. Salesforce Hyperforce aims to address customers’ growing appetite for compliance, safety, and standardization in the public cloud.
The Salesforce World Tour took place on June 6, 2024, at the Excel Centre in East London (England), with sponsors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cognizant, Deloitte, and PWC. The annual event included workshops, demos, and discussions with partners, the announcement of an AI center, and innovations in the Salesforce Data Cloud and Slack platforms. For GenAI observers, the most salient news was the general availability of Salesforce Data Cloud Vector Database, built into the Salesforce Einstein 1 Platform, which infuses GenAI into the vendor’s CRM platform, Salesforce Customer 360. The vector database collects, “ingests,” and combines structured and unstructured data regarding end users. This is of great importance to Salesforce’s customers’ customers. According to the vendor, around 80% of customer data is scattered across internal corporate departments in an unstructured configuration, “trapped” in PDFs, emails, chat conversations, transcripts, customer reviews, and so on. This data can be leveraged to create a closer overall relationship with the customer by creating a unified profile of the so-called customer journey. Being able to ground all types of data in Salesforce Data Cloud – where it is processed – unlocks a ton of valuable information and not just to engage with the customer in positive ways: It makes it possible to be agile as possible in case of problems including issues such as product recall, returns, and so on.
• Ericsson is investing to solidify and expand its US presence and ecosystem of partners to gain an edge over competitors based overseas.
• Ericsson’s messaging reflects the evolving domestic political climate and changing global geopolitical environment.
In late May 2024, Ericsson hosted industry analysts to its 5G smart factory in Dallas, Texas (US). The key theme of the event was that Ericsson provides “5G made in the US, for the US.” The Swedish telecom equipment provider reminded attendees that it has been operating in the US for 122 years and that 26% of its sales are from North America. Furthermore, it maintains six R&D facilities, employs 7,600 people, and has invested over $7 billion in acquisitions in the region. In March 2024, the company formed a new division, Ericsson Federal Technologies Group, to help the US federal government deploy 5G solutions. Via its Dallas facility, Ericsson meets the government’s requirements to support open RAN technologies and equipment manufactured in the US.
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