“ The 5G Council is serving as that hub for how we drive the next level of innovation across a number of industries ”
— Frank Wilde , Vice President , SAP and partners , while also adding telcos from EMEA and APAC into the mix .
“ We have Asian and European telcos working with us , so we have worked to broaden the exposure as well as creating diverse perspectives ,” says Wilde . “ The Council has grown over the course of the last two-and-a-half years , so it ’ s interesting to see that we ’ ve got customers also coming to us that want to join .” “ So it ’ s moved very much beyond just a pure telco conversation and connectivity conversation , and really moved much more into an open innovation forum where CTOs , as well as directors and VPs in marketing and sales and operations are interested in joining .”
While interest is clearly high , and growing , one of the core challenges facing Wilde and the 5G Council is that customers are not aware of what this next generation of network provides .
Wilde says he believes SAP customers still do not fully understand what a 5G network can do and he feels it will be another two , three , or even four-year process to get customers comfortable with its capabilities .
Part of that educational process is working with the likes of Verizon and Deloitte to put together a 5G Playbook to make it easier to understand both the technology and specific use cases that SAP can partner on .
99 technologymagazine . com