Rewriting the economic equations of Internet

We are moving towards a highly connected age, characterised by the complex interplay between social dynamics and telecommunications-ICT infrastructures.

Network Science will have a role in contributing to the challenge of rewriting economic equations of Internet and viceversa economic forces shape the evolution of technology.

Actually, considering technology acceleration, it’s easy to imagine future telecommunication infrastructures becoming like "spaces" of virtual resources, with diversified s/w functions, features and characteristics, capable of meeting dynamically any market demands for services.

The borders between the network and the Data Centers (either Cloud or Edge Computing) will progressively disappear, or better high capacity and self-reconfigurable network connections will be able to hook ensembles of hybrid Virtual Data Centers, partly decentralised. And also the future terminals will be part of this "space", as embedding more and more processing, storage and networking capabilities.

Current OSS/BSS cannot cope with this evolution, due to the growing complexity and scalability requirements, and the need of automated Operations.

So, one of the most important challenges will be developing systems and methods for the "real-time management" of network and service resources in such "spaces" where making overprovisioning of connectivity rather than just overprovisioning bandwidth. Overprovision connectivity pays off better: it allows creating very large numbers of topologies to choose dynamically, programming and controlling the QoS near the Users.

Today, the overprovision connectivity in a network is more expensive than overprovision capacity, but tomorrow the equation may change. In a Data Center, we have already overprovisioning of connectivity, but the story is different: DC network covers a relatively small fraction of the cost, compared to server, electricity and cooling costs. So overprovisioning connectivity makes economic sense (by the way, in DC, traffic demands are quite volatile and not well understood, so it is strictly necessary to overprovision connectivity; on the other hand, traffic fluctuation on a network is over time rather than space, thus today is mitigated by capacity overprovisioning). But tomorrow it will be another story.

Once we have achieved that, we'll be able to rewrite the economic equations of Internet, with far reaching implications for the Digital Society.

Softwarization Anthropology (cont’d)

Who can’t remember the amazing movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Movie starts with early hominids realizing how to use a bone as a tool. In the movie, millions of years later space technology and artificial intelligence (HAL) have become the new tools brining humans to a challenging voyage to Jupiter…

The way humans make and use tools is what determine our species evolution, perhaps making it unique.

Well, softwarization can be seen as the new tool for humanity, offering new ways for communicating, producing-consuming ICT services, creating the Digital Society and Digital Economy. In fact, it will be a tool capable of distorting, reducing space-time dimensions of Digital Society in this data-centric era.

Telecommunications and ICT are making distances are shorter and shorter, and space is being morphed by the digitalization of objects, things and processes. Causes-effects latencies are being dramatically reduced, and “control loops” intertwined as in Complex Adaptive Systems. Non linearity is going to characterize the socio-economic variables of our world.

So softwarization will bring big changes, as it will allow implementing into reality our cognition models.

In fact, we’ve mentioned several time that softwarization will allow pervasively sensing and collecting massive data (by sensors, terminals, smart things, machines, robots, drones, etc); exchanging data (via fixed and mobile networks with high bandwidth and low latency); analyzing quickly big data (with Cloud-Edge Computing) in order to elaborate decisions (e.g., with AI methods, algorithms, heuristics) for actuating local actions (by any actuators)… That's how a "nervous system" works. And this will boost pervasive robotics and intelligent machines applications. The “Second Machine Age” is really coming.

I believe that, from an anthropological perspective, this is also very much resonating with what R. Bandler and J. Grinder called “distorsion”, as one of the processes which allow us to survive, grow, change…a process which allows us to make shifts in our experience of sensory data. Indeed, future Telecommunications and ICT services will allow transforming our experiences, digitalizing everything around us. 

Also  Marshall McLuhan in “Understanding Media” argues that the web, media, Telecommunications in general are bringing to a sort of social "implosion", as people and processes are more closely connected and interworking.  This unification, through implosion, for McLuhan, will allows for the idea of living in a "global village" to emerge. And emergence is a phenomenon of Complex Adaptive Systems.

But I think that this  "global village" will be also populated with digital beings such as virtual and embodied agents or software processes, becoming characters of socio-economic surroundings and life conditions. ICT is reaching such a level of maturity that it will fade into the physical reality, merging with it. So it won’t be just a matter of technology records !

Also, it will be very much important realizing how to make this "complex" merger (of the natural and softwarized worlds) really acceptable from a socio-economic perspective, by addressing issues such as the overall sustainability and the compatibility, in the respect of Nature. 

Softwarization Anthropology

This post is not about technology: it’s about psychology, anthropology and sociology.

Why ? Well, digital anthropology is already there: it is the study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology. The field has a variety of names with a variety of declinations, including techno-anthropology, digital-ethnography, cyber-anthropology, and virtual-anthropology, etc.

No need to say that “Softwarization of Telecommunications” will also intersect with various disciplines dealing with humans, including anthropology, psychology, sociology, etc.

Sometimes ago I read the amazing book “The Structure of Magic” (A Book about Language and Therapy) by the two psychologist R. Bandler and J. Grinder.

Book contains very interesting remarks about human conditions and paradoxes. Quoting the Authors: the most pervasive paradox of the human condition which we see is that the processes which allow us to survive, grow, change, and experience joy are the same processes which allow us to maintain an impoverished model of the world - our ability to manipulate symbols, that is, to create-models. We can identify three general mechanisms by which we do this: Generalization, Deletion, and Distortion.

Generalization is the process by which elements or pieces of a person's model become detached from their original experience and come to represent the entire category of which the experience is an example. Deletionis a process by which we selectively pay attention to certain dimensions of our  experience and exclude others. Distortion is the process which allows us to make shifts in our experience of sensory data. […] It is this process which has made possible all the artistic creations which we as humans have produced. A sky as represented in a painting by Van Gogh is possible only as Van Gogh was able to distort his perception of the time-place in which he was located at the moment of creation. […] Similarly, all the great novels, all the revolutionary discoveries of the sciences involve the ability to distort and misrepresent present reality.

Softwarization is like a tool that will offer humans a potential new world of communications and services: I believe that the creation of a new socio-economic development will depend very much on our ability to manipulate symbols, that is, to create-models.

This is call for psychologist, sociologists and anthropologists to join our initiative !

http://sdn.ieee.org/

    

Two Innovation Cycles for Softwarization

SDN and NFV principles are going to impact not only the evolution of current networks, but also the services and applications platforms. It would be very limitative considering SDN and NFV only from the networking perspective.

In fact, Softwartization will be a systemic and impactful change of paradigm in whole Telecommunications and ICT domains, with far reaching consequences in the value-chain: it won’t be just like introducing a new transport or networking technology or new network layer (as it was for SDH, IP/MPLS, etc).

We know very well that, in the past, Telecommunications infrastructures were always built with purpose-built equipment designed for specific functions; these pieces of equipment were provided by Technology Providers as “closed boxes”, including the hardware, software and its operating system. 

When introducing a new technology or network layer, a waterfall innovation approach was normally adopted. Softwartization is a game changer. Waterfall innovation is dead.

In the future, the decoupling of software from the hardware, the virtualization of IT and network physical resources and growing availability of Open Source software will change the scenario: it will be possible to develop and manage network and service functions as “applications”, made of chains of open source software components interconnected via logical links.

The software mindset is eating the Telecommunications.

In this respect, it is likely that Softwarization will be exploited by Industry with a bimodal approach, through two innovation cycles: one relatively slow, looking at a seamless evolution of current network infrastructures towards SDN-NFV, and another one much faster, where Softwarization will pave the way to integrated network and service software platforms. A totally different scenario with respect to past times.

These two cycles will coexist bringing to the deployment of “softwarized” network and service domains, operated with IT-style processes and capable of providing specific end-to-end services. 

These “softwarized” network and service domains will emerge here and there and coexist for some time with the legacy infrastructures. A key issue will be the cross-interoperability of these “softwarized” domains, which should be pursued since the beginning - by design – i.e., by embedding interoperability features and capabilities into these horizontal platforms.

An Open Fabric at the Edge

Fog Computing pushes the Cloud Computing paradigm towards the edge of current networks, leveraging on distributed processing and storage resources around Users. Apparently another buzzword: in reality the progressive maturation of a technology trend, which is about hardware miniaturization, increasing performance and costs reductions, together with pervasive ultra-broadband. This is resulting in more and more powerful devices, smart terminals, intelligent machines scattered in the environment around Users, and capable of storing data and executing services locally (or better in orchestration with the Cloud).

This floating fog of ICT resources at the edge will create the conditions whereby Users will literally “decide and drive”  future networks and services. This fog of edge devices can indeed create a sort of processing and storage fabric that can be used to execute any network function and to provide any sort of ICT services and applications. The components of this fabric can be seen as: CPU/GPU, SSD (Solid State Drive), HDD (Hard Disk Drive) and link (and this is perfectly in line with the “disaggregation of resources” targeted by the Open Compute Project). One may imagine these components aggregating dynamically in an application-driven “flocking”. And, in the same way as birds with simple local behaviors are optimizing the aerodynamics of the flock (which is solving a “constraints optimization problems” by using very simple local rules), the flocking of component can follow dynamically application-driven network optimizations.

So, imagine providing ICT services by orchestrating the use of local idle computing and storage resources of millions of smart terminals, nodes, machines at the edge…one may argue that not all types of services and applications can run entirely on the edge, however, there are several examples like content aggregation, transformation, data collection, analytic, static data bases, etc. which can really take benefit from the fog paradigm.

Surely, the end-to-end latency is one of the major problems to be solved.

Imagine, just for didactical reasons, to consider the equivalence between the time of one CPU cycle and the time of a step in a walk. The latency in accessing a SSM (e.g., DRAMs) can be estimated as around tenths of CPU cycle, tenths of steps in our example. But if you wish estimating the average latency in accessing HDDs, i.e. stored data (also including the latency of the network links, RTT), then, overall, it results the time of a walk of about 10 000 km !

Cognitization of Telecommunications

This is how I see the concept of Network as a Nervous System of the Digital Society and Economy. 

The Network will disappear into the reality, gaining a new role.

Cognition is deeper inside Software, which is, in turn, a way to implement it by means of both architectures and methods, algorithms, heuristics, etc.  

Cognitization is Upon Us!

Peter Fingar is arguing that the Cognitive Computing Era is Upon Us ! I couldn’t agree more on that.

I believe that in the future deep inside in the Softwarization of Telecommunications there will be more and more the so-called “Cognition”, which will be (at least) about using cognitive methods, heuristics and algorithms, machine learning, knowledge representation-reasoning and, eventually, massively parallel computation to crunch, and make use of the Big Data, collected and transferred by the future Telecommunications infrastructures.

This is what I’ve argued (see slide 16) in my last keynoteat ONDM2015.

We’ll be able to sense and collect massive data (e.g., by pervasive sensors, smart terminals, things, machines, robots); these big sets of data will be exchanged and moved very quickly (transported by optical and mobile networks with high bandwidth and low latency); these big sets of data will be also elaborated (with Cloud/Edge and Fog Computing) in order to make decisions and then actuating local actions (by any pervasive actuators embedded into the reality around us).

Indeed all of this looks like an overall “cognition loop” exploited by future Telecommunications infrastructures. By the way, this loop is well-known in the context of Brain–Computer Interface Technologies: so just take the approach and imagine of expanding it to a Network !

Software architectures and software coding will be the concrete instruments to implement this “Cognitization” of Telecommunications, so cognition is the very core of Softwarization, where the "value" is moving. 

This will have several impactful applications for automation and robotics, as nicely reported here. 

A Universal Platform for Softwarization

There are a lot of reference architectures looking for the Softwarization of Telecommunications infrastructures. In my opinion too many, given that in the medium-long term will make no sense distinguishing SDN, NFV...and related declinations. 

Just to mention some of these references: the SDN architecture from ONF, the NFV architectures from ETSI, the architecture from OpenDayLight, the one from OpenStack extended to become an Orchestrator...plus all the reference architectures coming from other RT&D and Innovation projects and initiatives worldwide (e.g., H2020 in Europe). And the number is growing daily, through several other emerging proposals from start-ups…

Will market decide with a standard-de-facto, by promoting a “winner takes it all”? Not sure, in the medium term, there is too much fragmentation, lack of interoperability… 

It’s also true that tomorrow, rather than on thousands of closed equipment, the Telecommunications infrastructure will be based on millions of software processes…executed in distributed logical resources. Nevertheless this does not justify the current fragmentation…this chaotic rush.

  

This fragmentation is delaying - if not jeopardizing - an effective exploitation of the enormous innovative potential of Software Defined Infrastructures, and their socio-economic impact. Technology maturity and cost reductions are enabling this transformation.

Let's exploit it by creating the foundations of new open ecosystems. Specifically, we are missing coherent efforts in defining a sort of "universal functional model" for SDI, and, in turn, the sw and system architectures which will have to become the standardized references for implementations and exploitation. Should a coherent effort be jointly applied in this direction, there would be an “explosion” of new developments and growth in several ecosystems, with far reaching positive impacts from the socio-economic viewpoint.

This is my take today: let's join a coherent industrial-academic efforts in developing new analytic ways of modelling, designing, deploying, and operating SDIs, in a word, not ten but one universal functional model (a sort of new G.805-like model for SDI) with well-defined functions, modules and interfaces. And it should be able to unify the abstractions of both network and IT services, and the way they are modelled and represented. Based on that, then, we’ll have to design the system and software architectures and all the required processes, which will have to be highly dynamic and flexible…to cope with future ICT markets.

Network Coding in Software Defined Infrastructures

Have a look at this: it is reported that Aalborg University, MIT and Caltech have developed a technique boosting internet data speeds by up to 10 times, by making the nodes of a network much smarter and more adaptable.  This approach could also improve also the security level of the transmission.

The technique is mathematically-based and it is known as Network Coding and it adds adding intelligence at the node level: instead of making the classical store-and-forward, each node builds a set of linear equations, using both the numbers extracted from the content of the packets and a set of randomly generated coefficients. A linear equation forms a "coded packet" where the coefficients are stored inside the coded packet's header, and the unknown variables are the actual contents of the packets, considered as a number.

Network Coding is compatible with Software Defined Infrastructures (SDI) where network functions and services are virtualized and dynamically allocated onto physical resources, both centralized and distributed. So, also Network Coding could be virtualized and the intelligence could be at the node level from a logical perspective, but physically it could be executed in a cloud.

This idea of adding intelligence at node level resonate also self-organization, or autonomic capabilities. Complexity of future Software Defined Infrastructures, supporting the dynamic interactions of millions of software processes, will require self-organization capabilities in the orchestration, management and control functions (both centralized and distributed at the nodes level, obviously).

No need to say that today, Self Organizing Network (SON) is a well-known avenue of RT&D which is about intercepting SDN and NFV trajectories.

It’s mathematics again, the heart of Software Defined Infrastructures.

Softwarization and Componentization of Manufacturing

We’re witnessing that technologies advances are progressing at an impressive rate: processing is continuing to follow the Moore’s curve and it is doubling in capability roughly every 18 months; storage capacity on a given chip is doubling every 12 months. Add this to ultra-broadband diffusion.

All of all this is creating the ideal conditions for the software eating the world , as Mark Andressen argues. In other words, these trends are leading to a progressive “softwarization” of any Industry, which appears to be an unstoppable trend, because of the costs reductions and the new business opportunities it will bring. 

Many business will be "commoditized". One of the most mentioned example is about the evolution of Computing: from mainframes, as large as a room, accessible only to big organizations, up to embedding more and more powerful processors in anything, or up to accessing computing as an utility, at very low costs. It’s the last phase of a technology transformation cycle. This will have an impact on manufacturing, as well. And the network will play a new role, "disappearing" into the Digital Society and Economy.

Have a look at this nice presentation about Future Proof Design here. The big deal seems moving from a monolithic production where “Producers create a product and Consumers will consume it” to another perspective, where the “Producers develop the seeds of ecosystems and the Consumers’ communities will contribute to the creation of the products they will consume (or even sell)”.

In summary, it seems that the new challenges for SMEs and web entrepreneurs in the coming era of softwarization will be:

• building a vision around a seed (e.g. service or product) for a new ecosystem;
• defining the levels of componentization, configurability and assembling capabilities of cheap and simple components (e.g. for customizing or developing the services or products) which will be under the control of Communities of people;
• providing the ICT tools and the platforms to “make it simple”;
• stimulate and facilitate the development of Communities around it.

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Universality and Open Ecosystems for the Age of Softwarization

If I were at NetSoft today, I would have opened our flaship conference this way...

It has been mentioned several time that Software-Defined Network (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) are just different facets of an overall systemic and disruptive transformation, the so-called Softwarization, which is going to impact Telecommunications, ICT and other related ecosystems.

In fact, even if SDN and NFV are well-known paradigms, since a few decades, today they are (probably) becoming exploitable and sustainable, given ultra-broadband penetration and the increasing performance and the down-spiraling costs of ICT. As such, SDN and NFV represent just a part of the Softwarization process which will transform our Society: Cloud, Fog and Edge Computing are part of the same systemic picture. And also Internet of Things.

SDN is not the next "networking paradigm" and it makes no sense considering it independently from NFV as from the other paradigms, such as Cloud, Fog and Edge Computing.

It's Softwarization, simple enough, but highly disruptive, opening the way to Open Ecosystems.

in fact, Softwarization is going to bridge several gaps: one is the line between the applications of Terminals, Consumer Electronics, Smart Things, Machines and the businesses of the Digital Enterprise and even more the processes of Industry 4.0. Terminals, wearable and any robot, machine...in fact will become part of a pervasive, dynamic and highly flexible virtual infrastructure capable of handling complex communications and business processes (including mission critical applications).  

Huge datasets produced by pervasive machines, terminals, sensors, and devices will be moved and handled in real-time: massive and pervasive horizontal infrastructures, based on ultra-low latency links and capable of running powerful compute and storage engines. This will end the age of vertical silos.

Then, future Telecom-ICT infrastructures will look like pervasive, massive, multi-domain Data Centers or “Supercomputers”, with fixed and mobile ultra-low latency links providing the required pervasive connectivity. We can imagine then a sort of Operating System (OS) managing the hardware and software resources and providing sets of services, programmable with APIs. On top of this OS, applications will flourish to create and develop the new ecosystems for the Digital Society and Economy. ON.OS is not that far from this model…which should be extended to mobile ecosystems.

The value is moving from hardware to software and the software will be the mean for implementing flexible architectures-of-architectures based on cognitive, deep-learning algorithms, A.I. methods...and other mathematics crunching datasets to infer decisions, to learn and to actuate actions onto the reality.

Main systemic characteristics should be universality (e.g., based on recursivness of a limited number of functional component and blocks) and openness (e.g. adopting Open Source Software and Hardware). Main technical challenges include:

• What Abstractions ?
• Which virtualization applying to the different types of resources: e.g., virtualized network functions can be implemented as a full VM using a server node, virtualization based on hypervisor (e.g. QEMU, Xen, KVM, and VMware), as a Linux Container, (e.g. LXC)...
• How designing an overarching and distributed Operating System capable of orchestrating applications live-cycles, software and hardware infrastructure’s resources ?
• Which controllers for different kind resources (up to terminals) ?
• Which levels of “Programmability” through dynamic APIs ?
• How automating processes: eTOM vs approches a la DevOps ?
• How “mitigating” CAP Theorem limitations ? The CAP theorem states that any networked shared-data system can have at most two of following three properties: 1) Consistency (C) equivalent to having a single up-to-date copy of the data; 2) high Availability (A) of that data (for updates); and 3) tolerance to network Partitions (P). Looking at a future software-defined infrastructure as a distributed Data Centers or super-computational system (routing/forwarding packets can be seen as a computational problem), just two of the three CAP properties will be possible at the same time.
• How achieving end-to-end latency of units of milliseconds? The key factor of success…
• Multi-domain, multi-vendor interoperability for virtual platforms (mind the clash Standardization traditional processes vs Standards-de-facto);
• How handling Security and Privacy issues “by design” ? We don’t need reinventing the wheel any time ! Let’s consider rule-based filtering…
• etc…

Eventually, we'realizing that technology might be indisputable but economics and policy rule, so: which are the business models for the newly enabled service paradigms beyond “commoditization” ? which are the policies ? Technology, economics and policy rules will be highly intertwined in the Age of Softwartization!

I hope that NetSoft will contribute bringing some answers to these and other relevant questions. 

Drop me an email if you wish joining our Community !

Towards Industry 4.0

Softwarization is paving the way to the Industry 4.0.

Originally the term "Industrie 4.0" originates from a project in the high-tech strategy of the German government, which promotes the computerization of the manufacturing industry.

I think that we are moving beyond that: it’s not just about computerization, it’s about the global trend of Softwarization which is impacting all socio-economic aspects of our society.  

Paradigms such as SDN-NFV are just the top of the iceberg, not new technologies but well-known paradigms (decoupling hardware from software and virtualization) which are becoming exploitable and sustainable due to ICT performance increase, costs reductions and Open-Source-XW.

Technology, business models/markets and policy are co-evolving together and the degree of “complexity” will dramatically increase.  Complexity is indeed what is needed for a change of paradigm, it should not be confused with "complication": the challenge will be extracting the proper levels of “simplicity” to exploit business opportunities out of that.

The Net will be the "nervous system" of Industry 4.0.

Which way ? Embracing fully the coming innovation wave. Rather than continuing to Telco-ize the Net with "big iron" nodes it’s time to IT-ize it radically, exploiting highly flexible “soft” processes.

NetSoft 2015: 1st IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization

The vision of the IEEE SDN Initiative is that Software-Defined Network, Network Functions Virtualization, Edge and Fog Computing are just different facets of an overall systemic transformation, the so-called Softwarization, which is going to impact Telecommunications and ICT ecosystems.

Softwarization is not just about Telecom networks. It’s about the evolution of the Cloud Computing towards the Edge and the Fog Computing and it’s about terminals, smart things, machines, robots…

Not only. It’s about plenty of industrial ecosystems. It’s a systemic innovative transformation.

NetSoft 2015 is the 1st IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization, the flagship Conference of the IEEE SDN Initiative.  NetSoft Conference will be in London, hosted by UCL, on April 13^th to 17^th, 2015, and it will be a venue where discussing new innovative ways towards the future of ICT and Telecommunications.

We’ll be discussing the main impact of Softwarization on Telecom networks: for example that (sooner than expected) all network functions and services will be virtualized, dynamically allocated and executed as “applications” onto a hosting physical infrastructure, which will be fully decoupled, from above software platforms.

This is the dramatic end of the age of silos, a Red Ocean today. The value is moving from the hardware to the software, specifically to horizontal platforms. And beyond the software towards the cognition, the next big deal.

Softwarization is likely to be a disruptive point of discontinuity as it will pave the way towards the Digital Society and the Digital Economy, changing the old rules of the game and creating a new Industrial revolution. SDN and NFV are old concepts today exploitable and sustainable. An opportunity and a risk: in fact not all Industries are ready to embrace this change of paradigm and business models.

Digital Economy is moving into the Blue Ocean.

Simple enough, ICT is progressing at an impressive rate and its costs are declining. This is creating the sustainable conditions for the “software eating the world”, as Mark Andressen predicted. Softwarization of plenty of Industries and ecosystems will be an unstoppable trend, because of its costs reductions and the new business opportunities it will bring to all.

If You would like to be concrete involved in this bottom-up dream, shaping the way towards the real Digital Society and Digital Economy please contact me and I will help find the right area(s) of interest for You. I like inviting You to visit our SDN Web Portal for the latest details on how IEEE SDN initiative can help to support your technical and professional growth.

Join us with a free membership to the SDN Technical Community Free SDN Technical Community !

Will “Softwarization” create new risks of global Cyber-wars ?

Recently, we’ve been asked what are the potential military applications of SDN and NFV.

Well, the first simple example in my mind concerns remote control and program of (swarms of) drones and robots. In fact, it has been argued several time that “Softwarization” will transform terminals, tablets, machines, smart thing, drones, robots… into “meta-node” of SD-Infrastructures (SDI). In general, it’s easy to predict that the availability of huge amounts of cloud processing and storage, interconnected by highly flexible and fast SDI, will create a pervasive “machine intelligence” able to morph space-time physical dimensions, and, in general, the direct physical presence of humans will be required less and less to perform certain jobs or tasks.

In the future, technology will offer increasing capabilities and performance at lower and lower costs, and it will be more easily accessible. SDIs are likely to become  the nervous systems of future Digital Society and Economy. This will create opportunities and risks: software is vulnerable by definition.

Future SDI will be by definition a vulnerable infrastructure that needs to be secured against attacks and made resilient. Security should be part of the smartness (i.e., we always talk about smart grids, smart cities, smart objects…etc). Possible scenarios? It’s just a matter of “imagination”. Nevertheless, I guess it’s much more important concentrating on how to contain the threats, or predict, tame the risks posed by some uses of Softwarization.

Security-by-design should be, in my opinion, one of the key top-priority avenues concerning SDN and NFV. And, new techniques should be identified to complement the current approaches adopted in legacy infrastructures.

Softwarization, for example, could bring the ability for security policies to follow logically specific network functions (in logical containers, VMs).  More in general, cyberspace is definitely becoming a Complex Adaptive System: in this sense both local self-organization/emergent behaviours (with simple rules) and global Big Data analysis (making use of methods and algorithms for detecting suspicious data patters, anonymously) could contribute protecting SDI (e.g., through adopting 'honeypot' approaches to detect and block SDI attacks).

Softwarization: open field-trials of field-trials are welcome !

In this book “Software Take Command”, the Author Lev Manovich (2008) is arguing that “What electricity and the combustion engine were to the early 20^thcentury, software is to the early 21^st  century”.

Electricity and the combustion engine created a new development by changing legacy rules, opening Blue ocean scenarios. A new wave of innovation crossed the Planet.

The terms Red and Blue oceans refers to two opposite scenarios. Red oceans concerns known market spaces, where roles boundaries are clearly defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. As the market spaces are becoming more and more crowded, profits and growth are going to be reduced. Products and Services will become commodities, and the competition turns the ocean bloody. Blue oceans, in contrast, refer to enabling new market space, creating new demands, and the context for a new growth. In blue oceans, competition is less relevant. New Service paradigms will be created and new ecosystems will emerge.

So Softwarization and Machine Intelligence will open new Blue ocean scenarios like electricity and the combustion engine in the early 20^th century. Industries, Academia, Funding Agencies, Research-Innovation Communities, Open Source Communities will have to face such important and global transformation, a new wave of innovation crossing Society and Economy.

In this direction, my take is that large-scale experimental platforms (e.g., a “field-trial of field-trials”), properly integrated, federated and operated would create the ideal open environment where to support a global innovation efforts in developing and testing pre-industrial solutions. And this will pave the way towards a fast and trusted adoption in Blue markets.

This approach should also reflect the way in which “innovation” is being developed and exploited. In fact, the past top-down “waterfall” model of making innovation is going to vanish: that model was moving from research activities to standardization, from systems development by Technology Providers to Service Providers deployments up to services provisioning to Consumers. Already today (and more and more tomorrow) innovation is likely working the other way round: innovation should start bottom-up from the needs of the Digital Society, from the massive Consumers, Users and from the challenging requirements of the new Digital Society and Economy.

So, though many efforts have been made in Europe, in US, in Asia in the past years to create SDN-NFV test-beds and experimental facilities with the purpose of serving industry, academia and scientific community, the result is a large number of fragmented and isolated platforms, duplicating work, often missing exchanges of results and information. Above all creating no impact. This is jeopardizing and delaying the innovation power of Softwarization, as a powerful enabler to new developments in the Digital Society and Economy.

The challenge will be looking for concrete exploitations driven by common Blue oceans goals, developing new socio-economic opportunities and ecosystems (e.g., in the sectors from industrial and agricultural mobile robotics, to new service paradigms such as “anything as a service”, from “full immersive experience and communications” to “Cognition-as-a-Service”).

Global “field-trials of field-trials” are needed where pursuing joint open efforts boosting Softwarization impacts. And these efforts have to look at the future, going beyond the local Red Oceans competitions.  Join our Community. 

Softwarization and Machine Intelligence: A Blue Creative Destruction ?

In this very interesting interview A. McAfee is pointing out that certain “advancement of technologies falls in like with an economic phenomenon called creative destruction, a theory of economic innovation developed by Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter during the 1940s. A basic summary of creative destruction is as follows: as innovation occurs and revolutionary new technologies are introduced, former industrial structures will be dismantled with new ones constructed to take their place”.

My take is that’s exactly what’s likely to happen with the combination of Softwarization and Machine Intelligence. The “creative destruction” of these two intertwined trends will open new Blue Ocean scenarios changing the rules of the game, and impacting the value chain of several Industries.  

“Softwarization” of Telco infrastructures will allow (most, if not all) network and service functions to be virtualised and dynamically allocated onto an underneath physical infrastructure, fully decoupled from the virtual platforms. It will be like having a borderless “continuum” of logical resources spanning from terminals, machines, smart things, crossing the Network up the Cloud.

For sure, technology has still to face some key challenges (security, interoperability, multiple domains orchestration, etc.) but this vision – in my opinion – it is feasible in the short-medium term. In fact, this time we’re witnessing a tremendous critical mass of “brains” working on these challenges. This is still a big fragmentation worldwide, but almost any Organization and Body in the Telecom business is realizing that “Softwarization” is the way to the future of Telecom and ICT.

Coherency is important as Industries, Academia, Research-Innovation Communities, Open Source Communities should be prepared to face such an important and global transformation of Telecom and ICT ecosystems (and not only), which will be brought by "Softwarization": on one side there is the need to tame the socio-economic risks brought by this transformation, and, on the other side there is the urgent requirement of acting fast so to capture all the socio-economic opportunities that it will bring in several sectors. There is general consensus that this transition will not just a technology issue, but also an economic sustainability question, implying also proper regulation rules. So a coherent global effort is required.

This is a global transformation towards Digital Society and Digital Economy which is requiring global coherent efforts worldwide (for example, just to start, in developing and validating Open Source Hardware and Software solutions capable of getting trusted consensus from early Adopters) in order to accelerating the impact creating new socio-economic developments.

My take is the need starting thinking, globally, in terms of “field-trials of field-trials for SDN-NFV”.

I’ll elaborate on that in my next post: join us !

“Constraints that Deconstrain” SDN-NFV

We are witnessing very large but fragmented efforts worldwide in defining SDN and NFV. Very large as almost anybody is realizing that this is not just a new technology (like SDH or IP) but it is "tipping point" for Telcommunications and ICT ecosystems. It's software, it's OPEX-based models. It's much less investments to deploy a new infrastructure (virtualised from L2 to L7 and executed with Pay-as-you-go biz models). It's about many more Players entering the arena. It's changing the value chain, dramatically. So it's highly fragmented by different interests. Waterfall innovation and CAPEX-based models belong to the past.  

All Standardization Bodies, Fora, Projects and Initiatives dealing with SDN and NFV are debating more or less about the same well-known issues and questions, very often with different languages and background (from IT and From Telecom). And everybody seems looking for the winner-take-all SDN-NFV architecture, but in most cases discussions are dealing with conservative perspectives, slow-moving standards, in front of this global "game changer". This is risky, as in this context, "diversity" is accelerating.

My take is that it's unlikely that one of these Body will found winner-take-all solutions, and that standardization will reach fast agreements on certain "strategic" interfaces. One more thing, is that today, there is no formal theory nor systematic design principle for such a network architecture even more when this is more and more appearing as a “borderless continuum” of logical resources (e.g., containers) dynamically allocated on an underneath physical infrastructure.

Rather - quoting Prof. John Doyle - we need focussing on those "constraints that deconstrain" in this case SDN-NFV (i.e., defined by John as that minimum set of constraints that free up design choices everywhere else): but that’s indeed the Operating System, we need to make SDN-NFV to fly.

And to achieve that seriously, we need also following an approach with in line with the times: waterfall innovation model is failing today. That model was moving from research activities to standardization, from systems development by Technology Providers to Network/Service Providers deployments up to the provisioning communication services to Consumers. This is the past.

Winning innovation tomorrow is likely working the other way round: it will start bottom-up, from the real needs and requirements of the Digital Economy and Society, from the behaviour and dynamics of massive Consumers and Producers, from Communities and Social Networks etc. Network architectures are disappearing into the reality as they are become their nervous system of the reality. 

So let's start from concrete use-cases posing real development problems. And real market will decide, adopting also standards-de-facto, if the case

Brittle and fragmented activities adopting a slow waterfall innovation model will not find the way; what’s needed, in my opinion, is a massive joint effort for a new Operating System for Softwarization with a minimum set of constraints required to free up Virtual Functions (i.e., applications) on one side and the physical Hardware on the other one.

So let's start from available test-beds and field-trial aggregating effort towards a coherent global goal. Join our technical community ! Banner on top right of http://sdn.ieee.org/

Softwarization: Red and Blue Strategies

Softwarization will bring risks and opportunities for Telecom Operators and Technology Providers Just imagine two scenarios:

Scenario Red: gradual evolution (continuity)

This is about pursuing a gradual evolution of SDN-NFV onto the legacy Telco infrastructures: e.g., starting from virtualizing some functionality. Main challenges will interoperability of SDN-NFV with legacy systems, need of standardized interfaces (a long way) and above all need of updating, enhancing of the legacy operational processes, e.g. OSS/BSS, to cope with SDN-NFV (quite challenging and complicated).

Scenario Blue: disruption (point of discontinuity)

Some Players (even unexpectedly new) will exploit full potential of “softwarization” much faster than the gradual evolution of legacy Telecom infrastructure (scenario Red), so that they will jumps ahead in the markets, as fully Virtual Operators. Markets will decide the “Standard de facto”. As Virtual Operators they will adopt faster operational processes (IT-style) dramatically shortening the time-to-market a la OTT.

What will be the impact on current ecosystems and value chains ?

SDN linking Cloud with Fog

Fog Computing is (in a sentence) about executing services and storing data (at least some of them) in a “fog” of devices, terminals, machines, etc which are around the Users, at the edge of the current Telecommunication networks. So it’s about extending the Cloud Computing model, with a different density, to the edge.

Main characteristics of Fog Computing include: proximity to Users; highly dense distribution; support for mobility.  Apparently another buzzword, but in reality expression of a much broader technology trend transforming our terminals (smartphones, laptop, tablets, etc) in more and more powerful devices. Imagine also machines, smart-things, robots/cobots, vehicles becoming meta-terminals of the future.

This may have big impacts: Cloud will be soon complemented by the Fog, or even replaced for certain type of applications, when using local data! Also this floating “fog” of devices, terminals, machines at the edge will give rise to new biz models, based on various forms of competition and cooperation between existing Providers, and new ones, entering the arena. And the network – between the Cloud and Fog – will be fully virtualised (SDN-NFV).

So, ideally, it will be possible creating, programming, instantiating or migrating dynamically different types of virtual functionalities and services as well as alternatives of the same. No more ossified architectures. In other words a sort of an ephemeral virtual continuum will have the flexibility of plastically self-adapting to humans’ dynamics. This is the point.

Already today this is acquiring a growing interest in social networking: this is about modelling and predicting the dynamics of groups of people, the viral diffusions of certain ideas or concepts, use of resources, or even the potential adoption of products and ICT services. In other words, it’s about identifying emerging global behaviours, or ways to predict, trigger or incentive masses movements or markets. This will be rewarded directly by the market itself, which will be essential encouragement for further investments.

Imagine also the convergence of Internet and the social attitude of humans: beyond sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Wikipedia, YouTube there is a broader process to form connections with others, to build groups, to engage communications, to exchange services.  A political message, or a piece of news or a meme, or a service are examples of "things"that can spread from person to person, enterprise to enterprise, etc in an epidemic way: in a while, millions of people can create and destroy ephemeral aggregations.

My take is that “softwarization” should look also this: how a“virtual continuum” of ICT resources could anticipate/adapt plastically to humans’ - and maybe also machines’ – needs and dynamics in the market.

“Softwarization” will go “borderless”

It has been argued several times that “Softwarization” will be a game-changer for the Telecom and ICT domains.

Looking at the control variable of “Softwarization” I would even more argue that it will be a game-changer for the whole Economy and Society. Well, the technical ideas (decoupling software from hardware, virtualizing, programming APIs, etc) are not really new, but what is new today is the economic sustainability of “Softwarization”, which will be made possible by the current diffusion of ultra-broadband, the down-spiraling costs of chipset/hardware and the impressive advances in processing and storage.

A number of R&D Communities and Industries are converging on that, and cross-influencing each other. World is smaller and smaller, and innovation is propagating "virally". 

So, my take is that, in long term, “Softwarization” will go “borderless”: the border between the network and what is connected to the network will gradually disappear; more and more powerful Users’ terminals, devices, machines, smart things, robots, cobots…will become like meta-terminals or networks nodes, storing data locally and even executing network functionalities and service component. For example, “Softwarization” at the edge and Internet of Things will easily merge in a sort of “virtual continuum” of logical resources: a sort of pervasive “fabric” spanning from Users’ terminals, devices, machines, smart things, etc to the network nodes, up to the Cloud Computing.

It makes no more sense thinking in terms of “closed boxes”: future will be borderless.

Just imagine the multitude of services that could be provided (to Enterprises, residential Users, robots, machines and avatars included) by “borderless” and highly dynamic platforms of logical resources, fully decoupled from the underneath physical infrastructures. Exponential new technologies in digital money, mobile commerce, and big data will take benefit of that. This is a huge wave of innovation running over all Industries and bringing new development and costs reductions by automating (i.e., optimizing) “processes”. This is the main point "processes".

But there is a risk. If it is true that Telecom Operators and Manufacturers are showing great interest on SDN and NFV, at the same time, a wide deployment in “inertial scenarios” will take several years and it is unlikely it will initiated without strong motivations (that cannot be found just in increasing flexibility or programmability of current legacy infrastructures). In fact, there are OSS/BSS processes in place that a true SDN-NFV deployment would require changing dramatically. The risk is that “inertial scenarios” will be surpassed by “disruptive scenarios”, requiring less investments than an “inertial” evolution of legacy towards true SDN-NFV infrastructures. 

What is more likely to happen - in the short-medium term - (just my take) is that “Softwarization” will be exploited “at the edge” of current Telecom Infrastructure, with the challenge of orchestrating the logical layers of a variety of local networks distributed in different ownership domains, something that will happen already with the 5G, by 2020. In the meanwhile, other disruptive scenarios will take place with new roles and Player entering the arena.