It’s an established truth that connectivity is critical to all business’ operations today. However, the definition of connectivity is widening all the time, as are the opportunities it offers - and the potential threats it could create. Businesses will want to position themselves to both seize advantage and minimise risk.

Take the Internet of Things (IoT) – a term most people are now familiar with, as (for example) devices such as smart meters within their homes automatically input meter readings into their electricity suppliers’ systems, with no human interaction involved. But just as IoT has entered common parlance, the concept has evolved another step – to the extent that people are now talking about the Internet of Everything (IoE), highlighting that almost any device can now communicate with another device or system, generating huge amounts of data as they do so. As more and more devices connect and communicate, businesses will want to know what their devices are doing, and find ways to analyse the data they are producing in search of commercial benefit.

Data analytics has the potential to transform business models, for example, by helping identify new revenue streams, but on a day-to-day (yet still very important) level, data-driven insights can help businesses deliver vital operational improvements, by optimising either productivity or reducing costs. For the former, that could take the form of identifying issues such as excessive social media browsing at work, or where limits on some apps such as Teams should be de-restricted.

The my.plan platform makes this kind of intelligence available to businesses, collating relevant data, crunching the numbers to make them meaningful and providing the necessary tools so customers can put parameters around activity – enabling or limiting connectivity as appropriate. And alongside our network architecture and set-up services, we also help companies ensure those networks and devices are secure. This is something which is more vital than ever in the always-on, digitally enabled, fully connected world of IoE, where the impact if systems were to be hacked or attacked by malware is magnified exponentially.

Slicing the network

When it comes to cost optimisation, having intelligent data enables smart decisions to be made about whether it is worth paying a premium to ensure optimal connectivity. With fixed-line phone systems, it has long been possible for businesses to pay for a higher level of service so that their traffic has priority on the network, delivering top quality connectivity. This sort of “slicing” of the network to create premium versus more basic levels of service has until now not been possible on the mobile network – but that is soon to change.

With 5G becoming properly on-stream in 2022 (i.e. when network cores are 5G, rather than being 4G cores with a 5G cell tower strapped on, as they are at the moment) priority services will become available over the mobile network too. With the right data insights, businesses will be able to decide whether their applications are critical enough to warrant this premium-grade option. Prioritisation will be as important a consideration as guaranteeing the fastest network speeds and lowest latency (or lag) – indeed many businesses will want to optimise all three.

Connectivity touches everything these days, which is why our solutions cover the whole gamut, not just mobile or hosted services. As businesses start to see more and more use-cases for the data delivered by developments such as the IoE, issues such as analytics/intelligence, system security and network quality become even more important than they have been up until now.