Fotolia
5G services to headline Mobile World Congress Americas 2018
In a roundup of industry insights, 5G services will be a hot topic at Mobile World Congress, VMware embraces multi-cloud and cybersecurity platforms require key features.
If it's September, it's time for Mobile World Congress Americas. And this year's conference, scheduled for next week in Los Angeles, will be all about 5G services, wrote Kathryn Weldon, an analyst at GlobalData, based in London.
"Clearly we are closer to actual 5G rollouts, so all vendors and operators that participate in the 5G value chain will be touting their wares, anticipating and touting possible use cases, and amping up the excitement," she wrote.
Weldon said she does not believe next week's Mobile World Congress will yield any major product announcements. Instead, she categorized education as the show's biggest benefit, especially around 5G services.
"Enterprises know little about 5G at this point because they can't yet see it or buy it. [The conference] should help them envision the kinds of things these new technologies can do for their businesses."
Among those new capabilities will be enhanced video broadcasting, advanced interactive gaming systems and anything that can benefit from low latency, Weldon said.
5G services won't be the only technology discussed at Mobile World Congress Americas. The event will also showcase other wireless trends, including low-power WANs, internet of things and, of course, business transformation. What's a show without some mention of transformation, after all?
Find out what else -- beyond 5G services -- Weldon said attendees should look for at next week's Mobile World Congress Americas.
VMware loves the cloud -- now
VMware wasn't always a fan of the cloud, but it sure is now, said Drew Conry-Murray, in a Packet Pushers post.
The vendor pitched its virtual cloud network architecture at last month's VMworld, with executives telling attendees to make VMware software the foundation for all of their enterprises' multi-cloud operational requirements -- from security to management.
The reason why? The vendor does not want to be cast aside as more applications rely on a public cloud infrastructure that does not require VMware, Conry-Murray said.
VMware's approach could work, but it won't be inexpensive. Or easy, Conry-Murray said.
Read Conry-Murray's other observations about VMware's embrace of multi-cloud.
Platform wars: The next phase of enterprise security?
Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass., said CISOs are increasingly looking for a single vendor to provide the tools they need to secure their networks.
That may be an efficient way to go, but most enterprises have a dizzying list of security needs they must meet, and finding a security platform capable of supporting all those requirements is not easy.
But that's where Oltsik and his colleague, Doug Cahill, come in.
The two developed a list of eight attributes they said every cybersecurity platform must offer. Then they interviewed more than 200 cybersecurity professionals to identify the three attributes they consider most important.
Among the attributes cited: ease of management and coverage that includes major threat vectors such as email and web security. Almost 40% of those surveyed said email and web security is a must, while 33% said they needed a platform that offered central management across all products and services.
Find out what else survey respondents had to say about cybersecurity platforms.
