Celona Introduces Unified Platform, Orion, for Managing Private 5G, Wi-Fi 7, and more

August 21, 2026 - Thanks to the introduction of this new management platform, users now have greater flexibility to choose when they want Private 5G or Wi-Fi in their environment; think of Private 5G in the warehouse and Wi-Fi in the office. AI agents also make it possible to automate network operations, enabling the network to function increasingly as an intelligent component of the IT and OT environment.

Extra Budget for Private 5G

Following an enthusiastic introduction two years ago, it turns out that many organizations are still struggling to get started with Private 5G. Puneet Shetty, Senior Vice President of Product and Field Engineering at Celona, sees this hesitancy not only in Europe, but globally. "One of the biggest obstacles we encounter is that, although customers worldwide realize they need Private 5G, they find it difficult to allocate extra budget for this new wireless technology.

They know they cannot completely eliminate the Wi-Fi budget because they still need to support legacy equipment, for example, which pushes Private 5G to the back burner." A shame, according to Puneet, because Private 5G is not necessarily a replacement for Wi-Fi. In recent years, it has primarily been organizations in healthcare, manufacturing, and logistics that have adopted Private 5G—large and complex environments where you would need hundreds of Wi-Fi Access Points, whereas Private 5G can provide coverage with a much smaller number of radios. Nevertheless, these organizations also regularly opt specifically for Wi-Fi in their office environments.

We see this at Alcadis as well. End customers we speak with in the Benelux region often see obstacles because they think they have to replace their entire network with Private 5G, when in fact they only want to deploy it in their warehouse to support new AGVs or fully cover a large outdoor area—not for the printer sitting somewhere in the office.

A Unified Network

To eliminate these obstacles, Celona is now choosing to offer a unified platform. Puneet explains: “Orion is the management plane for both Private 5G and Wi-Fi. With this new solution, users can configure, monitor, and troubleshoot both technologies in the same place”. Segmentation based on network activity—referred to by Celona as microslicing—is now also possible on both the Private 5G and Wi-Fi networks.

These tight integrations between Private 5G and Wi-Fi unlock new efficiencies. “For example, during the day an AGV primarily needs reliable, roaming mobile connectivity as it moves through a warehouse. But at the end of the day, when the robots are on their chargers downloading software or the latest models—which could easily involve tens of gigabytes of data—this activity can take place over a high-capacity, best-effort wireless network, such as Wi-Fi.”

To make this development as user-friendly as possible for existing IT teams worldwide, Celona is shifting its focus from AIOps-based network operations to a model with pre-built AI agents that can automate tasks based on ‘network events’ (logs, packet captures, telemetry, …).