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.

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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/