Today, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) and Celona announced a partnership where ALE will sell Celona’s Private 5G systems. Additionally, ALE will integrate the Celona offering into its management systems so that customers will enjoy both systems but manage them more easily. The benefit to ALE customers will be that the combined offering will be a “turnkey” offering that includes ALE’s OmniVista, OmniSwitch, and OmniAccess Stellar networking systems with Celona’s innovative Private 5G solutions. We see the relationship between the two companies as very complementary because ALE has a loyal customer base in numerous vertical markets and geographies, some of whom demand Private 5G wireless connectivity. At the same time, Celona can expand to those same end markets by working with ALE.
Yesterday, we discussed the relationship with ALE and Celona executives. We learned that the joint offering will target customers who demand ultra-reliable communications in complex settings, such as large indoor and outdoor areas. Early target verticals for the partners include manufacturing, refineries, logistics warehouses, ports and airport ramp areas. We expect that, over time, other verticals and uses for the joint offering will include those in educational settings, government and healthcare facilities. We expect that the equipment and software aspect of the Private 5G market will exceed $1B in five years, initially in the verticals that ALE and Celona are targeting and then expanding to others, as the two partners have laid out.
We are interested in this announcement because the partnership touches on numerous areas of our research, including Ethernet Switching, Private Cellular, Enterprise WLAN, Cloud and AI Networking, IoT, and SSE/Zero-Trust Security. We feature both ALE and Celona in these various reports.