Why mobile connectivity is essential for the enterprise [Q&A]

While enterprise computing was once tied to the desktop, theses days mobile connectivity is essential to the smooth running of any business.

This is partly as a result of changed working patterns -- accelerated by the COVID pandemic -- and partly down to rapidly evolving technology. We spoke to Allwyn Sequeira, CEO of mobile cloud service Highway 9 Networks, to learn more about the enterprise mobile space.

BN: What is the state of mobile connectivity in the enterprise today?

AS: Every day a new AI, robotics, and/or drone solution hits the market. But despite how advanced and evolved these technologies might be, they have one major gap in common -- they depend on low-latency, highly-resilient mobile connectivity to operate effectively. And unfortunately this capability is severely lacking in most enterprise environments.

If you walk into any high-rise building, corporate facility or college campus today, you’ll find unreliable and under-performing mobile coverage at some area of the location -- either indoors, outdoors or both.

The issue is traditional fixed wireless solutions like Wi-Fi lack the full site coverage, resiliency, predictability and low-latency requirements needed to support these types of modern, mobile-centric use cases. In addition, most would crumble in the face of a cybersecurity attack or performance meltdown. Alternately, large enterprises often use Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) to extend traditional cellular networks, but they are very expensive to deploy and operate, and are completely siloed in operation from existing IT infrastructure and security policies.

Given the accelerated pace of innovation in AI, automation and robotics, enterprises are in urgent need of mission-critical, low-latency, and secure mobile connectivity to ensure these advanced initiatives can be effectively rolled out.

BN: Low-latency and highly resilient wireless connectivity seems like a problem that should've been solved a long time ago. What's kept this market sector behind the times?

AS: The wireless industry has lagged due to several technical complications:

• Limitations of Existing Solutions: Traditional solutions like fixed wireless have struggled to support the rapidly expanding requirements of modern enterprise environments. These include not only comprehensive coverage across diverse and extended physical layouts, but also the need for low latency and highly resilient connectivity for mobile-first applications.
• Physical and Telecom Infrastructure-centric Models: The cellular networking industry has traditionally focused on physical and telecom-centric infrastructure, which are less adaptable than cloud-native solutions to the fast-paced changes and scalability requirements of today's enterprises.
• Lack of Integration and Flexibility: Older solutions like DAS lack seamless integration with enterprise IT infrastructure and policies, while most fixed wireless offerings don’t natively extend across a full set of mobile service providers, making it difficult to architect and operate an enterprise-wide private mobile network effectively or efficiently.

BN: Do new technologies demand faster, more reliable connectivity?

AS: Undoubtedly. In the last year alone, we've seen an explosion of AI-based applications that demand greater connectivity. Algorithms require fast, reliable connectivity to process and analyze data in real-time.

But it's not just AI driving demand. We're seeing a proliferation of IoT devices that rely on constant, reliable connectivity to transmit data to edge-based servers or cloud platforms for analysis and action. The efficiency and effectiveness of IoT are heavily dependent on their ability to stay connected without interruption.

In industrial and commercial settings, we're seeing robots being increasingly used for a wide range of tasks including manufacturing logistics and supply chain functions. These robots often require real-time data exchange with edge-based backend systems for control commands, navigation, and task management. Reliable connectivity is essential for coordinating these operations, especially in environments like factories and warehouses where safety and efficiency is critical.

Drones are also growing in use. These need to maintain constant communication with control stations or leverage edge- or cloud-based computing for processing video feeds for monitoring or mapping. The ability to transmit high-definition video and other sensor data reliably and with minimal delay is crucial for the effectiveness and safety of drone operations.
And this is just scratching the surface of modern workloads.

BN: How is technology helping to overcome this growing problem?

AS: Several advances in private mobile technology, including the availability of spectrum, multi-eSIM support, and private 5G have finally made it possible to deploy extensible, high performance private mobile networks within the enterprise. But what was still missing is the ability for enterprises to actually leverage those technologies and run them using a familiar cloud operating model -- not a physical telco-centric one.

To help enterprises fully leverage the superior range, resiliency, and low-latency of these mobile technology advances, we combined that technology with a robust cloud-native platform and set of mobile services to build the first-of-its-kind Highway 9 Mobile Cloud. Highway 9 builds on private cellular technology, and couples it with a fully cloud-native platform.

Highway 9 customers are already deriving outsized benefits from Highway 9's mobile cloud. These include:

• Ubiquitous mobile coverage via access to voice and data services across and outside of locations of all sizes. Advances in private mobile technology -- such as free spectrum, multi-eSIM support, and private 5G -- help enterprises address their multi-provider, connectivity-everywhere needs effectively.
• Seamless integration into existing IT infrastructure, which helps enterprises maintain operating and security policies as well as roles and operating models. This, in turn, saves organizations time and money.
• End-to-end visibility and control via a cloud-based management system for tasks across the mobile connectivity lifecycle.
• Simplified operations via integrated stack of mobile services, including eSIM, SAS, radio, packet core, orchestration, and life cycle management, ensuring uniform connectivity, control, and orchestration of mobile devices organization-wide.
• High performance and low latency connectivity for next-generation AI applications such as AI-driven factory automation, autonomous machines and next-gen IoT.

To sum it up, much like the last decade saw the migration of servers and apps to the public cloud, we believe the next decade will see the migration of mobile and AI-driven devices to the mobile cloud, unleashing a whole new wave of innovation.

This is why we're setting out to transform enterprise mobility -- facilitating faster deployment, lower total cost of ownership, and enhanced security and performance for AI-driven and mobile-first enterprise environments.

Image credit: Sasinparaksa/Dreamstime.com