By James Blackman September 12, 2024
More to follow next week, with coverage of a wide-ranging interview with the firm’s enterprise chiefs, but here is the news from Ericsson’s enterprise industry event in Boston today (September 12), covering the brand and product refresh it talked about at the start of the summer – when hinting at a late-summer ‘reveal all’. There is more to discuss and also to say based on anecdotes and asides, and impressions of the market, as well as on strategy and deals. But this covers the bald news, as presented to analysts today.
The big brand message from Boston, where Ericsson’s enterprise team held court with analysts today, is that its integration of US enterprise networking outfit Cradlepoint, acquired in late 2020, is finally done – alongside parallel, and important, merger work with cloud enterprise security firm Ericom, acquired a year ago. The Cradlepoint brand has been retained, but only as a hardware label on enterprise routers. It has effectively vanished, otherwise; subsumed into its broad Ericsson-branded enterprise portfolio. “Cradlepoint is now Ericsson,” said the firm, “retaining some components of the Cradlepoint brand.”
The Boise-based division’s NetCloud brand lives on, for example. Its simplified NetCloud Private Networks product, geared for easy CBRS deployments in the US, had been repurposed as ‘Ericsson Private 5G Compact’, as part of a three-tiered private 4G/5G product refresh (more below); but, in brand terms, the original Cradlepoint moniker has simply been swapped for its parent’s in its NetCloud Manager infrastructure management platform (now called ‘Ericsson NetCloud Manager’), which works across all of its private networks and neutral host products.
Aside from the brand overhaul, the Swedish vendor said in interview (see coverage next week) that the intellectual property, human capital, channel partnerships, and customer relationships (over 36,000 enterprises globally, claims Ericsson) it inherited with the acquisitions of Cradlepoint and Ericom remain central to its developing proposition, and largely intact – to the point their mergers have been as much about reversing Ericsson’s technologies and expertise into their service properties, despite the straight logistics of making three companies work as one.
It has been a careful and deliberate process, it said; the result is a “first-class unified team, and the most empowered channel partners”, it claimed. But the brand rejig has been simmering since the start of the year, including through voluntary redundancies (and some dialled-in disgruntlement from ex-staffers) at Cradlepoint; and much of the detail about the progress with business integration came out in July. And so the real news from Boston is about how Ericsson’s revised enterprise 5G portfolio is taking shape – plus about new routers to support demand for AI in IoT.
Three networks for enterprise 5G
Ericsson’s new enterprise 5G portfolio includes three solutions, of which only has two are straight private 5G products (branded ‘Ericsson Private 5G’; part of the ‘Ericsson Enterprise Wireless’ portfolio): a Nokia DAC-style (with apologies to both companies) converged private 4G/5G solution (“with industry and licensed spectrum support”), called Ericsson Private 5G; and the (DAC Compact-style) cut-down (“simplified”) Cradlepoint CBRS proposition (for “where Wi-Fi falls short”), previously ‘Cradlepoint NetCloud Private Networks’, now called ‘Ericsson Private 5G Compact’.
The final entry is its neutral host solution, dubbed just ‘Ericsson Enterprise 5G Coverage’, which has been certified by the big US carriers and offers a “simplified and scalable architecture compared to legacy DAS”. This three-piece suits both carpeted and industrial enterprises, it said, and draws on its broader radio access network (RAN) portfolio, including its Radio Dot and small-cell radios for indoor and outdoor deployments, respectively. It means Ericsson’s enterprise menu is still a couple short of rival Nokia’s, which features at least five products just for private networking.
At the same time, it appears like a leap for the Swedish firm in terms of its coverage and presentation. For once, the de-rigueur analyst quote in the news release feels significant, and certainly echoes the line from Ericsson (see next week) about covering the bases, and also about focusing on what it is good at (rather than messing with edge compute hardware and industrial apps, say, like certain others). In an Ericsson-supplied statement, Pablo Tomasi, principal analyst at Omdia, describes it as a “strategic and comprehensive approach to evolving” its portfolio.
Which says that the firm has taken proper care, but also implies that it is not finished yet. Tomasi also talks about Ericsson’s new “ability” to provide customers with a “unified experience” – as “critical” for the market to scale. Which is presumably a reference to Ericsson’s view that it has created a private 5G system that works for enterprise IT departments, instead of just for telcos, with all the security and policy controls they are used to – and without losing any of the good cellular stuff that comes with 5G.
Way down in the press statement, there is talk about “seamless provisioning and configuration” and “unified policy management”, as well as “effortless network operations” and “streamlined lifecycle management”; these capabilities featured higher-up in conversation (see next week), like stand-out offers that will distinguish Ericsson from the rest of the private-5G vendor mob. Manish Tiwari, head of private cellular networks in Ericsson’s enterprise wireless solutions division, referenced a combination of “best-in-class radio, software and managed-operations capabilities”.
The Cradlepoint imprint is there, too, it seems, because of the prominence of NetCloud Manager as a “single pane-of-glass” cloud management platform for all its local-area (LAN) private and neutral-host systems, wide-area (WAN) macro systems, and network and security-as-a-service (SASE) functions. Plus, Ericsson is talking-up (more in interview; see next week) a simplified subscription model (with “optional services and feature add-ons”), Industry 4.0 sales support and training for channel partners, and public 5G and enterprise handover and roaming.
Two routers for enterprise IoT
Meanwhile, Ericsson has launched two new Ericsson-Cradlepoint branded routers, the R980 and S400, to support sundry AI-related (“computer vision, data analysis, other advanced apps”) IoT use cases, for asset tracking, fleet tracking, and in-vehicle automotive solutions. They work with the NetCloud management platform and security service – offering “zero-trust security across large-scale IoT and vehicle endpoints”. Abridged quotes about both products are included (verbatim) below.
– Ericsson Cradlepoint R980
“The Ericsson Cradlepoint R980 is a ruggedized 5G router that delivers high-performance connectivity to vehicles, enabling… advanced apps such as AI-driven video recognition and real-time data analysis… [for] public safety and smart cities… Designed for first responders, near-shore vessels, and school buses, the compact R980 delivers secure and persistent 5G connectivity, even in the most demanding conditions. It can also be leveraged in IoT deployments where video and mission critical applications may require higher performance and lower latency.
“Release-16 compatible, [the R980 is ready] for 5G SA networks and network slicing, including public safety slices and low latency network slices for IoT. [Its] eSIM will enable over-the-air carrier switching in future NetCloud releases… [It integrates] security, SD-WAN, and deep visibility into a unified, easily managed system. This industry-first approach is empowering our customers to seamlessly deploy networks that provide enterprise-grade network reliability and security, all while aligning with their unique innovation and business goals.”
– Ericsson’s Cradlepoint S400
“One of the first zero-trust IoT appliances, [the] S400 enables secure connectivity for diverse IoT use cases, including light industrial, digital signage, and building controls. [It is] a semi-ruggedized, compact IoT device… [with] field-expandable interface options such as additional Ethernet ports, a serial port, and a GPIO switch. This… allows IT specialists to tailor the device to deployment needs. [It] includes NetCloud SASE Secure Connect as a part of its subscription license so small, vulnerable IoT devices, which cannot support traditional security methods, are secure.
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