  The characteristic feature of 5G is the diversity of its services for
different user needs. However, the requirements for these services are
competing in nature, which impresses the necessity of a coordinated and
flexible network architecture. Although coordinated multipoint (CoMP) systems
were primarily proposed to improve the cell edge performance in 4G, their
collaborative nature can be leveraged to support the diverse requirements and
enabling technologies of 5G and beyond networks. To this end, we propose
generalization of CoMP to a proactive and efficient resource utilization
framework capable of supporting different user requirements such as
reliability, latency, throughput, and security while considering network
constraints. This article elaborates on the multiple aspects, inputs, and
outputs of the generalized CoMP (GCoMP) framework. Apart from user
requirements, the GCoMP decision mechanism also considers the CoMP scenario and
network architecture to decide upon outputs such as CoMP technique or
appropriate coordinating clusters. To enable easier understanding of the
concept, popular use cases, such as vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication
and eHealth, are studied. Additionally, interesting challenges and open areas
in GCoMP are discussed.
