Google Distributed Cloud Edge and Celona 5G LANs

Introduction

Leaders of the real estate industry have a tremendous opportunity in the making. 

With the use of digital technologies ranging from space analytics, room automation, environmental sensing, they can significantly improve the square footage value of their investments – while offering a lower cost of ownership for their tenants. 

There are few key ingredients needed here to make this all possible. First, without breaking the bank, these digital infrastructure components need to be “connected” to a private local area network – so that they can be remotely monitored and their data can be harnessed in real-time. Second, this data is only useful if it drives business insights with modern smart building applications. 

With this partnership, we take care of the first piece of the puzzle with our 5G LAN technology offering the highest levels of predictable connectivity, and since it is running on Google Distributed Cloud Edge (GDC Edge), ,powerful real estate applications now extend into private enterprise environments.

Usually connectivity and compute have been thought of separately. That no longer has to be the case, thanks to this close partnership between Google Cloud and Celona. 

That’s what one of the largest real estate investment firms in the US is taking advantage of with their rollout of this innovative solution. This is their story on how exactly they are getting this done. 

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What’s the problem?

Today’s conventional enterprise network and security architectures have simply not been designed for the diverse set of compute infrastructure options required to enable today’s modern real estate applications. 

Significant changes to applications and data flows, including latency and reliable connectivity, have resulted in the need for multiple options for compute environments: public cloud, multi-tenant edge cloud, on-prem extensions and centralized/distributed private clouds. 

This variety calls for the connectivity layer (also known as the “access network”) to be as smart as the applications that it supports. The only way for the network to keep pace with the speed of innovation with smart building applications is to seamlessly integrate with such variety of compute environments. It should also act to increase the availability and privacy of such critical infrastructure.  If there are moves, adds, or changes within the application stack, your network should be able to adapt dynamically and support green field deployments quickly. 

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What’s the solution?

Thankfully, a Celona network – given its cloud-native architecture as mandated by 3GPP’s 5G specifications –  can do just that. Wherever your GDC Edge resources are as part of a new smart building application rollout, Celona’s 5G LAN network operating system (OS) can be installed “as an app itself” to provide a fully integrated end-to-end private networking and application solution to enterprises. 

In this model, the Celona platform extends to wide ranging compute environments and supports forwarding of private cellular wireless traffic flows enabled via Celona’s indoor and outdoor access points. We like to call this “extension” of the Celona platform, Celona Edge. 

Ironically, Celona Edge is “edgeless” in its nature offering flexibility in edge deployment topologies and scale to  support private LTE/5G connectivity. 

With Celona Edge, the network OS for private cellular comes with a centralized cloud “orchestrator” federating across GDC Edge compute environments, just like the smart building applications – significantly increasing the speed of delivery and deployment. 

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What’s the benefit for real estate leaders?

There are of course more practical benefits a Celona 5G LAN solution (must read: our definitive guide on the topic) needs to provide for IoT connectivity within smart buildings. 

With the use of a private cellular network the overall cost to enable connectivity for smart IoT gateways is significantly reduced, as you will be eliminating the need to subscribe to individual SIM subscriptions with public cellular wireless providers. Less cost for the network translates to faster and wider adoption of smart building applications that people cares about. 

Given that the connectivity is truly private in a Celona network as it becomes part of your Local Area Network (LAN), and since the access points are within the four walls of the smart building, the privacy concerns for using a public cellular network goes out the window (pun intended). 

And as the Celona access points take advantage of private spectrum options (e.g., CBRS in the United States), you end up not having to worry about external interference as the chunk of spectrum you have access to is solely reserved for your use cases. 

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Why Celona 5G LANs?

If these benefits are not enough, there are few additional capabilities that make Celona a great ally for GDC Edge to ensure end to end differentiation of the joint solution for customers like the real estate investment firm we have been fortunate to support as partners. 

Celona’s 5G LAN solution comes with simplicity at its core. After being able to set it up at record times, you can easily align it with your organization’s corporate policies. And, as you onboard more and more use cases to the same network, there is no need to touch each end point (e.g. IoT gateways) for specialized configuration; with patented Celona MicroSlicing™ , it is in fact possible to ensure deterministic throughput and latency performance for each of these devices via software. 

“We’ve seen firsthand how the Celona solution resonates with IT professionals, who can extend their application connectivity needs with private 5G, and run it just like they do with their existing Wi-Fi network. We are excited to work alongside Celona to bring the ability for enterprises to simplify and operate private 5G networks at scale and with the flexibility they need,” Gabriele Di Piazza, Director of Product Management for Google.  

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If software and cloud are here to change how we do business, we think, a Celona 5G LAN is their partner for accelerating that change. To continue the conversation, and see the Celona technology in action, make sure to check out one of our product journeys at celona.io/journey.

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