Everybody agreed that the rise of cloud services has started and that the consumption of services sourced from the cloud became reality in both our business and private life. With the success and wide-scale adoption, cloud service providers are facing new questions and are looking for opportunities to differentiate and scale their service offering.

Many cloud service providers have started to plan their services portfolio more carefully than they initially did. This applies particularly to the traditional network operators who complemented their telecom portfolio by cloud services. They want to better understand who their cloud customers are, what cloud services are important to these potential customers and which can be addressed by their sales organization. Also the impact on their existing network, OSS and BSS landscape is an important fact to assess what ultimately provides efficiency and differentiation.

One challenge with cloud computing is the dependency on an Internet whose performance can vary from hour to hour. MPLS and Carrier Ethernet are considered as alternatives for providing access into the cloud with dependable quality of service metrics. Many operators are looking for ways to scale their services at reasonable cost while leveraging existing infrastructure. Areas of concern are how to adapt virtual private network solutions, what quality of service is required and what are the service level agreements seamlessly matching those of the cloud applications. Network security issues in the context of denial of service attacks also become more dominant.

Last but not least, the service control view has developed to be a frequently discussed subject in the context of cloud computing. How can we give cloud applications control over the network to allocate sufficient resources at the time they are required? In the age of virtualization, which successfully has been adopted for storage and compute resources in the data center, the inclusion of the communication network promises to enable new business models and efficiencies. Control plane and Openview are relevant technologies here.

All in all, lots of good thoughts and great ideas to maintain the momentum of cloud services – also on the standards side. All relevant standards bodies have ongoing activities helping to simplify and scale cloud offerings. Ultimately, there’s only one last question: What comes after the cloud? Some people say: The sky …

Yet if there’s such potential here, why aren’t we seeing more progress? There can be no question that some companies do understand the opportunities. One need only look at Google or Facebook to realise how these companies are effectively mining their data to drive new business opportunities and further monetize their value proposition. But these companies are rare exceptions. As I highlighted in my previous couple of blog posts, many companies are still very sceptical about moving from traditional business models and reluctant to embrace new opportunities.

However, resistance can only last so long, especially when we’re talking about new revenue opportunities. Last month’s World Economic Forum meeting saw people referring to data as a new class of economic asset and in many respects we’re at the start of a new gold rush. One need only look at the job market to see proof of this. Take a look at job opportunities for data scientists. The results are staggering. There’s a huge shortage of trained professionals. McKinsey & Company estimates this shortage to be almost 1.7 million big data professionals in the U.S. alone. It may be time to take your pan and start sifting.

Looking outside of staffing though, there are still two enormous obstacles. One is cultural and the second is infrastructure.

Firstly, if big data is to truly succeed we need to consider what data is being collected. Only this week headlines were made as the British government released plans to store details of every citizen’s phone calls, text messages, emails and website activity. I’m sure this act will meet with the same response as a Facebook privacy update. Yet it raises a key question, how do we feel about our data being collected and analysed? Can we overcome this barrier to see there are benefits? Can big data help us create, as Rick Smolan suggests, a human dashboard? Or will big data simply become another term for big brother?

Secondly, there can be no big data without big infrastructure. Data is useless if it sits in isolated silos. It needs to be harnessed, it needs to be collected on an enormous scale to be effectively analysed to the extent where it can offer insight and this is where we need a capable underlying network infrastructure. Whether this information is housed in the cloud or kept in your own data centres, it needs to be readily accessible, and this means we need to transport huge amounts of data quickly and securely.

What’s incredible to note is the speed at which this data is growing. IDC suggests that data is doubling every two years. This is phenomenal growth and if we’re to successfully transport this volume of data through the network, we need to continue driving forward with the optical reboot. A reboot based on the rebuilding of our networks on a core of 100G, OTNs and ROADMs and further expansion of fibre-based access and backhaul solutions. Something we’re only just at the start of doing.

What’s fascinating to note is how this data could spur a whole new industry. With Amazon’s HPC-as-a-Service platform, we’re seeing the democratization of supercomputing technology and this means big data can be accessed and analysed by a whole new subset of companies, groups and even individuals. It’s tantalising to consider what breakthroughs this may result in. This will be especially true when the Internet of Things starts to mature and we have access to a whole other subset of data.

Are you involved in big data? Have you seen the impact it can have? What’s the future here and what obstacles do we still need to overcome. I’d be interested to hear from you on this.

The target for availability called for every citizen in Europe to have access to 30Mbps broadband by 2020. The target around uptake was even more ambitious: the European Commission wanted half of all subscribers to be taking 100Mbps services by 2020. As Chris Holden, president of the FTTH Council Europe, pointed out at the time, such a high penetration would require almost ubiquitous availability of 100Mbps services – something that FTTH is well placed to deliver.

So how are things looking one year on? The European Commission recently published the 2011 scoreboard (see below), which indicates that very little progress has been made towards the take-up goal in particular. The FTTH Conference 2012 in Munich provided the ideal opportunity to delve a little deeper into how things are shaping up.
First, the good news: FTTH continued to grow at a reasonable pace in 2011 in spite of global economic uncertainty, according to market research firm iDATE. There were 600,000 new subscribers in the region (specifically the 27 European member states plus 8 other countries on the continent) corresponding to a growth rate of 28%.

The number of homes passed by fibre grew even faster with a 41% increase year on year. However, as a result of deployment exceeding take-up by new subscribers, the overall take rate of FTTH in Europe (the percentage of people taking the service where it’s available) actually fell from 20.3% at the end of 2010 to 18.4% at year end 2011.

The fact that subscriber take-up lags deployment sounds worrying, but is quite normal. The results of a study by consultancy firm Diffraction Analysis, also unveiled at the event, confirm something that may seem self-evident – it takes time to build a subscriber base. FTTH operators in the study gained between 5% and 7% market penetration for each year that they were in business.

The detail of the market panorama also bears this out. Countries with more mature FTTH markets also tend to have higher take rates, the highest being Norway (60%), the Czech Republic (42%), Sweden (39%) and Lithuania (29%). (By the way, Lithuania continues to lead the FTTH Ranking, Norway has moved up to second place, and Sweden is in third, while major economies like Germany and the UK still do not feature.)

Looking ahead, however, the news is not so good. Analyst firm Heavy Reading has downgraded its market forecast for the third year in a row, as actors have failed to achieve the objectives they have set themselves. Heavy Reading now forecasts that the FTTH subscriber base is expected to grow from around 10.3 million subscribers today to 32 million in 2016 (this figure is for 38 European countries including Russia).

When considering European Union member states only, the numbers correspond to around 8.7% of homes subscribing to fibre by 2016. That would leave just four years for Europe to reach the 50% target in the Digital Agenda. In fact, Heavy Reading’s forecast indicates that by 2020 Europe is expected to attain FTTH market penetration of only 20%.

Incumbent operators are being particularly slow. “If incumbents were solely responsible for FTTH additions, and kept going at the same rate, then it would take about 450 years to connect all the homes in Europe,” said Graham Finnie, Heavy Reading’s chief analyst. “I think we can all agree that’s too slow.”

Incumbents only accounted for roughly one third of FTTH deployment in 2011, but the situation is not much better among municipal projects and alternative operators, who are also struggling to meet deployment objectives on time. If FTTH is to be a major contributor to Digital Agenda targets, then deployment needs to accelerate dramatically and, given that subscriber take-up lags the roll out, it needs to start soon.

The alternative scenario, which is probably slightly disturbing to fibre evangelists, is that other technologies, like cable television networks and fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), will have to play the dominant role in delivering high-speed broadband by 2020.

By 2020 all cable networks will be upgraded to offer 100Mbps – indeed in many countries they already are capable of such speeds. Improvements in copper technology, such as vectoring, could lead to VDSL becoming capable of speeds as high as 100Mbps even if only over distances of several hundred meters – something that seemed unlikely just a few years ago.

The Broadband Forum, which also unveiled its numbers at the event, reported that deployment and uptake of what it calls “hybrid FTTx” (fibre in the access network with copper tails) is currently outpacing true FTTH. There are almost three times as many subscribers on hybrid FTTx connections, and that number is growing rapidly because this approach has been popular with incumbents.

Politicians have a great deal of influence in how things evolve from here, says the FTTH Council Europe. Individual member states are required to set out their plans for meeting the Digital Agenda targets, but so far they haven’t done a great job – at least not from the viewpoint of FTTH industry.

“Generally speaking, the national plans [for broadband] are a disaster,” said Holden. “Many countries don’t have national broadband plans and of those that do, they’re not aligned with the Digital Agenda targets. Many governments say they are going to use other technologies based on ‘up to’ speeds to meet the Digital Agenda targets, instead they should be realistic about what these technologies can actually do.”

The FTTH Council Europe is also keen to see the Digital Agenda targets strengthened by including a minimum upload speed. Many studies show that the world is not asymmetric – once good upload speeds become available, subscribers start to upload far more data. It seems unlikely that the Council’s suggestion will be adopted, however, as it would virtually guarantee that Europe misses the 100Mbps Digital Agenda target.

One of the big challenges, says Holden, is to convince governments that telecommunications should be viewed as a critical infrastructure, on a par with road, rail and airports. Like other big infrastructure projects, FTTH requires significant long term investment, and patient investors to match. That’s not something that publicly traded companies with shareholder pressure and short-term investment horizons are necessarily in a position to provide; and that’s why government understanding of the situation is vital.

“Maybe we should do more work with national governments; that’s certainly something for us to think about,” Holden mused.

Is Europe on track to meet the Digital Agenda targets? What needs to change to make sure we get there? Tell us what you think by adding your comments below.

Check out more from Pauline Rigby on Optical Reflection.

Think about that for a moment. Email usage among 18-24 year olds has dropped by over one third. I find this figure incredible. I’m sure these people aren’t communicating any less; in fact, I expect them to be communicating even more. They’re communicating through Twitter, Facebook, Path and the wealth of other social media tools designed purely to share and communicate.

Sure, so what? Well, look at the percentage drop in email use among 12-17 year olds – 31%. Today’s digital natives are starting to migrate from traditional online communication tools to more social applications. I believe this shift has enormous implications for businesses and the future of enterprise IT. As digital natives enter the workplace they will expect similar communication tools, similar ways of interacting across a company as they do now with their friends.

One need only look at Salesforce Chatter, Unified, Rypple and other online tools to see how the workplace is changing. The shift from email to collaborative tools that strip away inefficiencies and direct focus are dramatically growing in popularity. Take a look at some of the figures if you’re in any doubt. There’s an incredible amount of money exchanging hands at the moment as startups are being bought by some of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) giants that want to offer enterprises complete solutions from sales, to marketing to HR and every other aspect of business life.

However, as I mentioned in my previous blog post, this paradigm shift is not going to happen overnight. Although 77% of enterprises have deployed some form of cloud service, mass migration is slow and there are questions as to how quickly companies will move from an owned-infrastructure model to a cloud-based solution. Yet this migration appears inevitable. Digital natives are entering the workplace and expecting the same IT experience as they have personally. They expect appealing interfaces, rapid communication and, what’s more, they expect it across multiple devices – mobiles, tablets, laptops.

Apart from the cultural shift here, there’s also an infrastructure issue that needs to be resolved – mobile. Digital natives expect to be productive on mobile devices and to do this requires a network that can support the enormous amounts of bandwidth needed for remote working. What’s incredible here is that the network is moving faster than many corporate IT departments. Currently, we’re in the middle of the biggest rebuild of the network’s core in over a decade. This rebuild is founded on three principle technologies: 100G, OTNs and ROADMs. The possibilities here are enormous. What’s more, mobile base stations are being connected with fibre-based carrier Ethernet solutions supporting Gigabit per second speeds.

It’s tantalising to imagine how the future of enterprise communication is changing. There can be no question that email will always have a place, but as digital natives enter the professional environment, there’s a real opportunity to change how we work, to change how we operate and embrace new possibilities.

What impact do you think digital natives will have on the workplace? Are you seeing this shift to cloud-based tools? Are you starting to migrate from email? Let me know what you’re seeing here.

What amazed me during these discussions was the level of negativity from these senior managers; key decision makers who are spread across a range of industries. The appetite to start moving to the cloud, whether it is public or private, was low to say the least. The fear of seceding control, increased in security risks, possible impact of future regulations, growing trend of European nationalism and numerous other reasons were cited as strong prohibitors.

Yet this continued fear of the corporate cloud comes at a time when the media is suggesting that 2012 could be a pivotal year for growth. There is a whole range of articles that highlight how CTOs are overcoming their cloud phobias. We even had Aaron Levie, CEO of BOX, state recently that he’d seen an unbelievable transition to CIO-led conversations on enterprise cloud storage. In fact, Levie believes that large corporations are now ready to sign on the dotted line on enormous cloud-storage deals.

We really shouldn’t be surprised when chief officers of large IT integration companies and cloud-based storage firms espouse the rapidity of corporate cloud adoption. If they’re not vehement on this then who will be? However, analysts also seem to be quite bullish about growth here. James Staten, a Forrester analyst, in his 2012 predictions suggests the cloud is now entering its awkward teenage years. During this phase we can expect to see rapid growth, a range of success and a number of failures as the cloud strives to assume its own identity.

Comparing the cloud to an awkward teenager is certainly an interesting analogy and one that my dinner guests agreed with. One of the key challenges that Staten highlights for the awkward teen is budgeting, ensuring that you adequately plan to scale. Ultimately this is a paradigm shift that moves away from traditional IT spend on purchases of physical hardware that are wholly owned and a known factor to pay per use platforms that will vary as demand dictates.

Yet what I find incredible here is that people don’t explore both sides of the coin, especially when it comes to cost. Yes, budgets are going to change and you will move from capital expenditure to operational expenditure but you need to look at the efficiencies that the cloud presents. With a pay as you go model enterprises have incredible opportunities to embrace new platforms, new services that streamline operations and harness productivity. Ultimately the cloud enables enterprises to respond quickly to customer demands and new business opportunities.

In addition to cost benefits, it’s also important to understand the data benefits. Moving to a cloud solution helps you to effectively liberate your data and empower your teams to better understand current processes. I only need consider how Salesforce and its dashboard views have provided me with a holistic scope of operations to see this in action. I now have a detailed tool that enables me to understand workflows and where weaknesses may lie.

There can be no question that we have a long way to go here. The U.S. Patriot Act and its continued rumblings are worrying, as are the responses of France and Germany to build their own cloud infrastructure protected against the prying eyes of the U.S. government. However, we need to overcome these challenges and embrace new opportunities. There’s incredible potential here and it’s time we started supporting the awkward teenager and pushed him on his way to a prosperous and effective adulthood.

Do you believe that corporate IT belongs in the cloud? Do you expect to see mass migration to cloud solutions in 2012? Has the cloud become an awkward teenager and or is it still toddling? Let me know what you think.

• Latency—Critically important in electronic trading and a growing range of industries, network latency varies substantially from fiber path to fiber path and multiplexing platform to multiplexing platform. Reducing the fiber path by one physical kilometer of fiber translates into five microseconds of one-way latency that is eliminated, and Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) introduces significantly more packet delay than does Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM).  Furthermore, significant differences in latency are generated by the way a given WDM system performs regeneration, amplification and color conversion. For example, some WDM systems use a technique for offsetting chromatic dispersion that adds additional latencies to the signal. Other systems are “carrier” based in their design and add extra overhead like Forward Error Correction (FEC) and other non-data-center-friendly transmission technologies. This is especially true for users in the metro (under 200km) that want to run “native” channels over their WDM infrastructure.

• Power efficiency—Some WDM systems consume double the energy of others, which can add up to the price paid for hardware after just three years. Furthermore, the ability to support the highest native data rates (such as 5G and 10G InfiniBand, or 8Gbit/s and soon 16G Fibre Channel, or 10G QFabrics from Juniper) enables this end-to-end power efficiency.

• Rack-space efficiency—Data-center real estate is expensive, and some WDM systems demand twice the equipment rack space of others. Search for a WDM system with a data-center Design.

• Simplicity—Some WDM systems are up and running within one day; whereas, others typically require three days or more. This adds significant OPEX cost to the solution. If it’s hard to install, suspect that it is hard to maintain.

• Investment protection—Some WDM systems available in the marketplace today still fail to support 8G Fibre Channel, and the protocol has been available since 2008. Similarly, tried-and-true, legacy protocols that continue to be relied upon across the enterprise cannot be simply abandoned. Data centers are likely to be heterogeneous protocol environments for the foreseeable future, so wide protocol support is a must for a WDM solution to shoulder interconnection.

• Security—Fiber can be tapped more inexpensively and easily than ever, so a comprehensive, modular security strategy is necessary to ensure protection for a company’s valuable information assets. Some WDM systems offer a cost-efficient capability to fully encrypt certain channels of traffic and monitor for intrusions at the physical layer. The result is a sophisticated security solution—without threatening degradation of the superior, low-latency performance for an organization’s most demanding local and storage area network (LAN and SAN) applications.

• Qualification—Consider the example that the largest storage system vendors have never accepted support calls if the WDM platform that a data center employs is not qualified specifically with that system vendor. Qualifications with all leading SAN vendors like IBM, EMC, Brocade and HDS is a must for interconnecting data centers.

In striving to implement the optimal interconnection strategy for their organizations, data-center managers must carefully examine their potential infrastructure partners with regard to costs and tradeoffs across all seven of these areas. Protocol-agnostic WDM can play a valuable, unifying role for data-center interconnection, delivering benefits of effectively unlimited bandwidth, superior performance and long-term support for current and emerging protocol needs. But the differences among WDM platforms matter, and data-center managers must look for a WDM system that optimizes their environment.

If successful, O2′s network will be a first for the U.K. and for Europe and will hopefully stimulate similar developments in other cities. There can be no question that the U.K. needs to start driving forward with mobile connectivity. However, while I was reading about this project, I was reminded of an article in Gigaom from last year. This article discussed whether our WiFi expectations are simply too high and misaligned with service providers’ plans.

What’s striking about the Gigaom article is the apparent discord between users and service providers. Sure, nothing new you may be thinking, but let’s look at the figures. According to a report from Devicescape, over 83% of users believe that service providers should be offering some form of free WiFi access as part of mobile subscriptions. This contrasts with figures from the Wireless Broadband Alliance that shows only 47% of service providers believe WiFi offload to be an important part of their mobile strategy. The difference in figures here is huge. The key question is how do we all move forward together?

Unfortunately, I’m not sure we’ll see any form of structured approach to developing WiFi blankets anytime soon. Looking at London, there are already a number of small trials being run across the city to offer some form of free connectivity. Just look at Nokia’s offering from 2011 to see this in action. What’s needed is a collaborative approach. One need only look at cable providers in New York to see what’s possible here. But are we likely to see this model replicated elsewhere. Do service providers have it in their DNA to collaborate?

I’m sure service providers will be watching O2’s success here before taking any competitive measures. However, as I highlighted in an earlier post, it’s clear that we’re entering an age of WiFi connectivity. People expect access to data wherever and whenever and with poor coverage and data caps continuing to restrict people’s mobile data usage, especially in the U.K., WiFi offloading is the next logical step. It will be interesting to see which service providers accept the challenge and begin to offer compelling WiFi packages in their tariffs.

What do you think to O2’s plans? Do we expect too much from WiFi? Should WiFi offload be a part of every service providers’ mobile strategy? Let me know what you think.

How long does it take for a packet of data to make its way from one point in a network to another? That measurement of time is defined as the latency of a path, and it can be influenced by a tremendous range of factors. Data-center managers in the most latency-sensitive markets must steep themselves in an understanding of all of those factors if they are to give their companies optimal competitive advantage.

Many of the new and trendy innovations have been enabled through migrating telecom networks from a static, circuit-switched infrastructure to a more flexible and scalable packet-based technology. The wide-scale adoption of Ethernet as a transport protocol and the increased usage of fiber in all parts of the network allowed operators to provide more bandwidth at significantly lower cost.

Software has started to play a much more dominant role in all layers of the network lately to increase flexibility, provide service awareness and to keep cost under control. Software Defined Networking promises to enable operators to implement innovative services more easily and much faster in all parts of their network. This includes fixed network infrastructure, wireless networks, data center networks and access networks for business and residential users. SDN also promises to enable a better control over the network and optimize the usage of the available resources according to the actual demand.

Software Defined Networking also plays a critical role in optical networks, especially when looking at transmission speeds beyond 100G – we refer to it as Software Defined Optics (SDO). Increased spectral efficiency comes at the expense of reach when going beyond 100G on a single wavelength. Higher-order modulation schemes provide better spectral efficiency but have a significant impact on the reach achievable. There clearly is no one-size-fits-all solution anymore.

In agile optical networks where communication routes are switched between different end points according to the actual demand, the concept of SDO enables network operators to flexibly adapt their network to actual requirements. They can utilize the same transponder hardware to transmit at lower capacity over longer distances or provide maximum capacity over a short distance. SDO increases the agility of a network by utilizing adaptive modulation schemes and software-driven error correction and equalization technology. And SDO allows reducing the energy consumption of a network by adapting available capacity to demand – an important characteristic for telecom and data center applications.

In other words: Software Defined Networking builds a robust foundation for future networking innovation.

Yet what would happen if access to this type of processing power were opened up? What if it was democratized to the point that it’s available to a mass audience? How would this impact upon our society and our future? These are some of the questions asked in a recent Gigaom article that demands entrepreneurs and technologists to think bigger. To look beyond the continued development of lifestyle and gaming applications and assess how they can use their talents and the considerable advancements in technology to drive humanity forward.

Clearly these are enormous questions, but I can’t help but think of the possibilities here. One need only look at Amazon’s HPC-as-a-Service platform to see some of the opportunities available. Let me expand on this. Until now, access to this type of processing power has been available only to government agencies, R&E bodies, pharmaceutical companies and other such well-funded organisations. With Amazon’s offering, HPC becomes an increasingly mainstream proposition. Sure, $1,000 per hour is not quite within the reach of everyone, but for startup companies or smaller organisations that wish to access this type of computing power there’s now a real opportunity to do so.

What’s clear is that we need this type of innovation and liberalization of technology. If we are to start answering questions critical to the development of our world we need platforms such as Amazon’s HPC service. It’s only through the democratization of technology that we can achieve true advancement. However, this is reflected throughout the technology ecosystem. One need only look at the drive for universal broadband access or the One Laptop per Child initiative to see how critical it is to make technology available to all, to ensure that every society has the tools they need to improve.

Although I’ve talked on a global scale above, it’s also important to think about how technology access impacts upon the local environment. I remember a fascinating piece I read some time ago on how Chinese farmers are using mobile telephones to develop a network of information that provides advanced weather warnings, suggestions on how to improve crop yields, etc. It’s this type of democratization of technology and data that are critical to the world’s development.

Do you believe that technology and data democratization are important? Is greater access to processing power critical? Have you tried Amazon’s HPC services? If so, how has it impacted upon your business? Let me know what you think on this.