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Wireless Carriers Moving Beyond Connectivity

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Panel Discussion

Wireless carriers are moving beyond cellular connectivity, and industry is innovating beyond traditional technologies, all to support IoT and emerging verticals. At Mobile World Congress 2017, TIA NOW speaks with important industry influencers; Brent Hodges, Head of IoT Planning and Product Strategy at Dell EMC, Bill Morelli, Senior Research Director for Enterprise and IT at IHS, Mo Nasser, GM of IoT Business Unit at Sprint.


Operationalizing Network Virtualization: Advising the Software Industry

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Kevin Shatzkamer, VP of Service Provider Solutions and Strategy, Dell EMC

Kevin Shatzkamer, VP of Service Provider Solutions and Strategy at Dell EMC speaks with TIA NOW’s Abe Nejad about his new role, which includes areas like strategy and architectural evolution at the intersection points of network technologies, virtual platforms and software programmability.

NFV: Relieving the Complexity

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Panel Discussion

As new business models around NFV increase, operators are no longer managing a handful of innovations - but now managing dozens of technologies that support NFV. In comes the independent systems integrator, to marry these innovations with operators to customize and create a robust NFV solution. At Mobile World Congress 2017, TIA NOW hosted a panel discussion focused on relieving the complexity of NFV. On the panel are Kevin Shatzkamer, VP, Service Provider Solutions and Strategy at Dell EMC and Amol Phadke, Managing Director, Global Network Virtualization and Transformation at Accenture. 

Blog: Is there scope for a ‘customer first’ Telco IoT Alliance?

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  • Here’s why and how telcos could join together and play the responsibility card on Internet of Things with the proposition that the telco IoT business is not just about mining data: it’s about being the customer’s data custodian and, if instructed, its broker.

Last month a UK morning radio news programme featured an item on the popularity of Amazon’s Alexa digital companion. But the story became really interesting the next day when it turned out that broadcasting the word ‘Alexa’ had caused dozens of listening Alexas out in radioland to wake up and start chatting with their owners.

As a result the radio audience had suddenly realised that Alexa and the other digital assistants were permanently alert and listening. That, they all thought, was ‘creepy’.  “And what else were they listening to?” they asked the broadcaster the next day. “ How do we know that Amazon isn’t recording all our conversations?”

How indeed?

The ‘Alexa incident’ is just one of a slew of recent techno-privacy ‘moments’ which, little by little, have been waking the public up to what they should have known for a while: which is that if you’re not explicitly paying for something in the technology world, then you’re probably offering up valuable information in exchange for it.

People ‘sort of’ knew this already. They knew that Google collected information about our likes to better deliver ads, for instance.  But the Internet of Things (IoT) technology behind the recent problems and the increasingly intrusive services using it, have a way of sneaking up and surprising us all into ‘Ah-ha’ and ‘Uh-oh’ moments.  

There’s been the ‘listening Barbie’ incident – doubly shocking because it was apparently recording little girls. Very recently there has been news of both the UK and US spying organisations working together to bug television sets which could be deployed to record conversations.

And it isn’t just information-gathering in the spotlight. Online enterprises like Yahoo, TalkTalk and many more, seem to have a problem holding on to personal data once it’s collected, causing a steady stream of ‘big data’ thefts – complete with credit card details – and yet more public outrage. And don’t forget the biggest security worry of all – IoT device hacking to launch distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS).

As a result there are already reports of flagging interest in IoT because of privacy and security concerns. Is the still-emerging IoT industry about to shoot itself in the foot?

We say it’s already taking aim, but there’s still time to fix things and telcos can play a major role if they and the equipment suppliers/IoT application providers, step up to the plate together.  But first, a recap.

So far the world’s telcos have not generally joined in with Google, Samsung, Amazon, Apple and the rest in a mad scramble for data, despite often expressing a desire to do so. In both Europe and  America telco advocates often argue that they have been unfairly constrained by regulation and, not surprisingly, many have praised the most recent actions of the FCC’s new chairman, Ajit Pai,  in rolling back the FCC’s privacy requirements for telcos. They figure it will assist them to proffer IoT data-gathering business models on the same basis as their OTT rivals.

A new Telco IoT Alliance?

But instead of piling in with ‘me too’ propositions, when it comes to the deployment of IoT services, we think we can make a good case for telcos to get together with a common approach and to rise above the fray and differentiate themselves with a progressive business model. We’ve worked on an alternative pitch to the IoT consumer which might go something like this:

“The Googles and the Samsungs might be making a business out of taking your personal information and selling it off and keeping the profits. We are doing something different. First of all, we understand that it’s your data, not ours. So we undertake to collect the data you authorise us to collect on your behalf and look after it for you. We will send it to other parties and service providers – perhaps where doing so forms part of a warranty obligation – only with your permission.  

If you want us to sell your data, we will follow your instructions. Likewise when you want us to delete the data after a period we will do that too. Essentially, you are in charge.  In return, because we are not earning money from your data, we will charge you a small amount per month on your bill to fund the service.

It goes without saying that there will be no bad actor moves by the Telco IoT Alliance, such as recording or analysing customers’ conversations. Our slogan is  ‘Don’t bother asking – we’re NOT listening’”

Just as important as a set of solid terms and conditions, telcos will be able to flex their most important selling point: that their hard fought reputation for running bullet-proof networks and systems will be what they bring to the IoT party. Telcos will invest, not just in new systems, but on protecting the integrity of the their customers’ data.

And this is not ‘ethical’ window dressing. We will not be asking customers for ‘trust’ which won’t work because trust has long gone. Neither should a Telco IoT Alliance backstop itself with some sort of external regulation because that would be a sign of failure. The customer-focussed business model should be understood to be the result of enlightened self-interest, rather than sullen compliance to regulations.

The Telco IoT Alliance is simply offering the user a way out of the ‘should I tick the box to share my data’ conundrum with this straight-forward proposition – that the cost of ongoing connection has been worked into either the initial purchase price of the IoT gadget, or is compensated by a small subscription (or both), thereby allaying any suspicion that the missing revenue is being dragged back surreptitiously.

Where personal information is gathered and has value, users must be asked to opt in and share the value. Most important of all, telcos following this path need to proclaim loudly and rudely that they are doing so.

Because of multiple data privacy breaches and apparent bad faith by some players, the conditions are right to gain favour with the consumer market by uniting on an implicit pledge – not a dry as dust ‘document’ dressed up in cliche and words like ‘trust’ –  but to make it clear that the privacy and data stewardship aspects ARE the service, not just some extra words tacked on the side.

Here’s what we think telco customers should see in their contracts:

  1. Customers will be able to cancel the data collection and cancel the use of the data. This is already a widespread issue for consumers when installing smartphone apps which ask for the rights to access various functions, but without offering context.
  2. There needs to be an agreement posted by the third party service provider describing what kind of data is being mined and what they are looking for.
  3. The third party provider needs to say how long it will retain the data.
  4. The user must have access to the data to see that what has been said to be mined and stored is actually what is mined and stored.

A call to action

Could telcos – should telcos – come together and pursue a user-oriented IoT service (rather than a rampant info-gathering one) and make this approach their unique selling point?

Certainly there is a need for the development of new technology to address the issues of integrity, data transparency, policy based handling of data, escrows, encryption, third party data handling, data exchange, and so on. But as things currently stand, very few companies are putting effort into overcoming the integrity challenge: at least compared to the effort being put into creating the challenge in the first place. Perhaps this is a vacuum that might be part-filled by the 3GPP.

Those who first see the commercial value in overtly and loudly taking the side of the customer could have a lot to gain. Let us know more about how you feel about this in the comment box below.

This blog is the fruit of a discussion betwen Ian Scales, Managing Editor, TelecomTV and Tord Nilsson, Director of Global Marketing at Dell EMC.

Which global cities do best at attracting and fostering women-owned firms?

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via Flickr © perzonseo (CC BY 2.0) https://perzonseo.com/
  • Dell’s Women Entrepreneur Cities Index - rating cities’ ability to attract and foster growth of women-owned firms
  • New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, London, Boston and Stockholm are the top-five
  • Dell provides a diagnostic tool to advise entrepreneurs and policy-makers on how to improve conditions

Dell has just hosted its 8th annual Dell Women Entrepreneur Network Summit, where it announced the findings of the 2017 Women Entrepreneur Cities (WE Cities) Index. This reveals how 50 top global cities are fostering (or not) high-potential women entrepreneurs (HPWE). The study ranks cities based on the impact of local policies, programmes and characteristics in addition to national laws and customs.

Dell says the idea is to ‘arm’ city leaders and policymakers with data-driven research and clear calls to action. The objective being to  collectively improve the landscape for high-potential women entrepreneurs. This in turn lifts a city’s economic prospects - everyone’s a winner.

The WE Cities Index can be used as a diagnostic tool to help ensure that lawmakers are enabling women entrepreneurs to succeed - all part of an agenda to develop an ecosystem where all entrepreneurs can thrive, regardless of gender.

The methodology is to rank cities on  five important characteristics: capital, technology, talent, culture and markets, which are organised into two groups: operating environment and enabling environment. The overall rating is based on 72 indicators; 45 of these, nearly two-thirds, have a gender-based component. Individual indicators were weighted based on four criteria: relevance, quality of underlying data, uniqueness in the index and gender component. The 50 cities were ranked as follows.  

See if these Top 20 city results were pretty-much what you might have expected.

  1. New York
  2. Bay Area
  3. London
  4. Boston
  5. Stockholm
  6. Los Angeles
  7. Washington, D.C.
  8. Singapore
  9. Toronto
  10. Seattle
  11. Sydney
  12. Paris
  13. Chicago
  14. Minneapolis
  15. Austin
  16. Hong Kong
  17. Melbourne
  18. Atlanta
  19. Amsterdam
  20. Portland (OR)

New York City ranks No. 1 overall among the 50 cities for its ability to attract and support HPWE with a top-ranked Operating Environment and Enabling Environment ranked. While New York City ranks No. 1 for Markets , and within that, Access and Policy, it’s No. 6 in Talent , and No. 2 in Capital , trailing the Bay Area. It is No. 1 in Culture , followed by Sydney, and ranks No. 2 in Technology

  • While NYC ranked No. 1, its total score out of 100 was 62.9, leaving considerable room for improvement
  • The Bay Area (consisting of the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas) ranks No. 2 overall, ranking No. 2 in Operating Environment and No. 7 for Enabling Environment. It ranks No. 1 for Capital, No. 2 for Markets, No. 8 in Talent , No. 7 in Technology and No. 6 in Culture
  • London ranks No. 3 overall, and in Operating Environment, performing No. 3 for Markets and for Capital. It ranks No. 4 in Enabling Environment.
  • Boston and Stockholm round out the top 5 in the overall ranking
  • Boston, No. 4 on the overall list also No. 4 in Operating Environment and Capital and reaching No. 3 in Talent, while Stockholm (No. 5 on list) ranks No. 2 in Enabling Environment, No. 3 in Technology and No. 4 in Culture

In the top 10 cities overall, six are in the U.S., two are in Europe, one is in Canada and one is in Asia - 41 of the cities in this index are in the top five for at least one pillar or sub-category; 34 of the cities are in the bottom five for at least one of the pillars or sub-categories – demonstrating the competitiveness of these 50 cities.

Of the cities in the top 10 cities overall, only New York City and Washington, D.C. rank in the bottom five on any pillar or sub-category (New York City for cost of Market access and New York City and Washington, D.C. for cost of Technology). Of the top 10 cities overall, only the Bay Area and New York ranks in the top 10 across all 5 pillars.

Image Credit: PerzonSEO

 

BT to lab test disaggregated switching against the traditional integrated alternative

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via Flickr © stevepaustin (CC BY-ND 2.0)
  • BT and Dell EMC develop a 'Proof of Concept' for disaggregated switching
  • Trial to use the sort of ‘open’ network switches currently used in data centres
  • BT to evaluate performance of  the disaggregated switch and software combination against traditional integrated switching hardware

In another move towards the use of commodity silicon together with disaggregated switching in the data centre (see today’s - HPE folds Big Switch Networks into its ecosystem to take on Cisco in the data centre) BT and Dell EMC have inked a research collaboration agreement under which they’ll develop a ‘proof-of-concept’ (PoC) trial at BT Labs in Adastral Park, Suffolk, using open network switches and switching software.

As with the HPE tie-up with Big Switch, the idea is that the disaggregated switching can be used to create more flexible and responsive networks. The trial will use the sort of ‘open’ network switches currently used in data centres.

BT says the combination of merchant silicon switching combined with either commercially available or open source system software represents a significant shift architecturally, in that it applies server-like principles to the delivery of dynamic network services over fixed-line and wireless networks, it says.

BT will be evaluating the performance of the Dell EMC disaggregated switches and software combination against traditional integrated switching hardware to see how the solution stacks up in terms of economics and programmability.

BT says the disaggregated switches should have several advantages over traditional network switches. They can be managed flexibly using Netconf protocol and YANG models which will allow the switches to be operated in tandem to provide new network services or to  make configuration changes rapidly.

BT will work with Dell EMC to look at a number of potential use cases as part of the trial, including the instant activation of Ethernet circuits from a third party, and the ability of the system to deliver real-time network operational data.

The platform also has the potential to deliver other programmable use cases such as bandwidth calendaring – flexing the bandwidth of an Ethernet circuit according to customer needs via a predetermined calendar – and delivering network telemetry data to third parties automatically.

VMware stakes major claim on telco NFV

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via Flickr © Michael Dunn~! (CC BY 2.0)
  • VMware Integrated OpenStack-Carrier Edition claims:
  • Enhanced VNF Performance along with
  • Dynamic Scaling, Multi-Tenancy, and Cloud Resource Reservation

VMware has topped a flurry of announcement at its own VMworld event in Barcelona by announcing  ‘VMware vCloud NFV-OpenStack Edition’ which lays out what VMware sees as a claim to a pivotal position in the fast-evolving carrier NFV stack.

It claims the telco-targeted solution represents the fastest path to deploying NFV services on OpenStack.

"We are... providing what nobody else has in the market: the most reliable and rich NFV infrastructure based on VMware's industry-leading virtualization software combined with the openness of standard OpenStack to be optimized with carrier extensions," says Gabriele Di Piazza, vice president of solutions, Telco NFV Group, at VMware.

VMware has also announced that Vodafone has selected VMware to support its global roll out of NFV; and Dell EMC and VMware introduced a new pre-integrated and pre-validated NFV Solution that is ‘OpenStack Ready.’

Tuned for Carrier Requirements

VMware says vCloud NFV-OpenStack brings native support for container-based Virtualized Network Functions (VNF) through integrated container management, enabling VM and container-based VNFs to run on a single VIM. The solution gives CSPs tools to deploy NFV networks including:

  • Multi-Tenancy and VNF Resource Reservation: provides resource-level tenant isolation and guaranteed resource availability for each tenant, enabling CSPs to deliver on infrastructure SLAs while securing tenants within the network and improved capacity planning.
  • Dynamic and Elastic Scaling of Network Resources: allows CSPs to create elastic service constructs that can scale network functions up or down, in and out based on usage patterns in order to respond to real-time network traffic conditions. This enables optimal resource management and lowering of capital and operational costs.
  • Enhanced Networking Support and Platform Awareness (EPA): delivers carrier-grade, low latency data-plane performance, enabling CSPs to maintain network performance to deliver a high subscriber Quality of Experience while optimizing resource utilization through supported methodologies such as CPU Pinning, fine-grained NUMA placement settings, support for multiple NIC types and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV).

VMware vCloud NFV OpenStack further offers CSPs:

  • Simplified OpenStack Installation and Deployment : VMware Integrated OpenStack-CE allows templated install and deployment of a complete OpenStack Infrastructure within the VMware vSphere® Web Client, leveraging advanced management capabilities through vCenter.
  • Seamless OpenStack Upgrade Experience: Control Plane and Data Plane separation allows for zero network services downtime and service continuity during the OpenStack upgrade process. CSPs can keep up with the pace of innovation through fast upgrades and patching.
  • Integrated Operations Management: through unique NFVI operational automation and Ceilometer integration, along with proactive and predictive analytics, issue isolation, root cause analysis and fast remediation capabilities. VMware vRealize Operations Manager, Log Insight, Network Insight integrated within vCloud NFV-OpenStack, provide operations monitoring, analytics, and a remediation platform via a single pane of glass that reduces operational costs through fast Mean-Time-To-Understand and Repair (MTTU/MTTR).

Blog: Just transforming the technology won’t cut it

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  • This blog is the fruit of a discussion between Ian Scales, Managing Editor, TelecomTV and Tord Nilsson, Director of Global Marketing at Dell EMC

Today CSPs feel themselves to be in an existential ‘costs going up as prices come down’ dilemma. The trouble is that their customers are demanding more bandwidth for the same money. In highly competitive markets that’s what they’ll get because bandwidth scarcity, even for mobile services, is no more. Instead network connections increasingly offer unlimited data. So operators must pursue two options. One is to find ways to slash costs, the other is to find new sources of value against which to charge. And they need to do this while ensuring that they win their share of new services such as IoT as they deploy their next generation infrastructure and services.

That’s the well-understood challenge in a nutshell. So how are telcos responding? They are preparing to transform using software defined networks and network functions virtualisation (SDNFV) and they are readying themselves for 5G mobile which is designed to both lower the cost per mobile bit by unleashing huge amounts of usable bandwidth and to deliver highly differentiated services designed to push up overall margins. SDNFV will enable the 5G differentiated services.

Changing the tech won’t do it

But transforming the technology simply won’t cut it. It should be obvious by now that cultures must change, new modes of working and thinking must be adopted and new - we think sharing - business models and industry roles must emerge to take advantage of the technology change.

The prime benefit of the new virtualisation framework is to enable ‘agility’ so that services can be created, tested and deployed (by software rather than by men in vans) in days and weeks rather than months. We think agility is going to be key, not primarily to ‘compete with OTTs’ as is often cited, but to enable new business models which can help CSPs rejig roles and relationships (both internal and external) to both reduce costs and find those new points of value.

Enabled by the technology CSPs can build new, compelling sources of value because the demise of the old source - bandwidth scarcity - will surface new problems to do with network complexity and management. If you and your competitors have overwhelming amounts of bandwidth to deploy, the value moves to ways to employ it the most effectively and efficiently before you and your customers are overwhelmed. As a result the telco attributes defining value today are not bandwidth or spectrum, but the ability to perform Network automation, Orchestration, Reporting and Analytics, or NORA (everyone likes a four letter acronym). NORA gives CSPs the ability to offer customers and partners new relationships and sharing business models that were simply too complex and expensive to arrange and integrate on the existing technology platform.

What sort of sharing?

The move to open source software in telecoms is an obvious means of cost (and risk) sharing when it comes to network technology. Big telcos such as AT&T, Verizon and Telefónica have been keen to set the pace here. AT&T in particular is ‘open sourcing’ its ECOMP (Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy) automation platform through The Linux Foundation. For AT&T the more inter workable infrastructure and services are, the greater its ability to efficiently partner and build new services and business models. So open source software should provide a basis for easier integration of NORA capabilities once transformation is well developed. It’s possible to envisage CSPs developing particular skills which could then be offered to partners across their partner networks - security and analytics, for instance. This sort of sharing is already being employed in the ‘analogue’ world and for similar reasons.

Lessons from on-high?

The airline industry, for instance, exhibits some fascinating parallels. Airlines operate in a deregulated environment and the name of the game today is to cut costs to try to stay ahead of ever lowering per passenger ticket prices. Sound familiar?

To illustrate its problems the last couple of months has seen insolvency threaten Italy’s Alitalia and has put the UK’s Monarch Airlines out of business. For Monarch the market has moved on and its business model, developed for an earlier time, just can’t cope; while Alitalia has been unable to restructure to get a grip on its costs (amongst other things) by shedding employees. Its latest proposal for an across-the-board cut in wages in return for more investment was rejected. Administration followed by a complete break-up looks possible. In the airline business the short- and long-haul markets have diverged and what works in one doesn’t work so well in the other - different planes, different customer expectations, different cost structures.

Essentially low cost airlines, the category that Monarch found itself in, do short haul best because passengers - even relatively wealthy ones - care less about levels of service on a short flight. They are in the air for less time, so don’t demand feeding and watering and can put up with less comfort on the journey. 

This is not so different from the telecoms market where low cost Web-scale or ‘digital’ approaches to delivering services are on the rise because users are prepared to sacrifice the high-touch customer relationship and ‘5 nines’ reliability on offer if it means big savings. But with this approach there is always the danger that customers, while enjoying the low prices, quietly suffer a “user experience deficit” and yearn for more provider contact.

As always, there’s a balance to be struck. Naturally, the long-haul airline players, such as Alitalia, have a harder time stripping out costs because of customer expectations. So one proven way forward for them when it comes to costs is to be careful not to cut service quality, but to actually try to make the customer experience better while at the same time reducing costs where possible.

On with the sharing

One effective way to do that for the airlines has been through ‘sharing’. A good example is the Star Alliance. Twenty eight airlines share a growing range of facilities at the airports and, according to the alliance, all the members get to retain their distinctive culture and style of service, but where they can they develop co-locations at airports so they can share infrastructure for ticketing and check-in, executive lounges, baggage facilities and parking.

This approach is already being applied in telecoms with the ‘Next Generation Enterprise Network Alliance’, ngena, being an example. This alliance, which was created with Cisco, SK Telecom and others just over a year ago and recently bolstered by Deutsche Telekom, offers a wholesale model to partner telcos who want to deploy SDNFV-based services to their enterprise customers, but would prefer not to build the necessary infrastructure themselves. So it’s essentially another way to get to scale, reach and lower costs by sharing facilities, in a similar way to that deployed for the Airline industry by the Star Alliance.

The ngena example shows how partner relationships which would have been unwieldy in the extreme on a legacy architecture can enable individual carrier members to build their own particular customer network services across the other members’ infrastructure to create near global network reach for each individual member - hopefully without the technical and business model complications that have bedeviled telecom carrier alliance attempts in the past. We think arrangements like ngena will proliferate as network transformation really begins to bite.

The key ingredients are not just SDNFV and the ‘agility’ it brings, but large doses of entrepreneurial imagination and a willingness to take risks. And all this must be done, at the retail end at least, without the customer experience being sabotaged by the complexity of the offering. All this has been the urged on the industry for many years. Maybe this time.


NFV: 5 years, that’s not a lot, or is it?

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SDN panel discussion

As David Bowie almost sang, “It’s been five years, my brain hurts a lot,” a sentiment many participants in the NFV ISG can relate to. But looking back they also feel that the ‘journey’ has been successful - they are happy with the NFV foundations and appreciate all the learnings they’ve picked up on the way. There is now no question that the VNFs can work, said one participant, now we’re concerned that they can all work together.

Featuring: 

Francisco Javier Ramon Salguero
Head of Virtualization, Telefonica GCTO
Telefonica
 
Eric Debeau
Head of R & D Team
Orange
 
Saurabh Sandhir 
VP Product Management Team
Nuage Networks
 
Eric Vallone
Director of Product Management, Service Provider Solutions
Dell EMC
 
Filmed at: SDN NFV World Congress 2017, The Hague, Netherlands
 

NFV: 5 years, that’s not a lot, or is it? - Highlights

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SDN panel discussion

As David Bowie almost sang, “It’s been five years, my brain hurts a lot,” a sentiment many participants in the NFV ISG can relate to. But looking back they also feel that the ‘journey’ has been successful - they are happy with the NFV foundations and appreciate all the learnings they’ve picked up on the way. There is now no question that the VNFs can work, said one participant, now we’re concerned that they can all work together.

Featuring: 

Francisco Javier Ramon Salguero
Head of Virtualization, Telefonica GCTO
Telefonica
 
Eric Debeau
Head of R & D Team
Orange
 
Saurabh Sandhir 
VP Product Management Team
Nuage Networks
 
Eric Vallone
Director of Product Management, Service Provider Solutions
Dell EMC
 
Filmed at: SDN NFV World Congress 2017, The Hague, Netherlands
 

Architecting the network edge

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Video discussion

Why is the network edge such an important issue for the telecoms industry right now, and perhaps even more critically, where exactly is the “network edge” and how do we define it? As CSPs re-architect their networks and start investigating edge-based business models, what are the types of services and applications that the industry expects to see at the edge, and what are the associated architectural challenges of the network edge?

Featuring:
Kevin Shatzkamer, VP Service Provider Strategy, Architecture & Solutions, Dell EMC
Caroline Chan, VP Data Centre Group, 5G Infrastructure Division, Intel

Filmed at: Mobile World Congress, 2018, Barcelona, Spain

Bringing Zero Touch automation to 5G networks

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Panel Discussion

The concept of “Zero Touch” is becoming increasingly important, as the industry develops its virtualised network offerings to support 5G deployments. But what are the requirements needed by telcos to support the end-to-end zero touch network and service management of a multi-vendor environment? How do we ensure end- to-end network programmability for service creation and full automation of life-cycle processes? Automation is an essential component of future networks, especially given the importance of 5G network slicing and the dynamic provisioning of numerous virtualised networks for industry use cases. Getting all this working is a major challenge.
How does this fit with the equally topical subject at MWC this year of Network Slicing? And what is the advice for those service providers who are now starting to seriously explore Zero Touch within 5G architectures? The panel looks at the new options available to operators as we move towards dynamic, automated and agile 5G networks and services, as will debate the challenges still faced.

Featuring:

Gabriele Di Piazza, VP Solutions Telco/NFV, VMware
Chandresh Ruparel, Director, Ecosystem Strategy & Enablement, Network Platforms Group, Intel 
Francisco Javier Ramon Salguero, Head of Network Virtualisation Initiative, GCTO, 
Telefonica
Kevin Shatzkamer, VP Service Provider Strategy, Architecture & Solutions, Dell EMC

Filmed at:  Mobile World Congress, 2018, Barcelona, Spain

Dell EMC and VeloCloud engineer SD-WAN operating from the virtual edge

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Kevin Shatzkamer, VP of Service Provider Strategy, Architecture & Solutions at Dell EMC and Steve Woo, Co-founder of VeloCloud

Kevin and Steve talk through the thinking behind Dell EMC’s launch of its Virtual Edge Platform, the 4600, which is optimized to host VNFs (Virtual Network Functions) and, Dell EMC claims, is ideal for SD-WAN applications.  Kevin also explains the company’s Service Provider Ready nodes. While Dell EMC is primarily a vendor of network infrastructure, with the current transition to virtualization it also sees its role as an integration-savvy advisor to its telco customers on how to choose and integrate an increasingly complex and diverse set of applications.   

Featuring:
Kevin Shatzkamer, VP of Service Provider Strategy, Architecture & Solutions at Dell EMC
Steve Woo, Co-founder of VeloCloud

Filmed at: Mobile World Congress 2018

Metaswitch and Dell EMC offer composable Network Protocols for White Box switches

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© Flickr/cc-licence/Linux Foundation
  • Aim to accelerate adoption of disaggregated networking
  • Offers lower costs, increased choice and greater reliability
  • Dell EMC to resell Metaswitch CNP solution
  • Will integrate with EMC OS10 Open Edition

To coincide with the ONS open networking event in Los Angeles last week, Metaswitch announced its new portfolio of “composable” network protocols (CNP) that enables networking engineers to create disaggregated white box routing platforms with fully-decoupled control plane components and open management interfaces. It will be collaborating with Dell EMC, who will combine Metaswitch’s CNP IP routing and MPLS networking stacks with its own OS10 Open Edition on ONIE-enabled platforms. Metaswitch says its carrier-class solutions are clearly distinguished from pure open source alternatives.

“While the trend towards the separation of networking functions is mostly tied to open-source efforts, these solutions require significant time for integration or testing, potentially missing delivery expectations,” said Chris DePuy, founder and technology analyst at 650 Group. “By opening up network protocol stacks to a wide range of customers, the company can enable the white box switch market to deploy cutting-edge routing and switching systems quickly and simply.”

“Metaswitch has a thirty year heritage in protocols and protocol stacks,” says Simon Dredge, Director of Technical Marketing at Metaswitch. “Recently we've made a good business out of selling our protocol stack source code to OEMs and then supporting their engineers to tightly integrate it into their products. What we’ve announced today basically replaces that model.”

Simon explained that the monolithic NOS software often sitting in the white box tends to generate lots of problems around software updates and patching. “For instance, the network operating system will often still include whatever protocol stacks the vendor chooses to include. There can be dozens of them, most of them never used, but because they’re monolithic in nature they can present a real security problem.”

But now the market is much more aware of the advantages of disaggregating the software.

“In the last nine  to 12 months many players have been looking at the ‘completely software disaggregated’ model, as deployed by the web-scale Googles, Amazons and so on, and saying to themselves, 'We’ll have some of that. It’s similar to what we’re doing on the NFV side of things'.”

Metaswitch explains that composable networking is the development of network solutions from completely disaggregated software components, for deployments ranging from Layer 2 intra-data centre applications to fully featured Layer 3 fabrics, VPN interconnect and carrier-grade MPLS infrastructures. Its routing and control plane protocols install and operate as binary applications on top of any open network operating system.

“Metaswitch has a very strong track record in the development and deployment of hardened protocol stacks for the most demanding applications and OEMs,” said Martin Lund, CEO of Metaswitch, “and we look forward to working with an expanded range of customers to help them realize the future of composable networking.”

OpenSwitch integration

The adoption of microservices methodologies across both development and deployment life cycles enables routing, control, management, database and abstraction-layer modules to be written, patched and upgraded independently of the full software stack. This level of modularity simplifies the coding process and reduces software costs by allowing operators to pay only for the components they need. It also lowers operational expenditures by enabling infrastructure automation. This guarantees that every data plane element, including protocol stack, hardware system and management option, is perfectly-aligned with its application.

For its primary route to market, Metaswitch has partnered with Dell EMC. One of the network operating systems that its CNP can run on is The Linux Foundation’s OpenSwitch project, which is largely built around EMC’s OS10 Open Edition.

“The combination of Metaswitch CNP and Dell EMC OS10 Open Edition significantly raises the viability of software disaggregation in production deployments,” said Drew Schulke, VP of networking at Dell EMC. “With this comprehensive portfolio of hardened network protocol stacks, we’ll work closely on addressing the complexities of data centre interconnect and wide-area IP/MPLS routing at scale.”

“This combined solution introduces new capabilities and flexible purchasing options when moving to a fully-disaggregated architecture,” said Shriraj Gaglani, EVP of business and corporate development for Metaswitch. Look out for a video interview with Shriraj on TelecomTV next week.

Network Functions Virtualization: Are We There Yet?

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How far have we come to demonstrating and implementing an open, cloud-based NFV model to further support transformation within the telco industry? Joining us from MWC 2016 are Brian Higgins, VP of Network Planning at Verizon; Chris Wright, VP and Chief Technologist at Red Hat; Gee Rittenhouse, SVP and GM of the Cloud and Virtualization Group at Cisco and Drew Schulke, Executive Director of Next Generation Infrastructure at Dell.


Data Center Solutions: A Business Case

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Advanced compute and server solutions are the backbone that support billions of device connections and are based on open standards to help maximize compatibility, scalability and expandability of our communications networks. How are these new server and storage solutions helping telecommunications companies bring their intellectual property to market faster and ultimately help lower operational expenses, increase profitability and simplify operations? At the Dell TIA NOW studio, network operators will explore the latest OEM solutions in the data center, that promote reliability and cost-effective components for high volume and hyper-scale environments.

The Network is Breathing In Capacity- C-RAN & vRAN

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Sports stadiums and crowded shopping malls often require peak capacity from their network to support thousands of high bandwidth devices. But now network topologies are less cost prohibitive to provision and build with NFV and virtualization technologies. Linsey Miller, Vice President of Marketing for Artesyn, tells TIA NOW how C-RAN and vRAN are changing the way we provision our networks.

BLOG: taking IoT to the edge

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  • 'Fog Computing' will answer real capacity and latency problems
  • Why the Fog trend should be the CSP’s friend
  • CSPs can either host edge computing or provide it as part of a service

Dell and EMC tie the knot and close their $67 billion merger

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Nearly a year ago Dell announced that it was going to merge with EMC, the huge storage and data management vendor in an eye-watering takeover deal worth US$ 65 billion.  As we noted at the time (see - Dell’s $67 billion bet on the one-stop-shopit was “a bold move considering the sad history of technology mergers and acquisitions where the bigger they are the harder their share price tends to fall in the aftermath. Dell (the man) obviously likes a challenge.”

Today is the day the complicated M&A deal ‘closes’ and it leaves Dell with a new name for EMC (see logo above) and sees Dell Technologies become the world’s largest privately-controlled technology company, incorporating a range of capabilities which it hopes will enable it to carve out a strong position in the hybrid cloud and emerging ‘fog’ markets (see Blog: taking IoT to the edge).

The Dell empire now comprises what the company describes as a unique family of businesses   including Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtustream and VMware.

How Dell supports telcos from cloud to edge

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All telcos are interested in how they can offer the next generation of IoT services to their customers, Brent tells Guy Daniels. And Dell is aiming to help them meet their own customer requirements in the IoT space, from edge to core to cloud. Most important will be architectures that can scale from the edge to the core and that can be managed by IT professionals with openness a prime requirement so that the ecosystem can rapidly evolve.

See our Fog blog 

Filmed at: Mobile Edge Computing Congress, 21-22 September, 2016, Munich

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