Control Variables of “Softwarization”

It has been mentioned several times that “Softwarization” is a global systemic trend, appearing under the form of several technologies and models, such as Cloud Computing, Edge-Fog Computing, SDN, NFV, etc, which are sharing the same common denominator: “any transactions, functions and services can be seen as applications executed on (virtual/logical resources hosted in) low cost distributed hardware”. This is the essence of a “game-changer” which is bringing, in a few years, far-reaching implications in the Digital Society and Economy. 

So, “Softwarization” is paving the way towards the 5G.

In fact, Industries (both Large and Small Medium ones) and other Institutions embracing this paradigm will see dramatic costs optimizations, whatever will be their business sector. It’s about “digitalizing and then optimizing” the processes (e.g., in Industry, in Agriculture, in Services, in the Public Sectors, etc) with Industrial Mathematics.

In the near future, robots, smart things and machines will become the new “tools” – directly controlled through the 5G – supporting/helping humans in their daily tasks, jobs and activities. Not only in factories, or in the agriculture, but also in the smart cities and at home. This is like saying that 5G will become like a Nervous System of Digital Society and Economy. Technologies are (almost) ready and the it is likely to be sustainable (even when communications will be just commodities) !

Just imagine the socio-economic impact of Virtual Network/Service Providers, renting physical (L0 and L1) resources (from Infrastructure Providers) for exploiting their virtual platforms (L2 to L7), so to provide - globally - services to Digital Single Markets ! Less investments will be required to enter new markets and the businesses will be oriented towards a "pay-as-you-go" model. An opportunity or a risk, depending on how you're looking at it.

Nevertheless, as I mentioned in the previous post, this wave of innovation may have different strategies of adoption, and levels of impacts, depending on a number variables, not only concerning technology maturity, but also business sustainability, regulatory rules and willingness to change, to adapt.

As a matter of fact, all these systemic interdependencies of the multiple variables of today Society and Economy are transforming our socio-economic environment in a sort of global "complex system". And like in any “complex system”, which typically non-linear, even small changes in the so-called “control variables” could produce sudden and highly impactful changes in the overall system (the well-known butterfly effect).

So it makes sense, looking for those “control variables” of  “Softwarization” in order to understand, and possibly predict, when and how (I'm not saying "if") this dramatic “phase transition” will occur, and, above all, what will be the scenarios, after said transition, and what evolution/adaptation is needed. Just taking time…or focussing on narrow, fragmented approaches, might not be the best investment! In natural ecosystems, during changes, the best surviving species are those which are capable of fast understanding and adapting.

A systemic thinking is required. Linear approaches are not enough during these types of changes.

In this analysis, we should be able to “extract simplicity from the appearing complexity”. The number of control variables should be limited enough, but complete, to cover most (if not all) the dynamics of the socio-economic environment.

My take is that the “Softwarization” way towards 5G will be impacted by the following key control variables:

• Hardware equation: chip-sets performances/costs curve (for servers, terminals, embedded systems, etc)
• Open Source Software: viral diffusion of pre-industrial product (e.g. a global operating systems)
•  Network Performances: increasing of bandwidth, towards 0-latency, stability…
• Standards-de-facto: winner will take it all (market will decide)
• Reasons why: improving quality of life (new services), costs optimizations, new jobs…
• Rules of the game: what regulation environment to create new development
• Level of trustiness: dependability, security, privacy…
• ...others ?

Obviously, there might be others, and others strictly related to these ones.

Then, each of these variables should be subjected to a breakdown analysis to understand what’s the best strategic positioning to tame potential risks and/or to be ready to exploit the opportunities of the coming 5G transition towards the Digital Society and Economy!

We'll go through these variables in the next posts.

Softwarization: two scenarios towards 5G

In the IEEE SDN initiative we wish dealing with SDN-NFV adopting a “systemic” perspective.

In fact, I believe that Cloud (and Fog) Computing, SDN and NFV are just different expressions of the same systemic trend (impacting not only the Telco networks by also several other segments and Industries) which is called “Softwarization”. This trend has been/is triggered and steered mainly by ultra-broadband diffusion (i.e., high bandwidth and low latency connections) and the IT techno-economic drivers (e.g. increasing performance of chipsets, at continuously decreasing costs). This wave of innovation may have different levels of impact on the Telco infrastructures, depending on several variables, among which the speed and level of adoption of “Softwarization” by said industries, the foreseen models for business sustainability and the regulatory issues.

Personally I believe that these trends will potentially bring soon into reality (at least) two main scenarios, characterized highly different techno-economic perspectives:

·    Scenario 1: an evolutionary scenario, based on a smooth and gradual introduction of SDN (coupled with NFV) into the legacy Telco networks, e.g., starting from virtualizing network functionality; communities looking at this scenario are focusing on short-medium term challenges such as interoperability aspects of virtualized network functions with the systems of current infrastructures, integration of orchestration capabilities with the OSS (e.g., ETSI reference model), Standardization of relevant interfaces, etc.

·         Scenario 2: a disruptive scenario (where speed of adoption of innovation is much faster, so that it will jumps ahead any gradual evolution of current infrastructures as described in Scenario 1.). In this case “Softwarization” should be seen from a more “systemic” perspective, which is going far beyond the network and the Cloud, but it is reaching also terminals, smart phones, machines, smart things, robots, etc. The market will decide the standards the facto.

This second scenario is clearly disruptive. A main point  is the “lowering of the threshold” for other Players to enter the Telco market to offer services (as potential competitors).  As a matter of fact, this progressive “threshold lowering” is driven by chipsets technology advances and cost reductions (bringing to more and more powerful IT systems at lower and lower costs), and by the large availability of Open Source software solutions (examples are the open source operating systems for the Cloud and the network, respectively OpenStack and ON.OS, etc).

In this sense there is the risk a number of other Players (even with limited investments, much lower than in the past) will be able to provide services (with different business models) using low-cost software platforms of virtual resources, spanning from the terminal to the cloud (Opex-oriented model), and by using “lean” operational processes. This would mean that the gradual evolution of current Telco networks towards SDN-NFV (scenario 1) could be “surpassed” by this disruptive approach, creating a “point-of-discontinuity”.

In this case, the full potential of this wave of innovation could be "materialized" into the 5G which could become a sort of border-less “continuum of virtual resources and services” (hosted part in the Network, part in the Cloud but also part at the Edge i.e., up to end-Users terminals, devices, and smart things…). This virtual “continuum” would be capable of enabling new service models (eventually creating new roles for Operators, as well) and new business ecosystems (in industry, agriculture and social contexts). Lean operations, highly flexibility and programmability (via multiple level APIs) will be other main features of such innovative perspective, opening new ecosystems.

Adopting innovation at this level it will be possible enabling the so-called the “servitization” (e.g., anybody and anything ...even a piece of software!... will become a Prosumer of services) , and the “de-perimetrization” of services (e.g., global provisioning of any services where it will be possible for a Service Provider simply renting a physical infrastructure from Infrastructure Providers).

Towards 5G: the Nervous System of Digital Society

Cloud and Fog Computing, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) are just different facets of this same evolutionary trend which is called IT-sation or Softwarisation of infrastructures. No way to look at them separately. And this trend will change dramatically the nature of telecommunications infrastructures by automating Operations processes (thus reducing costs), by increasing flexibility and programmability (e.g., through APIs). At the end of the day (which is a few years), it will create a point of discontinuity.

This new wave of innovation will be brought to concrete exploitations and socio-economic impact through the 5G infrastructure by 2020. In fact, 5G will be more than a next step beyond 4G, it will become the “Nervous System” of the Digital Society and Economy, a truly converged and massively dense telecommunications infrastructure, deeply integrating IT (e.g., processing and storage systems) with Network resources. In other words, 5G will become the pervasive, highly flexible and ultra-low latency virtualized infrastructure capable of hooking the sheer number of smart terminals, devices, machines, things, cars, drones and robots…with the enormous processing and storage power available in the Cloud.

As a matter of fact, the number of smart terminals, machines, things (with sensors and actuators) attached to current networks is growing rapidly, and soon it will be possible to connect and operated cars, drones and even robots. All these systems will literally become like 5G future “advanced terminals”, allowing the exploitation of remote monitoring and control capabilities through the 5G radio infrastructure: this will enable the so-called «machine intelligence» (e.g., computerization, automation, robotics, Artificial Intelligence) to enter deeply into  the processes of industries, agriculture, public institutions, society and eventually into our lives, as Users. Overall this will determine costs optimizations  and the development of new business and services opportunities.

Connectivity will bring on line so many devices that the sheer number of connected points will exceed the thresholds on manageability using today’s paradigm. It will be connectivity but also processing and storing data, more like a nervous system, dynamically changing around stability points minimizing energy consumption.

This will change the rules of the game, in terms of business and economic sustainability and regulatory frameworks. From a technical point of view, it will revolutionize our ideas of networks and future service ecosystems.

5G-controlled robots (or drones, or any other self-acting machine) is an excellent example of potential future ecosystem. Already today there are robots to work alongside people on a few manufacturing production lines. In  many cases robots are augmenting the abilities of humans — freeing them to do repetitively or dangerous tasks – and increasing productivity for manufacturers. Nevertheless today robot full mobility is still a challenge, being most of said machines static or connected with cables, limiting the flexibility. 5G will allow not only monitoring and controlling truly mobile robots, but also it will allow the development and provision of “cognition services” (Cognition-as-a-Service). Robot sensors could collect data from the environments which will be transferred thought the 5G to Cloud Computing facilities where a variety of methods and techniques will execute the remotely the “intelligence” of the robot, whose decisions will be transferred to the robot local actuations. 

Moreover availability of APIs will allow Users and Third Parties to develop, program and provide any related services with Robots. So, the next generation of 5G-enabled robots will work alongside humans also in Smart Cities, collaborating with them in far more articulated ways in the daily life. 

Software Defined - Agriculture

Already today we're witnessing several cases where drones and filed robots are adopted in agriculture, just like another "tool". In the future, robots and drone will look like SDN nodes or even better like any other low cost Consumer electronic devices. In fact, the availability of cheap and easy to use robots and drones is largely due to the remarkable advances in technology: tiny sensors (accelerometers, gyros, magnetometers, and often pressure sensors), small GPS modules, powerful processors, radio communications.

These devices will transform in an unprecedented way the job and working skills, introducing changes that we haven't witnessed since the Agrarian era: agriculture will be transformed to robot-intensive, data-driven process optimizing the use of resources like water while reducing the pesticides needed so for a given effort, there will be a significant increase in the output using fewer resources.

My take is that tomorrow, drones and robots (made more intelligent and controlled through the network OS) will provide farmers with a lot of customised services, e.g. detailed views revealing patterns from irrigation problems to soil variation, pest and fungal infestations, differences between healthy and distressed plants. And this at any time the farmer may want, even every hour.

These changes will be complemented with other changes that will eventually transform a muddy, low-skilled profession to a high-tech research-lab level activity. Again the agricultural production and distribution processes will be mapped in huge data sets, employing big data analytics to make optimal decisions, to save time, resources and money. And the environment will be less-polluted. 

Fragmentation and lack of collaboration between Communities and Research Groups (e.g., IT/Cloud Experts, Network Engineers, Robotics Experts, etc) is delaying this unavoidable transformation, which will be beneficial for the Digital Society and Economy. Let's join effort around this vision ! 

5G will be embodied into the reality

“Shannon performed an inestimable service by giving us a definition of Information and a metric for Information as communicated from place to place. We have no theory however that gives us a metric for the Information embodied in structure...” This is what Frederick Brooks wrote here “The Great Challenges for Half Century Old Computer Science”. 

This is a challenge which we still have today: the need of going beyond the traditional definition of information theory, which considers information in terms of exchanges of messages between end-points. Technology advances call for looking at new questions like, how information is embodied in the structure of the reality? In fact, when imagining the future of the environment around us, anywhere (at home, in the working areas, on the move...), we can easily foresee ultra-dense embedded processing, storage and communications resource; so we need looking at a new definition of embodied information, maybe more related to the cognition processes. Amazingly, this is how the brain-mind operates: neurons and their interconnections (the synapses) can store and process information in the same location !

So technology advances will bring in the long term to a new definition of networks beyond the client-server model and the paradigm of connecting end-points: the network become the "Nervous System" of the Digital Society and Digital Economy.

In fact, the number of terminals, devices, machines, smart things, cars connected to the Telecommunication networks is growing exponentially, and the so-called «machine intelligence» (e.g., computerization, automation, robotics, self-*) is entering already in the life-cycles of industries, agriculture, smart cities and eventually public institutions.

Advances and diffusion of ultra-broadband and Information Technologies (IT), tumbling hardware costs and availability of open source software are creating the conditions for a change of paradigm in designing and operating Telecommunications networks and services. 

In this sense, I think that 5G  (which is not just one step beyond 4G) will be the main “collector” of the Cloud/SDN/NFV waves of innovation, bringing such disruptions to maturation and socio-economic impact. Literally, the 5G will morph the space-time dimensions of the Digital Society and Economy...optimising processes, just like in Nature. IT will be the new tool. And this will determine a new economic growth more inclusive and sustainable.

Protocols are distributed optimizer

In an amazing paper, F. Kelly, has shown that TCP/IP protocol is a perfect example of optimizer: its objective is to maximize the sum of source utilities (as functions of rates) with constraints on resources. And actually, each variant of congestion control protocol can be seen as a distributed algorithm maximizing a particular utility function. The exact shape of the utility function can be reverse engineered from the given protocol. Similarly, Border Gateway Protocols (BGPs) can be seen as a solution to the Stable Path Problem, and contention-based Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols as a game-theoretic selfish utility maximization. Other utility functions could be User satisfaction (e.g. User-generated pricing following end-to-end principle), resource allocation efficiency or different network economics fairness.

Then, modeling networks as a sets of optimizers, means considering management-control based on interacting controllers maximizing a combination (e.g. weighted sum) or an aggregation (e.g. in multiplicative form) of multiple utility functions. Or, alternatively, we may say that management-control should look for the network Pareto optimality (a state of allocation of resources in which it is impossible to make any one individual better off without making at least one individual worse off: the term is from Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), an Italian economist who used the concept in his studies of economic efficiency). But this would mean taking a different perspective in designing and operating networks: i.e., looking for a vertical and horizontal network decomposition and solving problems with multi-objective optimization. In fact, protocols are distributed optimizer !

In a SDN, control intelligence could be (logically) centralized in software-based controllers. Said controllers could provide visibility and control over the network, they can ensure that access control, routing, traffic engineering, QoS, security, and other policies are enforced consistently across the network infrastructures (whilst keeping in mind the CAP Theorem). The interactions of these (centralized vs distributed) controllers will allow managing and optimizing a SDN according to certain policies. Extend this concepts to all layers functions, up to L7 (i.e., consider NFV) and this seems paving the way to look at future networks in a different way, systemically decomposing them and letting ecosystems of resources being aggregated and managed by combinations of multi-objective optimization solvers.

The Network is the Robot

Ultra-broadband diffusion, Information Technology (IT) advances and the market mass decreasing costs are determining a growing adoption of processing and storage resources.

The number of devices, terminals, things connected to the network is growing at an exponential rate: microprocessors and embedded communications are everywhere around us. Smart Cities are going to become populated by any sort of mobile terminals, devices, machines, smart things, sensors, actuators, drones, robots etc.

This is the coming of “machine intelligence“ which will determine a number of socio-economic implications, moving us and the Industry towards the Digital Society and the Digital Economy, where real-time robotics (the new digital tools of mankind) will be pervasive. But robots will require a real-time “nervous system“! 

In this big technology transformation, we need developing an highly flexible and pervasive 5G network, embedding processing and storage capabilities, and capable of providing high bandwidth, ultra-low latency connections. Space-time dimensions of Society and Economy will be morphed.

And a technical challenge will be exploiting the “real-time Operating System“ of this “nervous system“,  i.e., an Operating System intended to serve real-time applications (whatever they are functions or services or related chains) requested from all kinds of terminals (i.e., smartphones, tablets, machines, smart things, cars, robots, drones) attached to the Network and the Cloud. And these borders Terminals-Networks-Cloud will disappear !

So, my take is that controlling and minimizing the “latency” (in its generalised interpretation, including IT response time) will represent a powerful competitive advantage over which building new forms of cooperation and competition, and eventually business models for the Digital Society and Economy. 

If I had to summarize this in a slogan, I'd say: "The Network is the Robot".