Technology Reseller v34

01732 759725 06 TECH TRENDS 5G could add $8 trillion to global GDP, says Nokia 5G-enabled industries have the potential to add $8 trillion to global GDP by 2030, claims a new report from Nokia and Nokia Bell Labs. The 5G Business Readiness Report highlights the potential of 5G to drive sustainable economic growth, boosted in part by the Covid-19 pandemic’s acceleration of digitisation, particularly among the least digitally advanced industries. The report draws a clear correlation between 5G deployment and business performance, with companies at an advanced level of 5G adoption being the only group to experience a net increase in productivity (+10%) since Covid-19, and the only group able to maintain or increase customer engagement during the pandemic. 5G mature companies are also growing considerably faster than their peers, with 49% of firms in the expansion phase and 37% in the implementation phase – the two most advanced stages of 5G maturity – achieving rapid growth last year, compared to 20% in the planning phase, 11% in the discovery phase and 5% in the passive phase. Nokia is anticipating a big increase in 5G investment as enterprises advance their digitisation programmes, with 71% of large companies planning to invest in 5G over the next 5 years. While the report highlights the benefits of investment in 5G, it also reveals low levels of 5G maturity across the eight economies analysed – Australia, Germany, Finland, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, the UK and the US. Just 7% of companies (4% in the UK) are categorised as 5G mature, with 50% at the midway point between planning and deployment on the 5G readiness scale i.e. still conducting trials/pilots or early stage deployments such as 5G mobile phones or limited 5G connectivity for fleet services or rural locations. Moreover, while awareness of the importance of 5G adoption is high, a significant investment gap remains, with just 15% of companies currently investing in 5G implementation and nearly one third (29%) not planning any 5G investment in the next 5 years. The report’s authors identify five principal barriers to 5G adoption: concerns about security (cited by 34%); limited infrastructure outside urban centres (28%); low prioritisation in businesses (22%); poor understanding of 5G amongst business decision-makers (17%); and cost and complexity (15%). https://www.nokia.com/networks/5g/ readiness-report/ 4G boost for old phone boxes Vodafone is using old phone boxes in towns across the UK to boost 4G coverage at a time of rising data volumes. Miniature 4G roof units with a signal radius of 200 metres are being used to provide 4G in busy areas of Brighton, Edgware, Edinburgh, Guildford, Harrow, Oxford and Polzeath and Sennen Cove beaches in Cornwall. Scott Petty, Chief Technology Officer at Vodafone UK, said: “Our network has never been busier as more people rely on their smartphones and expect a fast, reliable connection. Across the UK, we see old phone boxes being used as libraries, shops and even aquariums. With our technology, they are returning to their roots.” The benefits of AWS for SMEs If organisations in the North-East deployed cloud technology to the same extent as London businesses, they would see a productivity boost of 2.6%, worth £1.4 billion. So says a report from Amazon on the impact of Amazon Web Services (AWS) on UK SMEs. Among the other findings by economic consultancy Public First are that AWS generates £8.7 billion in economic value for businesses across the UK; that companies which run on the cloud are nearly three times as likely to be growing at more than 5% a year than those that don’t; and that moving a company’s IT workload to the AWS cloud reduces its carbon footprint by 88%. www.awsimpactreport.publicfirst.co.uk/ Too many vendors, not enough visibility Security fears (84%) and risk of non- compliance (52%) are cited as the biggest barriers to cloud adoption for the insurance and finance industries in a new report from Veritas Technologies, Veritas 2020 Data Management in a Multi-Cloud World: Finance and Insurance . Even so, cloud adoption in the sectors is growing strongly, with 48% of organisational data now stored or managed in the public cloud – a figure that is expected to rise to 78% in five years’ time. The report highlights weaknesses in organisations’ data backup capabilities, with 83% using multiple vendors or solutions within their data protection infrastructure and just 21% able to back up all workloads equally effectively. Only 13% have a consolidated on-premise and cloud solution and only 15% have full visibility of unstructured data. www.veritas.com Data challenges push businesses to the edge Almost half (44%) of UK businesses have already deployed Edge technologies to improve their ability to collect, process, store and analyse data at the Edge – and this figure is expected to increase to 67% within the next two years, according to a new report from Aruba. At the Edge of Change: Navigating the New Data Era highlights clear awareness of the cost and latency advantages of storing and processing growing volumes of data at the Edge. More than half (57%) of IT decision- makers (ITDMs) surveyed describe their need for systems to handle data from users and IoT devices at the Edge as ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ urgent, with 24% of ITDMs in the UK stating that “there is too much data for our systems to handle” and 30% stating that “we cannot process the data quickly enough to take action”. Around half think that capturing and acting on data would give them deeper customer insights (52%), increase workforce productivity (51%), improve operational efficiencies and costs (48%) and enable service delivery personalisation (48%). Just over a quarter (28%) say it would enable them to create opportunities to develop differentiated products, services, revenue streams and business models. The report also identifies a number of obstacles that are preventing organisations from deploying Edge technologies, notably a shortage of skills within organisations (cited by 87%) and concern that connecting devices at the Edge makes a network more vulnerable (cited by 59%). www.arubanetworks.com Tech trends: ICT in the UK today At the Edge of change NAVIGATINGTHENEWDATAERA DataManagement in aMulti-CloudWorld: Financeand InsuranceEdition