Thoughts from the Qualcomm 4G/5G Summit

I'm heading back from the #Qualcomm 4G/#5G Summit and had some takeaways after a few days of meetings, session, and demos..

Connectivity is the secret sauce to digital transformation. I have nothing against wifi but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm taking about seamless and transport agnostic connectivity (throw in some Wifi when appropriate), anytime, anywhere, on a pipe where the quality and capabilities can be controlled. 5G will provide the fabric for this connectivity.

We have been "hacking" through connectivity for too long, back in the day - enduring dial up when no one else in the house could use the phone, hunting for wifi, or obscure passwords from the barista, typing in credentials onto a tiny one line display, calling MOs to get activated, sticking tiny pieces of cardboard into impossibly small plastic trays... ENOUGH. We have convinced ourselves that these hacks are worth it because connectivity is so valuable. But it's time to move on, kill the hacks, and just be Always Connected. I was psyched to be using the new Lenovo C630 using the Qualcomm SDM850 as well as the new Samsung Galaxy Book 2...these are behavior changing devices - lose the power brick, no boot time, and finally, always connected.

IOT that is not connected is not IOT, it's just a bunch of toys. Real IOT is connected, managed, secure and programmable. You cannot give a developer a garbage bag of #legos and expect them construct a Death Star.....they need a reference device that works, out of the box, and connect to the cloud, to get them started. Connected IOT doesn't necessarily mean public cloud, it could be connected to an Azure stack sitting on-prem for sovereignty and privacy reasons. And "intelligent" edge devices can do the processing on the edge and keep the data there, if needed (like images or sound for privacy reasons). I enjoyed seeing the AI Vision Platform that leverages Qualcomm's state-of-the-art 603 vision processor and Azure IOT Edge/services showing up in devices, as well so much innovation on SOMs and dev kits that can drive great AI and other compute experiences, and can scale into real, commercial-grade IOT solutions.

Now let's get those IOT devices on a a secure and managed high density cell network where Azure Cognitive Services and others capabilities can be developed on the cloud and provisioned down to IOT devices, securely, so we can mange a smart city with a scalable private or public cloud.

When these intelligent edge devices get connected to the cloud and drive data into enterprises for real decision making, it's transformative.

5G is one of the biggest ecosystem plays, ever. It literally CANNOT be done alone, and standard setting is not sufficient. We need to partner, invest, get creative, "never give up, never surrender," understand each other and our collection of customers, to make this all work. We need silicon, we need new an innovative intelligent edge devices (more than phones), we need private and public clouds, we need data pushed to the edge to full the low latency promises of 5G, smart ways of offloading and leveraging the cloud, and we need developer platforms that can be used consistently worldwide, in the cloud or the edge.

And, we need it all to work together. I have a colleague that uses the phrase "the power of three" - and maybe sometimes four, or five!

The Qualcomm 4G/5G Summit reinforced all of the above for me, and I learned a great deal about the breadth and depth of innovation out there - it's getting more real, but there is plenty of work to do. 2019 will be an interesting year, but nothing compared to the decade after that.