Transformational Technology Summit

This webinar will explore how satellite communications can bring forward cost efficiencies in rural and remote regions that fiber and microwave simply cannot. The discussion will highlight the enabling technologies and recent technological innovations, including high-throughput satellites, software-defined satellites, and advanced phased array antennas. The presentation will also compare the strengths and weaknesses of LEO, MEO, and GEO constellations, and discuss the possible synergies between GEO and LEO solutions as well as the underlying strengths at the core of GEO satellites. Finally, it will provide market forecasts on the respective demand and adoption of these satellite types.

While 5G development is ushering in new market opportunities, mobile products, and user experiences, the devices market is being upset by a number of issues, including a disruption of the mobile devices supply chain, premature acceleration of 5G smartphones to low price points, the emergence of always-on broadband experiences, new device types, and a drastic order change to the vendor landscape. This webinar will look at these issues and will elaborate on potential winners and losers throughout this market transformation.

(Panel Discussion) The RTLS landscape remains fragmented, with hundreds of start-ups and small players developing various location software algorithms and hardware technologies. These range from Bluetooth, UWB, Wi-Fi, and visual light communication within indoor environments, to high-precision GNSS and cellular positioning in outdoor environments. As a result, the RTLS landscape lacks an established and mature ecosystem, has relied heavily on verticalized proprietary solutions, and has been difficult to scale effectively. This panel aims to understand what challenges are facing the RTLS market today and how key industry players can help create a more scalable, open, secure, RTLS ecosystem that will stimulate growth in 2021 and beyond. The panel will also investigate opportunities and challenges of 5G positioning as a challenger to existing RTLS technologies, discuss when the technology will mature, and what markets it will initially address.

This webinar will explain the newly mapped out IoT analytics value chain, focusing on technologies such as edge, stream processing & analytics, data ingestion and data integration, core analytics, storage, and AI/ML, as well as professional services. It will provide insight into the Enabled Ecosystem, with an emphasis on partnership (SI/VAR MD) and the importance of Azure, AWS, and IBM marketplaces as distribution channels for analytics vendors. Finally, It will highlight results of our recent competitive analysis and introduce companies to watch.

Cellular network infrastructure has traditionally been the exclusive domain of a few large vendors. However, open networks, Open RAN, and network virtualization are now exposing the value chain to a variety of new entrants. Network virtualization disaggregates software from hardware and standardizes open interfaces and reference designs. As a result, MNOs can work with different stakeholders, such as Radio vendors, chipset suppliers, system integrators, and application developers, to build a multi-vendor interoperable and modular-based system and reduce time to the market. This webinar will share ABI Research’s view of these value propositions and business strategies in building the modular-based system to foster a healthy and sustainable telco ecosystem. This webinar will also discuss the ability of open cellular networks to bring new opportunities to various industrial verticals and drive innovation, therefore improving their network security and performance and operation efficiency.

The entry of hyperscalers into the telco domain will fundamentally reshape the value chain for enterprise cellular connectivity, as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft start to integrate on-premise, telco edge and public cloud infrastructure that will now include connectivity in the form of private cellular. Ultimately, it will put them in a prime position to unlock the US$ 63 Billion private networks opportunity, the ABI Research projects for 2030. Anticipating this development, this webinar will offer a systematic analysis of what this change means from a telco point of view and how it will change the opportunity to monetize enterprise 5G deployments in the long term.

IoT identities are critical to the secure management of devices throughout their lifecycle, from protecting IPRs during manufacture to securing OTA updates and vulnerability patching after deployment. The identities of devices is a major challenge in the IoT not only due to the range and diversity of such devices across sectors, but also because of the varying network connections available (e.g., LPWA, Cellular, etc.). Numerous solutions are emerging within the market, both in hardware and software variants, which are suitable for myriad use cases. Beyond that, new service platforms are emerging that will securely monitor and manage those identities. This fragmented landscape is nascent but highly dynamic, with determined vendors keen to exploit the lucrative opportunities of adjacent markets in secure provisioning, onboarding, and lifecycle management.

(Panel Discussion) This panel discussion will cover the technologies that will enable cost-effective deployments of massive numbers of devices and sensors for not only traditional applications such as asset tracking, but which will also enable the innovation for new IoT use cases. Key topics discussed include:

• Cloud-based location services
• New antenna technologies
• Advancements in short range and LPWA networks and chipsets
• New engineering approaches for design and production
• Energy harvesting technologies.

(Panel Discussion) For telcos, the artificial intelligence era is just getting started, as AI is being integrated into vertical industries as well. The diverse nature of use cases and the complexity of today’s telco networks create new challenges on networks, including performance, service dynamicity, and latency. These challenges, along with the ongoing quest to institute new commercial models, has forced the telco industry to shift their operations from reactive to AI-assisted, and eventually closed-loop operations. The demand, therefore, is for AI- and analytics-based solutions that deliver intelligent analytics, automation, and assurance for existing physical and soloed infrastructure and processes.

The global pandemic engendered a new level of remote work, online collaboration, and workflows. Although the appetite for adopting collaborative tools has been healthy in recent years, enabling technologies struggled to address the necessary pain-points for a wider market adoption. In many ways, the pandemic helped validate these earlier trends and has played a key role in accelerating technology innovation, expanding perceptions and opening the door wider to new opportunities. In this webinar, we will discuss these accelerated trends, notably the impact of technologies such as content cloudification, 5G and AI on content delivery, and collaborative content in particular. Impacts within the M&E and enterprise markets will be highlighted beyond "zoom calls" to explore the profound changes that are looming on the horizon.

Topics for discussion include:

• The cloud, enabling a wider range of workflows and employees to work and collaborate remotely, allowing for more flexible workflows and workforce, reducing time to market and costs (e.g. reduction in CAPEX spend), and increasing scalability
• Bridging the divide between virtual and in-person, making communications feel more natural: ultra-low latency streaming and data sharing, flexible in-office meeting spaces and hardware (e.g. huddle over conference rooms), and 5G for onsite and flexible/remote work collaborations and communication
• Next generation of communication and collaboration, bringing parity to virtual and in-person communications: immersive, virtual settings/world/offices, digital assets and personas, blockchain cryptocurrencies.

The diversity of edge devices means any enterprises that want to use custom AI solutions in their devices need to identify, develop, and trial the right interface, middleware, framework, and cloud solutions that are optimal for edge AI. This requires investing in an AI development team with skillsets in data science, firmware and software technologies, app interface, and full stack development, resulting in heavy investments and long development cycles. This session will focus on evaluating platform and ecosystem options likely to facilitates edge AI commercialization and how these platforms will be monetized in the future. Starting from understanding the challenges during edge AI deployment, the discussion will go through enabling device onboarding, seamless integration with cloud computing and storage, workload orchestration, innovative user interface, and other features that are popular and high in demand. Ultimately, these advancements allows enterprises to reduce CAPEX investment, minimize development time and accelerate their digitization processes.

(Panel Discussion) As the dust settles from the LPWAN technology hype, the question is whether these mainstream technologies will perish in pilot purgatory or succeed in enabling the massive IoT market. In the last decade, the technology landscape has evolved. However, there’s increasing business complexity as enterprises decide the right technology for specific IoT use-case. The session will provide the audience with insights and analysis on vertical IoT applications driving LPWA technology growth In key regions. The panel discussion will offer industry leaders voice their opinion on how LPWAN technologies will help accelerate the creation of a digital society.

How will the focus on enterprise verticals change the 5G value chain & what does that mean for network operators & infrastructure vendors? What should MSPs and network infrastructure vendors do to address industrial manufacturers? Which benefits will 5G connectivity on the factory floor offer to factory operators? Join this webinar for answers to these key questions and many others.

In the wake of Covid-19 and amidst rapidly digitizing lifestyles, urban concepts such as ultra-dense microcities will come under review, potentially yielding to more distributed city fabrics. At the same time, cities will remain unchallenged in terms of their roles as engines of economic and social life, albeit subject to new design principles like resilience and circularity. A host of technology tools will enable these new frameworks. Digital twins will increasingly drive real-time management of urban assets but also become a key tool for generative urban design. Digital currencies used as incentivizing tools for influencing responsible citizen behavior will help advance the sustainability agenda. AI-based machine vision will provide advanced levels of for surveillance, traffic management, preventive maintenance, and indeed social distancing enforcement. 5G-enabled edge cloud and MEC networks will power mission-critical applications such as automated emergency response modes and various forms of robotics for a range of use cases including zero touch delivery, driverless mobility, and unmanned inspection of urban assets both driving down operational costs and improving the overall quality of urban living.

This webinar will dive deep into the findings from our recently published report, highlighting investment and disruption from analytics in the smart home. We will detail the drivers, the leading players, and the potential to draw traditional consumer equipment providers into the smart home through a greater ability to embed intelligence directly into devices without the limitation of requiring detailed and specific smart home platform functionality.

As Augmented Reality proves value across industries, the enabling technologies and potential pitfalls around AR implementations becomes increasingly important to understand. The market is moving from targeted, vertical approaches to more flexible and horizontal opportunities, while the new working environment of today demands efficient collaboration between workers, often split between office/worksite and remote locations. New business models, with greater portfolio granularity and more as a Service (aaS) AR offerings, are reaching the market to address this shift in workforce demands and market focus. Immersive visualization opportunities, leveraging enabling technologies such as 5G, AI, and digital twin/thread, can fill business continuity gaps and maximize workforce potential.

This webinar will examine the opportunities and challenges AR presents across markets, as well as what’s required to ensure success. Considerations across hardware and software, necessary preparations, high value partnership opportunities, and likely results will be presented. This will be grounded with quantitative analysis on addressable market size, growth opportunities, and ROI evaluations for varying markets and enterprise types.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed inherent weaknesses in the automotive market. However, this is not just a once in a generation blip, and there are opportunities to address structural weaknesses as the market recovers. This webinar will explore the many challenges facing the automotive market, with a deep dive into key metrics from 2020 and projections for the years ahead.

This webinar will discuss the substantial supply chain challenges introduced by the COVID-19 vaccine and provide strategies for addressing these challenges proactively, including by selecting the right technologies.

Topics for discussion include:

• Where the digital thread meets the supply chain and cold chain
• The Industry 4.0 technologies that have been deployed to manufacture the vaccine (e.g., MES,MOM, and QA automation)
• The importance of compliance and traceability going forward
• Transport challenges, from sufficiently enabled vehicles to drivers to monitoring tags that may need to be exchanged at delivery
• Largely unaddressed reverse logistics, including specialized containers, tags and possible medical waste

5G is rolling out with infrastructure and mobile devices. However the COVID pandemic demonstrated the need for regulators and telcos to improve digital resilience, and improving ultra-fast broadband access for homes, small offices and home offices should be a central component of these efforts. This webinar will answer key questions, including:

• What is the optimum spectrum band?
• How much spectrum is needed?
• What should the CPE cost and how should it be deployed?
• How should the operator configure their cell-sites to handle FWA subscriptions as well as mobile users?

(Panel Discussion) Asia-Pacific countries are interested in large scale smart city initiatives to boost welfare, make transport hubs more efficient, and realize greater resilience. Topics for discussion will include:

• Which Smart City applications will secure the most traction in Asia?
  • Integrated Transport? Smart Buildings? Digital Twin Applications? Smart Lighting/Street Lights? Green City & Refuse Management? Smart Security/AI-based CCTV?
• Have the Market Opportunity for Smart City applications finally matured?
• Which connectivity solutions fit which smart city applications?
  • Io NB-IOT? LTE M2M? Sigfox? LORA?
• A smart city application without proper software/application development will fail. What are the technical, security and UI requirements?
  • Government subsidized? Public/Private Partnerships? End user?