November 29, 2007

Now for the letter “C”: Change the equation from quad play to “any play”

With this post, I bring you to the letter C. In my two earlier posts, I emphasized how service providers, in order to become experience providers, need to follow the ABCs: Adopt a Connected Life, Boldly innovate, and Change the equation. This entry will focus on changing the math and equations!

Quad-play (data + voice + video + mobility) is too limiting. It is all about delivering a seamless experience of any service, to any device, to any location. To do this, we need to change the math to:

‘data x voice x video x mobility’ = “any-play”

An IP NGN allows providers to confidently and profitably deliver a suite of integrated "any-play" services – meeting the needs of their customers well into the future. With unique “any-play” experiences service providers can truly evolve themselves into experience providers.

Recently I was in India where Cisco announced its new Globalization Center, and along with it, the Cisco iPrize for innovation. The live audience in Bangalore, India witnessed a unique, seamless experience, a truly “any-play” demo. Cisco CEO John Chambers and Cisco SVP Marthin DeBeer, separated physically by thousands of miles and over 12 time zones, were able to co-announce the iPrize competition.

In this embedded video, you will see a three-dimensional hologram image of Marthin standing next to John on stage. Marthin’s image is literally being teleported thousands of miles away, via the network and TelePresence, from California to India.

One Indian reporter writing for the Hindu Business Line explains how the three-dimensional holographic conferencing system was used for the event. The reporter goes on to muse that this rich, seamless “any-play” experience will not just be for executive keynotes and announcements; rather, such TelePresence technology, could enable “your grandmother to virtually walk into a living room and talk to you - her image traveling overseas and countries over the Internet”.

From “any-play”, we now get 3-D holograms and teleportation. But I am certain that the best is yet to come from the ubiquitous network. With innovation, the equation will keep changing, but I like this kind of math.

Beam me up, Scotty!

Posted by Suraj Shetty at 09:10 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 27, 2007

The Open Path to New Business Model Creation

In the past, the typical SP business model was built around the notion of vertical integration – with the assumption that all essential elements of a service were created within the SP organization.

However, many believe that the future will likely include a variety of new SP business models -- some requiring extensive open collaboration with business partners.

Cisco sponsored the recent Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm event in London, which was devoted to the topic of new business models for telecoms, media and technology. Cisco’s Ross Fowler was interviewed, during the event. He describes how Cisco’s open innovation strategy will help SPs make the transition to an IP NGN-based experience provider.

Why all the fuss about business model evolution? SPs must do more to differentiate themselves in what is becoming an increasingly commoditized market, or risk becoming simple utilities, according to a report released by Strategy Analytics. However, building new business models -- and even adapting old ones -- has proven to be very difficult.

Crafting compelling new business models will depend less on the access technology and more on quality-of-experience capabilities in provider networks. Because almost any IP device can be voice-, video- or data enabled, service providers are becoming "experience providers," delivering many services to many screens over converged fixed and wireless networks.

Finding highly-skilled partners with complementary capabilities is a proven way to accelerate SP go-to-market plans. However, the challenge is isolating the best-fit potential partners for any given service delivery-related requirement. Therefore, the ability to broker between diverse groups of third-parties is highly valued.

Active membership in the Cisco Powered Program is one approach that forward-looking SPs can use as a “marketplace” to connect with potential new service delivery partners. The program also incorporates access to a growing list of Cisco marketing and technical resources that can be applied to envision, build, market and sell services that deliver a truly unique customer experience.

Posted by Jeff Spagnola at 06:47 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 26, 2007

Downloadable Security – Both Sides of the Fence

A lot has been written about a downloadable conditional access system (DCAS) in the cable industry (including a post I wrote a few weeks ago), but what’s going on over on the telecom side of the video marketplace?

In the IPTV arena, we’re working through the issues relevant to secure download within the IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF). Our approach will use some similar technologies to what DCAS is delivering for cable, but it is not the same technical solution.

The target of the IIF (which is one of the committees of ATIS, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions), is to deliver what is called “initial closure” of our first version of this secure, open-specification download stack by the end of 2007. The work is taking place within the Digital Rights Management Task Force which is one of 4 active IIF Task Forces.

Some current IPTV set-tops have a proprietary download mechanism that is not secured by hardware. This makes these set-tops less secure than the DCAS approach over on the cable side since DCAS calls for downloading into very secure hardware. The ATIS IIF downloadable solution under development will allow use of secure hardware but not mandate it.

Some IPTV providers take the approach of reloading new “software-only” conditional access (CA) once the previous version gets broken and use this reloading scheme as a way to fix the breach. But, even with re-loads, you still have the requirement to provide long-term key storage protection to safeguard the keys that provide device identity or allow you to do content decryption. This is a significant vulnerability in the software-only scenario. Since the deployment of IPTV devices is still relatively small, it’s not yet possible to know what level of piracy will exist against software-only IPTV CAS. Once the footprint of IPTV devices increases, there’s a bigger target and piracy activity will likely heat up.

From a regulatory point of view, the ‘TelCos’ must also meet FCC requirements for the ban on embedded security in navigation devices. Thus, similar to the CATV case, the IIF Secure Download solution will be an alternative to meet the separable security requirement.

In addition to all of the secure download specification work described above, the IPTV Separable Security Incubator (ISSI) at ATIS is working on a fast-track effort to standardize an “IPTV-friendly CableCARD” which can be deployed if downloadable security is not ready in a given network. Telecoms are basing this solution on the MCard standard that the cable industry is using and currently call it the “APOD”. The first draft of this specification is also expected at the end of 2007.

The parallel development efforts of IIF Secure Download and the APOD provide great options for IPTV security solutions and will continue to create an environment that is full of new challenges and opportunities as we move along in the standardization process.

Posted by Tony Wasilewski at 05:33 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 20, 2007

AusNOG – From Sydney, Australia

The Australian Network Operators Group (AusNOG) held their first conference on November 15-16 2007 in Sydney, Australia,

Platinum partners included cisco and pipenetworks; Google and Vocus Communications were Gold partners; and, eIntellego, APNIC, Western Australia Internet Association and Communications Day provided Silver Partnership support. Participants at the conference included a plethora of carriers and ISPs from the region.

Cisco speakers included Ric Pruss and Monique Morrow, both whom structured their presentations around the impact of dynamics and trends with regard to peer-to-peer networking constructs; RFID and sensory systems, content distribution as some examples to the overall infrastructure architecture, thus highlighting “the network as the platform” issue, and provoking discussions around subsequent industry preparation.

Bill Norton, Equinix, discussed how video Internet instantiate itself as the next wave of disruption to the U.S. Peering EcoSystem.

Hear Bill’s NANOG 41 presentation on this topic.

Geoff Huston, APNIC, presented on 4-byte Autonomous System Numbers or ASNs in BGP. Here's the memo from the Network Working Group.

Dr. Paul Brooks Layer-10, spoke about Inter-provider Interconnect Standards, ITU-T, IETF and cited also the MIT Future Communications Program white paper on the topic.

Brooks further proposed an implementation model for Australian providers. It should be noted that companies like cisco have been very active driving inter-provider standards for industry.

Whilst AusNOG-1 was advertised as an inauguration event, this venue is just getting started and has relevance not only for Australian Network Operators, but for the Internet community overall, reserve your calendars for AusNOG-2 in 2008!

Posted by Monique Morrow at 07:31 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 19, 2007

Where’s the remote?

Rhonda Raider This is just one of the questions that can be answered with the application idea that Rhonda from California submitted to the Connected Life contest (and which won her a runner-up award).
Remote Frequency Identification (RFID) tags would be put on your most frequently lost items, whether it be your keys, eyeglasses, or wallet, so that when you lose them, you’d be able to find their location by using an application on their home computer (or any networking device for that matter). The application would show a map of the home and identify the hidden item. More details of Rhonda’s idea, a video describing it, how she’s going to spend the money and why it’s a good idea for pet tortoises can be found here.

Speaking from experience of living with a two-year old who as a tendency to put the remote in the laundry bin… or the freezer…. Or in her doll’s stroller… which all-too-often creates a frantic game of hide-and-seek throughout the house just to see The Office, I’d be willing to pay a pretty penny for this capability. And fortunately, with RFID prices falling and home networks becoming commonplace, this idea has a very legitimate chance of coming to our Connected Life in the future.

Posted by Doug Webster at 08:02 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 16, 2007

Google and the Open Mobile Phone

I participated in the Rutberg Wireless Influencers conference last week. Various interesting sessions, but the biggest buzz was about Google's announcement of the Android mobile device platform and the Open Handset Alliance. Some industry watchers expected a new device, like the Apple iPhone. Instead Google proposed a software environment that would allow any company to create new applications, including Google of course.

Android joins multiple existing mobile device platforms, including Symbian supported by Nokia and others, Qualcomm's BREW, the fading Garnet OS (formerly Palm OS), and Microsoft Mobile Windows for Pocket PCs and Smartphones (and some cars). The Google proposal seems most aligned with the open source mindset, and certainly illustrates the colliding worlds of the mobile industry and Internet industry. The concept is promising, but will it attract a critical mass of application software and device developers? And will mobile operators allow such devices to connect to their networks?

When asked at the conference about the Google announcement, Lowell McAdam, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, raised concerns about risks such openness might pose to users. For example, what if malware infected an Android-equipped phone and started relaying your exact location to a stalker? Such scenarios are frightening, of course. But Verizon Wireless might also have business concerns about losing their ability to monetize services beyond basic mobile IP connectivity, if they lose control of mobile device software.

Google's motivations are not entirely philanthropic, either. Surely they understand the potential power of mobile advertising. And they must worry that the current mobile ecosystem doesn't lend itself to their participation, at least not to the dominant degree they enjoy with the fixed Internet. So when Google says "open", remember they especially mean "open for Google."

Mirroring such business maneuvering on a small scale, the conference also featured a friendly Texas Hold'em poker tournament. The dealers kept funding losers with more chips, so risk aversion disappeared and valuations for bad hands soared. I'll leave the obvious analogies to the dotcom bubble as an exercise for the reader.

Posted by Larry Lang at 08:23 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 14, 2007

Recap of Cisco Service Provider Press Tour

Jeff Spagnola, vice president of marketing for the service provider segment at Cisco, met with a wide range of trade press, business press and industry analysts during trips to New York and Boston on the week of November 5. In the brief video here, he recaps some of those conversations and their various areas of focus, which included service provider transformation, business managed services, Cisco in WiMAX, globalization efforts and emerging markets.

Recap Of Cisco Service Provider Press Tour - The funniest home videos are here

Posted by Jeff Spagnola at 03:19 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 13, 2007

Quo Vadis: MPLS?

The MPLS 2007 Conference, took place in Washington D.C. from October 28-31, and was advertised as:

“The year 2007 marks the 10th anniversary of MPLS International Conference and over the past 10 years, the conference has helped industry grow and have been the venue of the launch of new technologies that are driving the Internet towards next generation “

Approximately 500 participants internationally attended the conference mainly comprising the service provider and vendor community. Bruce Davie, Cisco, and Yakov Rekhter, Juniper highlighted the service modularity and extensibility that MPLS possesses in spite of approximately 10+ years of existence. Davie went on to discuss challenges to MPLS such as “different packet header” and forwarding paradigm; network management; asserted to, that challenging MPLS with no control plane and great network management seems like it begs the question of standards-based networking. Davie concluded that MPLS and IP remain entrenched because they enable valuable services such as L3VPN for MPLS; and that the rise of Ethernet is unlikely to change the fact that that the world depends on IP.

Yakov Rekhter highlighted differences between MPLS and Provider Backbone Transport or PBT and concluded with the following assertion:

“PBT is a new technology that promises to offer some of the same benefits that MPLS has been providing for years.
It is unclear if and when PBT will reach the level of maturity and sophistication comparable to what MPLS has today with respect to the features that are needed for packet-based transport point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and multipoint-to-point connectivity, protection, traffic engineering, QoS (including deterministic quality of service and OAM.PBT in the transport layer still requires MPLS in the service layer and as a service layer technology, PBT is limited to just Ethernet.”

By the way, the arguments in these transport discussions are not skewed to Ethernet vs MPLS --- in fact both technologies have co-existed for years. If a purported technology offers somewhat identical benefits as one that is rather mature, does this premise constitute a leapfrog and/or, disruptive paradigm?

The service providers who presented at the conference like Telecom Italia, Verizon, FT-Orange, Sprint, NTT, KDDI acknowledged the adoption of MPLS as pivotal to their service architectures; and certainly did not articulate a desire to move to so called “PBT.”

Ok, you may ask, well “what did one expect at an MPLS Conference?” The vendor panel discussion was rather circular with 9 or so vendors each stating their obvious positions --- yawn, yawn – there were no fireworks here!

The more interesting opportunity in the industry is to move at the service and application level. Looking at the bigger picture in terms of trends and impact to architecture, massive quantities of data will be generated on small scales (RFIDs, sensors or so called pervasive computing etc); further, there is an explosion of new creators
or consumers of content, so called “prosumers” like perhaps some of us. Oh, yes, the promise of Web 2.0 is supposed to drive greater consumer choice, participation and control – social networking indeed.

You may wonder why the 2007 Time Magazine “Person of the Year” award was YOU!

Uhmm, MPLS vs PBT vs whatever – is there something wrong with this picture? With all of these dynamics, have we thought about the impact to the overall network? The Internet?

Ah, stay tuned!

Posted by Monique Morrow at 07:00 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

November 12, 2007

The Need for Speed “Up”

Verizon recently announced a plan option for its fiber-based broadband service where the focus is not just on the downstream speed (what you receive in your home) but rather the upstream speed (what you send to others). Here are the details from AP/Yahoo.

This example, as is the case with broadband offer from SureWest and increasingly other providers, is indicative of providers fundamentally changing their model to match the needs of the rising, ever-changing, dynamic, at times confusing, and yet so appealing “empowered consumer” and their inherent desire for interactive, personalized experiences. No longer are users content with a “passive” experience, such as broadcast television in which both the content and the timing of delivery was determined by others. If users were interested in a particular show, they had to organize their lifestyle to accommodate the show’s schedule. With technology advancements, consumers were able to soon “Pick” content from their providers, where they were able to view the movie they wanted to watch using video-on-demand, or pick the type of content they wanted to surf with the introduction of the Internet. Soon thereafter, the desire of the consumer was one where they were interested to “participate”—where they could share their interests and interact with others through virtual communities. Even more quickly, this desire for expression evolved to where the consumers themselves “Produce” the content. They are no longer dependent on content created by others, but are able to create, remix, or develop content themselves and then share it with a global audience. This is where we are now, and is exemplified by the YouTube phenomenon, which started from nothing and within two years is one of the premier content distribution sites across all forms of media. It’s not just the amount that people watch, which is mind boggling and estimated to comprise of 10% of the internet traffic worldwide, but it is also the amount of new content added from empowered consumers – on average, six new hours of content are uploaded every minute of every day.

As a result of this inherent need to communicate, share, and express themselves, networks are having to undergo a dramatic shift. For example, broadband used to follow a very similar model to television, where the upload experience was only a small fraction of the download one – it was very much a passive/pick type of relationship. As a result, they didn’t invest in as heavily in the upload requirements. Just as the empowered consumers’ expectations of the experience are changing, so too must the provider’s ability to deliver on it. This is exactly what providers such as Verizon, Surewest, and others are doing – it’s neither easy nor cheap, but it is yet another example of providers rising to the challenge and evolving to becoming experience providers.

In turn, to keep up with to match the needs of the rising, ever-changing, and dynamic “experience provider,” Cisco is investing heavily as well to innovate and deliver intelligent networking technology. There is a lot to talk about on the need for intelligent network and on the innovation front, but I’ll leave that to some of our engineers to discuss more fully in future posts over the coming months.

Posted by Doug Webster at 08:26 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 07, 2007

And the Connected Life Contest Grand Prize Winner is….

Amir from North Carolina, USA! His idea was Personal digital butler, a virtual “Worthington” if you will, orchestrating your house and its appliances to more efficiently service your needs. Here how Amir described it:

I would like my home (heating/cooling, lights, doors, TV, stereo, computers, phones, game consoles, alarms, et al.) to be integrated via a Cisco router/ command center (wired, via blue tooth, and/or WIFI). I'd like my cell phone and car to connect to this command console. I'd like my house/appliances to text me info and allow me to send text instructions. The Cisco command center would learn my habits, preferences/needs and suggest settings. All settings as well as all my music, pictures, videos and files will be stored on a central file and accessible via a secure Internet connection.

So when you download a song to your PC, it automatically syncs with your car in the garage so you can listen to it on your way to work… and if your air conditioner needs maintenance, the system will ping you, so you don’t inadvertently wait too long, only to discover that it is barely working on a sweltering July day…right before a party… (I speak from experience that non-working AC in a Texas summer can be quite a party spoiler…)

I think it’s a great idea, Amir, and look forward to have this in my future Connected Life! Congratulations on being selected by our judging panel as the grand prize winner and thanks for sharing your ideas with us.

Amir, the other winners, and their ideas were showcased in an online event in Second Life last week, but in case you missed it, I’ll be showcasing some other ideas in future posts, so stay tuned! (But if the suspense is killing you and you just can’t wait that long, please check out all of the winners here.

Posted by Doug Webster at 08:45 AM Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

November 06, 2007

Michael Powell and the new Homo Digiteus Species

Michael Powell, former chairman of the FCC and current Cisco board member, visited our product development leadership offsite earlier this week. He spoke about the broad impact of computer and communications technology on society, often illustrating with examples from his two sons. Adopting the tone of an amazed and amused scientist, he described them as members of a new species, homo digiteus, whose life-long experience with technology creates expectations of connection, personalization and interactivity. For example, his son Bryan explains he doesn't like television because "it doesn't DO anything," so instead he surfs the Internet, plays a digital game, or text-messages friends.

Powell also commented about his time in public service, mostly positive about the privilege of serving the American people, although ruefully recalling the "wardrobe malfunction" controversy of the 2004 Superbowl halftime show. As you'd expect, Powell favors limiting government intervention in the technology marketplace, and argued cogently for organizing communications regulation away from access technology (coaxial cable, copper pairs) and towards the services offered (television, telephony). This change makes sense, as cable companies add voice and telephone companies add video.

Though covering familiar ground, Powell's speech wove together many threads of technology in society, an impressive display of broad synthesis. His polished public speaking prompted a standing ovation from the Cisco engineering leadership, usually a skeptical and judgmental bunch.

My personal connection to Michael Powell comes through my wife, Katherine. Her father served in the Army at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, at the same time as Michael's father, Colin Powell. At the end of his speech, when he paused for questions, I considered asking if he remembered playing in the creek with Kathy Broome. But then I decided that might stray too far off topic for most of the audience.

Posted by Larry Lang at 08:03 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 02, 2007

Never Seen Before Footage: Cisco Powered & Managed Services Channel Program

Richard Duggan has the latest news on dramatic new changes to the Cisco Powered Program, offering greater value to Service Provider customers.

Tom discusses the new Cisco Powered managed services designation and the opportunities it provides for service providers and the end-user experience.

Surinder describes this year's Cisco Powered Marketing Summit as unique -- Managed Services Channel Program enhancements are joining the CPN "badge" to create exciting new value for Cisco channel partners.

At the conclusion of the 2007 Cisco Powered Marketing Summit, Tom reports the excitement around the debut of the Cisco Managed Services Channel Program (MSCP).

Posted by Jeff Spagnola at 12:12 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 01, 2007

Service Provider Business Models Drive “The Connected Home”

The connected home is closer than we think. Believe it or not, it's not a technology issue, in my opinion. I think that the bigger issue in terms of deploying home networking and connected home-type systems is the business model for service providers. You know the story. You can go out and buy a whole bunch of home networking gear from retail stores and install it in your home. Its point-to-point type technology, does some very handy, straightforward things, and it works very well at a good price

When you try to connect your home network to a trusted, secure network, like the ones where you find our digital set-tops, who's going to handle the set-up, connections and management for all these additional devices? If a service provider does it and you can't print your daughter's term paper because the printer in the basement doesn’t work, and the service provider has to then send a truck, well there go all the profits for a year.

That may be a bit of over-dramatization, but it's the business equation. The business model isn't there yet. However, we believe that controlling some of these things from the network will make it easier, and prevent some of those maintenance costs. Then Digital Rights Management (DRM), Bandwidth Availability, and Quality of Service can all be used to improve the consumer experience and protect the programmers’ rights.

I like to use my house as an example of today's technology. We have an Apple TV connected to our plasma HD set to use mostly for photographs. We have a half terabyte drive sitting behind the monitor on the desktop. My wife has an iPhone. All these things connect together. We move video back and forth, and it's pretty painless. Apple has simplified those interfaces. Unfortunately the only connection to the network for these devices is iTunes over the broadband pipe, which limits the breadth of video access that is provided by the set top, which we all know is a network edge router!

In the long-term, what the service providers want to do is simplify the transition of those interfaces, probably by controlling a lot of it from the network. And I'll remind you that the edge of the network is the digital set-top.

We have over 33 million Scientific Atlanta digital set-tops connected at the edge of the secure network. If you have enough smarts and enough CPU processing power at the edge, and you've got all the admission control and policy management in the trusted network, you can then reach out to these devices and you can start to control them in a much more efficient way.

And I think the best example of that being done today with a simple interface is what Apple's doing. We think that in the future, service providers are going to offer those kinds of services.

Posted by Bob McIntyre at 10:03 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)