TelcoForge caught up with AxyomCore and Capgemini at MWC 26 in Barcelona to discuss their partnership and the solutions stemming from this collaboration, more specifically for the mission critical industry.
In this interview with Sachie Bristow, VP Global Alliances at AxyomCore, and Patrice Crutel, Senior Director, 5G and Mission Critical Services Strategy at Capgemini, Alex Lawrence asked about the ways 5G has been enabling mission critical communications, and initiatives such as 5G in a Box. Check out the interview or read the transcript below.
Patrice, can you briefly introduce Capgemini’s work in mission-critical communications?
Patrice: Yes, we basically started six or seven years ago, with a light deployment of this evolution with operators and train companies. Then we had the opportunity, thanks to the French transformation, the big national one, to really jump into the domain doing both advisory and system integrator roles, and then we have been step by step dealing with a lot of practical issues and evolution and so on, both in the public safety domain but also now that what we see in the critical national infrastructure domain.
Capgemini and AxyomCore are working together on 5G in a box. Can you explain what that means and why it’s important for mission-critical environments?
Patrice: So, 5G in a box, first of all, it’s a demonstration for us. It shows the capability, and it allows us to demonstrate to the different organisations what is mission critical, what it applies as a use case and so on and trying also to highlight the evolution and what we can put on top of it. We needed a solution that was compact, we needed a solution that we could manipulate, that we could have a different slice and so on in order to handle various use cases and we saw that really the solution that was fitting to this, to have it in a compact way, to have it in an efficient way was really the AxyomCore solution and we did a lot of studies and we decided AxyomCore is a solution we want to have.
So what are some of the key use cases where this kind of solution makes a difference?
Patrice: Well, the key use cases are all around mission-critical, so they are really use cases which will allow the users to benefit from the connectivity. I mean, we are playing with a lot with a video, with a lot of data, a lot of things like this that need really SLA and so on, and that’s really all those use cases about AI analytics that will allow us to have a better situational awareness, a better way for the users to react and so on when they are in action.
Can you give us any examples of that?
Patrice: I mean, one of the examples we are showing in our booth is really being able to have an end-to-end view where you will have a lot of sensors connected to a guy that will protect him and that will give a lot of data that we will analyze and then we will generate a sort of image or using all the videos, the video capabilities via drones, via CCTVs, we have body cams and all this has to be real time and so on, analysis and so on and the SLA are very important for it.
And why did Capgemini choose to work with AxyomCore, particularly for this solution?
Patrice: I would say it depends on the use case. If we are working with enormous transformation, perhaps due to the fact that in the EU you must have a lot of EU companies, we may go through the EU big companies, but for critical national infrastructure use cases, where we need solutions which are very efficient, that don’t take a lot of space, which have to be really stable and so on. We will always work with AxyomCore as a solution.
And Sachie, can you tell us more about this project from an AxyomCore perspective?
Sachie: Yeah, I would say I’ve worked with Capgemini myself for a long period of time. We go back many years, our partnership. I think for me, from our perspective on the project recently, was really the fact that Capgemini have the 5G in a box in their lab, as well as the 5G lab, which allowed them to validate some of those use cases. It allowed customers to come onto the site to see those use cases being live demoed, to see what the reliability of those use cases was, and the infrastructure that was in place. And that really helps because it’s all very well sometimes talking about what it could do, but seeing it in real time makes it really different.
And what’s been the experience working with Capgemini?
Sachie: Capgemini is interesting because obviously for some of these mission-critical use cases that they work on, they have to bring together vendors from, you know, many vendors from across the board, right? So they have the expertise to be able to integrate all of these different vendor solutions and target these specific use cases. I mean, I think on some of the projects that we’ve worked on recently, you’re probably getting close to 10 different vendors, right?
Patrice: Even more. I mean, we are going more towards 13, 15, even 20 different partners that we are bringing to be the end-to-end solution and use cases.
Sachie: Yeah. So, I mean, I’ve been very impressed with the expertise, the professionalism, and the technical ability of the teams. And our technical teams work very closely with your technical teams as you need, right, for any of these types of deployments.
Why is 5G specifically important for mission-critical applications?
Sachie: I think 5G standalone brings many important areas to mission-critical. I think the fact that it’s got a small footprint, you know, you can deploy these things on a relatively small area, like the 5G in a box. I think the reliability and the low latency are extremely important, especially when it’s mission-critical, right? Because some of the services you can’t afford to have, you need five nines and above. You can’t be having, like, lower SLAs. And also the reliability side, right? Because potentially you’re working with emergency services and those types of organisations, so you can’t afford to have any interruption in those networks.
