In a model increasingly being used by firms looking to enter the red-hot private network space, consulting firm Wipro launched a managed private 5G service that taps into work from Cisco.

The 5G-as-a-service offering provides a managed onramp for enterprises that want to add advanced 5G technical capabilities to their private network. It’s designed to integrate with an enterprise’s already deployed LAN, WAN and cloud infrastructure.

The service is built on Cisco’s mobile core technology and its IoT portfolio. This includes access to Cisco-validated edge services, including IoT gateways and sensors, and a cloud-based management platform. Wipro manages the operation and has created a dedicated private 5G lab to build, test and demonstrate industry use cases. Wipro said radio access network (RAN) equipment would come from a third-party provider, but did not provide details.

Wipro is taking the sales lead for the platform, which is broadly targeted at verticals such as sports and entertainment, retail, transportation, hospitality, manufacturing and automated factories.

The consulting firm explained the platform builds on its already established relationship with Cisco as a “strategic infrastructure partner.”

“Wipro believes Cisco is very well positioned with extensive products and services to provide the complete stack for enterprise-converged network and security solutions,” the firm noted in an email to SDxCentral. “Cisco also brings integration with enterprise infrastructure and applications.”

The Wipro model is similar to one recently updated by fellow enterprise-consulting firm NTT. That IoT-as-a-service option is highly reliant on Cisco’s IoT hardware, including connected sensors that tap into the LoRaWAN specification for low-power, long-range WAN connectivity, which can then be connected to either a private 5G network or use an NTT Transatel SIM card.

United Kingdom-based managed service provider Logicalis also recently jumped on the Cisco private network bandwagon. The firm’s Private Network Services includes the full deployment and management of a private wireless offering, with Logicalis overseeing the on-site engineering, including site preparation, ordering of solution components, organization of the spectrum, SIM management, staging, creation of customer profiles and core and RAN installation.

Chris Calvert, VP of private wireless services for Logicalis US, explained that Cisco is providing its Private 5G platform, which includes the core that Logicalis’s 4G LTE and 5G service rides on. That core is available as a single standalone (SA) core or a high-availability three-server cluster.

“Cisco really wanted this to be a managed services-only solution,” Calvert said. “Basically, Logicalis is Cisco’s customer. The combination of the industry expertise and the fact that we have a large managed-services practice were really the driving forces behind Cisco selecting Logicalis as one of only two manufacturers that can actually provide this solution currently.”

Cisco launched its Private 5G platform at MWC Barcelona in 2022. It’s an as-a-service platform that can integrate with existing enterprise systems and Wi-Fi, is billed on a pay-per-use basis and supports open RAN principles. It also supports multi-tenancy capabilities that, in this instance, means multiple local 5G service providers can share core network assets.

“The technology, in combination and integrated with the rest of the technology stack, can really solve significant customer problems,” Michael Beesley, CTO for service provider networking at Cisco, previously told SDxCentral. “So we’re bullish on the space and we continue to invest or even accelerate our investments.”

IoT Analytics recently ranked Cisco as one of the market’s top software providers, touting its Cisco Edge Intelligence and IoT security offerings. The analyst firm also noted that spending on IoT software hit $53 billion in 2022, with the installed base of connected IoT devices surging to 14.4 billion units. The firm expects that device number to surge to 30 billion units by 2027.

ABI Research this week reported that more than 1,000 enterprise private networks have been deployed worldwide, despite a slowdown in public proclamations.

“This is actually a good sign for the private networks market,” Leo Gergs, senior analyst for 5G Markets at ABI Research, wrote. “Enterprises are beginning to see the deployment of private cellular connectivity as a competitive advantage and, therefore, do not want to talk about it too openly. Which is important as the market moves from the experimental phase toward commercializing private network deployments.”

Gergs added that this growth has now placed more pressure on the telecommunications industry to ensure those networks can handle increasingly complex and revenue-generating use cases.

“The telco industry urgently needs to deliver on promises made to the enterprise community now,” Gergs noted, “otherwise, enterprise 5G will enter the history books as the technology that always overpromised and underdelivered.”