As the world navigates the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), manufacturers stand to benefit more than any other vertical. The ability to analyze and activate petabytes of shop floor data will drive demand for high-performance 5G connectivity and edge computing infrastructure. According to analyst firm Omdia, manufacturers stand to gain $4.6tn from 5G adoption over the next decade.
Despite the immense opportunity for 5G and edge to transform manufacturing, the adoption of these new technologies has been hindered by the cost and complexity of implementation. Upgrading a plant with 5G communications, AI robotics and smart sensor technology requires unprecedented capital expenditures and hard-to-find IT talent. It should come as no surprise that manufacturers find it daunting to build and operate a high-end data center on-site.
Manufacturing tends to be clustered geographically, making it feasible to build Industry 4.0 capabilities directly into shared infrastructure. Rather than require each business to implement its own underlying technologies, core capabilities can be delivered as a service from the infrastructure. Infrastructure investments can catalyze the digital transformation of individual businesses, but also act as a force multiplier to a region’s economic development.
We already have a model for shared infrastructure. It’s called the Internet. Our legacy core-out Internet is dominated by the large hyperscalers, their private backbones, and their massive, centralized data centers, often in the middle of nowhere.
To fully support Industry 4.0, we must transform the Internet.
Today’s Internet cannot support Industry 4.0 because it was built during an era when the primary use case was humans consuming content. But as Internet-connected “things” — sensors, cameras, robots — proliferate, we need an Internet designed for these systems. We need to rebuild the Internet to support an era of machines, at the edge. The Internet at the edge looks a lot like the Internet at the core, but it operates at a different scale.
It consists of data centers, fiber optic backbones, and robust networking architectures that are miniaturized to fit at the base of a cell tower, under a freeway overpass, or on the roof of a building.
They are small in stature to fit at the edge, but they are as robust as the technologies at the core and form the basis of smart city infrastructure.
Smart city infrastructure brings the centralized capabilities of today’s Internet to the edge. By building local extensions of the Internet directly into the fabric of our cities, we catalyze the economic growth of existing industries, while also making the region more attractive to new growth industries and capital investments.
Bringing the internet to the edge unlocks new delivery models that create opportunities for vendors and manufacturers. Vendors can now deliver capabilities as a service, whether its 5G-as-a-service, robotics-as-a-service, digital-twins-as-a-service, or any number of new and imaginative technologies, they can all be purchased on demand.
This lowers the capital expenditures required to implement new manufacturing capabilities, to both suppliers and manufacturers.
The internet, whether it’s at the edge or the core, benefits from the economics of shared infrastructure. The power of shared infrastructure means that the manufacturer can begin consuming new capabilities on a pay-as-you-go basis. It also means that suppliers, even small suppliers, can deliver powerful capabilities without investing in owned-and-operated infrastructure. Just as the cloud unleashed millions of new, low-cost services for consumers, the edge cloud will do the same for manufacturers.
In one recent study, Tolaga Research estimated the potential economic value of neutral host edge infrastructure for the City of Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County. The study looked at Industry 4.0 use-cases in key industry verticals, including manufacturing.
The study concludes that edge infrastructure has the potential to unlock USD 28.9 billion in cumulative GDP contributions to Clark County over the five years between 2021 and 2025 and $115.8 billion over the ten years between 2021 and 2030. These estimates predict a 3.8 percent CAGR in Clark County’s GDP with INZONE and a 2.5 percent CAGR without INZONE.
Encouraging the development of edge infrastructure is critical to unlocking the next generation of manufacturing capabilities. Just like today’s internet provides consumers with nearly infinite choice, neutral host infrastructure at the edge ensures the best technologies have a path to market and gives manufacturers the maximum range of choices for their cloud-consumed technologies.
New vendor innovations, including software-delivered 5G RAN, augmented reality and AI robotics, will be available at exceptionally low cost because no one supplier will be required to provide all the infrastructure. Suppliers can quickly deploy their technologies and services without having to build and operate the critical infrastructure. This makes it easier and faster to bring Industry 4.0 products to market while also amortizing infrastructure costs across the multitude of its users.
Subscribe for industry insights. Elevate your influence – promote with us!
