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Digital commerce in the 5G world

5G is the next generation of mobile networks that will drastically increase performance and enable new use-cases across three dimensions:

• Massive machine-to-machine (M2M) communications will accelerate the adoption of M2M/IoT leading to emergence of many new use-cases including remote control, infrastructure monitoring, health, connected cars and many others.
• Ultra-reliable low latency communications will allow to achieve latencies as low as 1ms which enable delivery of new services such as near-real time data processing, remote control and augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR).
• Enhanced mobile broadband will enable 10x to 100x faster networks comparing to 4G allowing fixed-like services to be delivered to business and consumers through mobile connections.

Although still in its infancy, 5G is growing rapidly with the number of 5G connections expected to reach almost 1.5 billion by 2024. New use-cases and capabilities enabled by 5G will accelerate enterprise digital transformation across verticals, such as:

• NEW TOUCHPOINTS. In the world where people, devices, equipment and cars are connected wirelessly at any time, increasing the number of interactions will happen through emerging touchpoints. Consumers and enterprises will interact with businesses to experience and order new products in near-real time with AR/VR, chat bots and a multitude of connected devices. For example, new pay-per-view content can be ordered directly from a connected car through an entertainment system. Enterprises will be able to order new stock based on data from sensors in the equipment and applications connected to the network.
• NEW PRODUCTS and SERVICES. Increased speeds, low latency and the adoption of M2M/IoT use-cases will enable new B2C and B2B business models based around on-demand services delivered anywhere in the world at any time. Manufacturers will be able to sell hardware products in on-demand fashion with new value-added services. Financial services will be equipped to charge customers depending on their level of activity, including usage-based car and equipment insurance. Telecom service providers will be able to allow subscribers to granularly configure their service based on various parameters including speed, bandwidth and quality of service.
• NEW EXPERIENCES. Enormous amount of data generated in the connected world will provide enterprises with valuable information on how their B2C and B2B customers use their products and services. This will allow enterprises to build an understanding of customer usage patterns, locations and profiles to design personalized offerings. Combined with the on-demand business models it will enable real-time hyper-personalization of products and services. 

Commerce Requirements

In order to drive the sustainable business growth in the 5G world, enterprises will need to employ a commerce solution that enables the delivery of new hyper-personalized offerings across traditional and new touchpoints:

• Diverse new business models will require commerce solutions to have comprehensive product management capabilities. It will need to support products and services with different payment methods including one-time, flat-rate, subscription-based, usage-based. On top of that it will need to support partner-enabled offerings as enterprises will extensively bundle their own and third-party offerings.
• Emerging touchpoints will require service providers to have comprehensive APIs on top of their commerce platform. The APIs will provide quotation and ordering through any channel, be it a vending machine or a connected car. Many of the touchpoints in the 5G ecosystem will be owned by third parties, which means that the APIs have to be well-documented, so that the third parties’ developers will be able to develop applications on top of them.
• To deliver hyper-personalized experiences commerce platform will need to provide comprehensive capabilities for promotion management and offering personalization. It will have to leverage data from diverse sources including billing, interactions, account profile to deliver personalized offerings with custom prices in real-time. Promotions will have to be defined both for large customer segments, as well as, microsegments and individual customers.

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5G and the latest digital transformation

5G has been an overall popular conversation topic globally and it definitely dominated at Mobile World Congress. 

The anticipated low communication latency and increased network speeds with 5G are drastically heightening further interest in areas where real-time data processing and augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) will be prevalent.

Sal Visca, CTO at Elastic Path is looking forward to the disruption this new technology is about to cause. “While, this new generation of communication provides up to 20 times more performance, it’s the other characteristics of 5G that will really change the game,” Visca said in an article in Gigabit Magazine. 

Many use cases of 5G will be around an overly connected world providing more convenience and safety. As the Washington Post reported, “5G’s latency will be crucial for a connected infrastructure. Improving the quality of government and utility services, in addition to enhancing public safety, health and sustainability. Smart-city technology is already in places such as Barcelona, Singapore and Columbus, Ohio, where it is being used for instant crime reporting, smart streetlights, and sensors that monitor things like air quality, parking spaces and garbage collection.”

With 5G’s network efficiency, it will enable billions of IoT devices to be added to networks. 

“5G may not have a tremendous impact on how we currently use our mobile phones, but it will bring more of the capabilities that are powered by cloud apps across networks that currently take seconds or many milliseconds to access (with limitations on the amount of data transmitted),” according to Visca. 

Healthcare, automotive, telecommunications and industrial automation are the main industry verticals that will see IoT-related benefits with the rollout of 5G.

With 5G pushing the boundaries of the networks and computing capabilities in the cloud, it’s also bringing edge computing to the forefront for industries. Analysts estimate that by 2020 more than five billion IoT devices will be in operation in enterprise and government environments utilizing edge computing for data collection.

Edge computing is already being deployed globally within the industrial automation (IA) field for smart logistics, machine learning, and factory asset management. According to Roger Billings, “edge computing is what is paving the way for a 5G rollout by helping to support virtualization, mobile and IoT applications. In addition to leading to a more scalable solution by migrating computation, networking, or storage capabilities across or through different levels of hierarchy.”

While most information will be uploaded and processed via the cloud, some business-critical applications will require the use of a computing infrastructure on the edge of the network to minimize the bandwidth needed to access data that is centrally stored (Gigabit Magazine). 

With the interconnectivity, machine learning, automation and real-time data now in play, we’re experiencing another industrial revolution. Bringing worth what is often deemed Industry 4.0– 5G, IoT and edge computing will be the essential enablers in this latest digital transformation. 

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Mobile’s impact on holiday shopping and how to compete next season

10 Magazine Lessons That Will Make You A Better Content Marketer

Even if you don't read them, did you know that your can learn from print magazines? Here are 10 magazine lessons for content marketers complete with actionable tactics and examples.

The post 10 Magazine Lessons That Will Make You A Better Content Marketer appeared first on Heidi Cohen.

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https://heidicohen.com/magazine-lessons-for-content-marketers/