It’s that time of year again – time to look back on success and challenges of the past year, both of which we saw much of in 2022. Another year of a global pandemic, an uncertain economy, and more colorful geopolitical issues. But also, stronger open source communities, more innovation, and integration across verticals as the industry marches towards digital innovation. That said, read below for my predictions as we head into 2023, and a look back at where we netted out on 2022 predictions.
- 2023 will be the year of “Non-Closed” RAN. I will not use any terminology or acronym here but global communities will start defining all aspects of “open” radio access network
- The last of the networking markets (Enterprise) will start closing in on Open Solutions, enabled by seamless connectivity of 5G, Edge, Cloud, Telecom and Private networks.
- Continued blurring of the lines between CSPs, Vendors, Enterprise, Hyperscalers. Private 5G “Network-as-a-Service” will be the accelerator of this trend. Open source software projects will be the technological enabler for this transformation.
- With further technology export and import bans and increased geo-specific regulation (e.g. EU), Open Source will remain the neutral platform where innovation happens. OSS development will continue to comply with the changing legislation, allowing country- specific requirements (security, data, federation, compliance, etc.) and be upstreamed into Open Source Networking and connectivity projects.
- Metaverse will still be going through “marketing definition;” however, just like Edge Computing, real use cases in real verticals will start emerging.
2022 Prediction Report Card: (our view of how accurate last year’s predictions were)
- Dis-aggregation will enter the “Re-aggregation” phase (Grade: A) Expanded collaboration across open source + open standards + hardware + software, via expanded blueprints and use cases that collectively solve real-world challenges such as orchestration (e.g., Nephio, 5G Super Blueprint, etc.)
- Realists and Visionaries will fight it out for dollars and productivity (Grade: B+) Realists won as the macro-economy took a hit in 2H2022, with widespread advanced technology funding reduced in major players across the ecosystem.
- Security will emerge as the key differentiator in Open source (Grade: A+) Open source is a leader in the cybersecurity space, with software supply chain security tools like SBOMs becoming mainstream, the US’s Securing Open Source Software Act,, and Google’s Assured Open Source Software repository of vetted, secure OSS packages, among others.
- Market Analysts will reinvent themselves (Grade: B) There is still no clear winner here, but analysts with deep engagement in Open source communities versus Vendor- sponsored are starting to win the race
- Seamless Vertical industries will emerge (Grade: A) Bigger proliferation of integrated use cases across added industries such as Government, Manufacturing, Retail, Energy, Industrial IoT, and more.
