« February 2008 | Main | April 2008 »
March 31, 2008
Taking Care of Business
Wait! Don’t worry -- I’m certainly not about to opine about a 1970’s Canadian-penned classic rock song. (I admit, though, that it was pretty catchy tune despite the fact that they don’t pronounce the “g” in the first word… as a Webster, I am bound by my ancestral tie to Noah to have pet peeves of inappropriate use of language…Needless to say, discussions with my two year old at the dinner table can be quite heated...)
Rather, “Taking care of business” in the service provider world means delivering highly available, scalable and reliable experiences – based on a solid foundation (Cisco IP NGN) and real market understanding. Running a great network is very much a provider’s business, and for many of them, offering managed services (or, an end customer business out-tasking the management of selected aspects of their network to a provider) is a very lucrative part of their services portfolio. For some, it is their sole focus.
One of those is, SAVVIS, a valuable Cisco Powered Service Provider partner, and a provider that is getting an increasing about of attention as innovator who is changing the way in the managed services are delivered to customers and, in the process, changing their orientation of being a service provider to a more comprehensive experience provider to their end customers.
In this video, SAVVIS executives outlines how managed services play an important role in their vision of being an “infrastructure as a service provider” and how the Cisco IP NGN platform best enables their ability to deliver on this vision to their end users.
So you’ve heard about the success SAVVIS has had and about their perspective on managed services -- what’s your take? How do you see business services evolving and what are the main benefits you see that make managed services compelling to end users?
Posted by Doug Webster at 02:21 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
March 26, 2008
Ideas, Musing, and Perspectives from the blogosphere…
Measuring the pulse of the industry and keeping up with trends is a necessary part of many jobs, including mine – here are a few though-provoking posts that I have come across this past week that I thought may be relevant to you as well. Thanks for reading.
Jon Arnold wrote an interesting post on Rethinking the Service Provider Business and discussed how revenues can be gained upstream (traditional subscriptions) and downstream (advertising, government services, etc.)
John Battelle covered the recent spectrum auction in the US and assessed that while Google may not have been declared the winner, they may have achieved their goal.
Jeff Kaplan discussed Managed Services 3.0 a few months ago and now is looking into “software as a service” aspects that are expanding what’s possible for a user’s business service experience. Plus, his pragmatic approach that focuses on the outcome versus the nomenclature associated with the execution is refreshing, as all too often these debates can digress to a focus on minutae.
Phil Leigh has a video tutorial around the Hulu and Future of Television, which not only showcases the interesting features of the online television application, such as ad content, social media interactivity, and content choice, but it also foreshadows what the TV experience will be like on our living room televisions in the coming years.
Lastly, on a similar note, a post on worldtvpc.com paints a vision along similar lines as Phil but points out some scaling challenges that service providers and infrastructure companies, like Cisco, are working to address to help make this future a reality.
Posted by Doug Webster at 11:05 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
March 17, 2008
From Global Industry Leader Forum to the IETF-71
Last week was quite a busy one for myself, as I had participated in the first ever industry and international regulator forum on March 10, that was chaired by Sanjay Ahuja, CEO Orange, Global Leader industry Forum held at Pattaya, Thailand.
I was a panelist in session 1, Universal access, chaired by Chairman and moderator, Mr Ph. Jorphochaudom, President CAT, Thailand.
The Global Symposium for Regulators, GSR, March 11-13, followed this session and was attended by Cisco’s RM Pepper, Sr. Director, Government Affairs. Pepper participated in GSR Session 1:
Cisco SP Marketing with support from Carrier Standards Director, Rajiv Kapoor funded a social event at this venue in Thailand.
The GILF and GSR were successful for the ITU since the venue was able to attract greater than expected ~ 600 attendees including regulators from 96 countries discussing topics important to making the Information Society more inclusive in improving the lives of people around the world.
The high-level platform for industry leaders led to an interactive exchange with regulators and policy-makers, covering issues related to universal access and rural connectivity, emergency telecommunications as well as stimulating business investment and expansion.
Wrapping up the outcomes of the industry leaders' meeting, Chairman of GILF Mr Sanjiv Ahuja, who is also Chairman of Orange U.K. and CEO of Augere, made a commitment on behalf of the ICT industry to do what is right. "We will serve our customers fairly, properly and with respect, and satisfy the needs of the local economy and the community that we function in," said Mr Ahuja. "We will compete fairly, openly, fiercely and vigorously in every market in which we participate; in return we ask the Regulators to give us as much leeway as possible within the laws of the country." He added that as "leaders of industry we have to balance our shareholder interests with consumer interests in the regulated business that we work in."
Addressing one of the key themes of GSR-08, he noted, "Network sharing is a potentially powerful tool operators can use to cost-effectively extend telecommunication services, including broadband connections to many millions of people."
"The presence of CEOs, industry leaders and major suppliers will enhance the investment environment and stimulate business connectivity at the regional and global levels," said Mr Suranan Wongvithayakamjorn, Secretary-General of NTC. "The ITU initiative in organizing the first Global Industry Leaders' Forum will be a crucial step in laying down a telecommunications platform for emerging and existing industries."
The meeting,was opened by Mr Mun Patanotai, Minister for Information and Communication Technology of Thailand. He said GILF offers a unique opportunity for industry leaders to interact face to face with regulators and policy makers with mutual benefits for all concerned.
"GILF is an opportunity for business leaders to express their views on how national regulatory frameworks impact their ability to invest and roll out networks to all the world's citizens," said ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré. Speaking at the opening Press conference, he said there are currently 3 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, which represents half the world's population. "Our goal is to ensure that all the world's citizens will have access to information and communication technology services by 2015," Dr Touré said.
The ITU press release on both venues is available here.
After GILF, I entered Philly on March 11 to participate in the 71-IETF hosted by Comcast. There were several highlights at this venue, one of which was the shutdown of IPv4 during the Wednesday plenary as to encourage IPv6 only participation. This was an event in planning by the Internet Society. Further, at the Technical Plenary, March 13, IAB Chair Olaf Kolkman provided an overview on the TMPLS topic citing a few people
This plenary included several presentations, e.g. Marshall Eubanks, The Video Tsunami: Internet Television, IPTV and the coming Wave of Video on the Internet.
And Professor Keith Ross, P2P Live Internet Video.
The subsequent discussions around these presentations were around the architecture of the Internet, and, mechanisms required for video, eventual live streaming and P2P transport.
This dialogue continues!
Posted by Monique Morrow at 07:23 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
March 12, 2008
Going Green - ICT & Climate Change - Energy Sustainability
Now that the importance of limiting greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming is well recognised, the role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in combating climate change is being widely discussed. The ITU-T has initiated two symposia on ICT and Climate Change to be held in Kyoto in April and London in June 2008 indicating the importance being attached to energy sustainability. All groups in the ITU-T are being urged to take energy consumption into consideration.
There has recently been some bad press about the environmental impact of the Internet with reports that it accounts for 5.3% of world energy consumption and results in the emission of as much CO2 as the airline industry and that the electricity consumption of one avatar on Second Life emits 1.17 tons of C02! However, there are a number of studies that clearly indicate that much energy can be saved by using ICT rather than traveling. A report to the Consumer Electronics Association by TIAX in July 2007 describes the impact of telecommuting and e-commerce on energy consumption (including liquid fuel consumption) and greenhouse gas emissions in the USA. A report by the European Telecommunications Network Operators (ETNO) “Saving the climate @ the speed of light” also presents calculations of the potential savings in C02 emissions that could be made in the European Union through the use of various ICT applications.
The ITU-T has also discussed the use of ICT in monitoring climate change, data analysis & climate modelling, providing emergency services & disaster relief and transport management systems and provides online resources.
And so is ICT a part of the the problem of part of the solution?
Part of the problem
- Internet - 5.3% of world’s energy consumption
- Contributes more CO2 than world’s airlines?
Part of the solution
- Monitoring climate change
- Data analysis & climate modelling
- Emergency services & disaster relief
- Travel substitution
- Smart Work Centres
- TelePresence
- Webex
- Transport management systems
- Sensor networks and process control (e.g. switching off unnecessary devices and production on-demand.
Cisco is fully committed to the Green Revolution and will increasingly be moving towards Green in it's products and in its' social responsibility.
Posted by Rajiv Kapoor at 11:49 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
March 10, 2008
Towards IPv6
The topic of IPv6 is not new in the industry. In fact, IPv6 has been hotter now than ever, particularly around IPv4 address exhaustion and application readiness. Cisco’s Tony Hain is an IPv6 Forum Fellow.
Cisco IPv6 product manager and evangelist, Patrick Grossetet has been driving IPv6 development at Cisco.
Geoff Huston, Chief Scientist APNIC has been exploring IPv6 transit.
In fact, this past January 2008, Google held an IPv6 summit where both Tony and Patrick had been present.
Google’s Vint Cerf hosted the summit; and Vint facilitated the IPv6 discussion with industry thought leaders, architects.
Patrick spoke about planning for IPv6 integration. One can view the YouTube dialogue at: Google IPv6 Conference 2008.
- What will the IPv6 Internet look like?
- IPv6, Nokia, and Google
- Planning for the IPv6 Integration
- IPv6 and the DNS
- IPv6 on Windows
Conclusion, service providers will be pivotal in IPv6 implementation internationally. The industry is still grappling with the issues around IPv6 transition for infrastructure, applications and content. IPv6 implementation is not a matter of if rather, it is a matter of when.
IPv6 stay tuned!
Posted by Monique Morrow at 10:29 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
March 05, 2008
Introducing the World’s Most Powerful Compact Router… (And changing the notion of what’s possible in routing in the process)
Yesterday, we introduced the newest addition to the Cisco edge portfolio, the Cisco Aggregation Services Router 1000 series, which is a testament to innovation of our engineers, a foundational platform to help providers transform the edge of their networks, and a proofpoint to our IPNGN architectural vision. We have a massive amount of content that can provide quite a bit of detail on the product and Suraj has already highlighted the virtual, viral, and visual aspects of the marketing that went into this launch. For this forum though, I think there are three key aspects of this platform which will have particular ramifications for the providers business.
Establishes a new price/performance class at edge
Placed between the Cisco 7200 and 7600 series routers in the Cisco edge portfolio, one ASR is equivalent to 160 Cisco 7200 series routers. Compared to competitive, multivendor solutions, it costs less than half, requires only a third as much Opex annually, and uses just a fraction of the space. Synergy Research did a study of it before launch and wrote, “Not only offering a distinct capital expenditure advantage, owning a Cisco ASR Series router over a five-year period, in comparison to the competitors’ appliances, also constitutes a OpEx saving ranging from 1.6 to 4.7 times per year.”
Benefit to providers: Get much more for far less for faster return on their investment
Enables “Instant-on” service delivery
Embedded capabilities on every Cisco ASR 1000 permit new services to be activated with a keyboard versus a truck roll. Think about that – this is pretty amazing, because no appliances or even blades are needed if the provider wants to turn on a session border controller or firewall within the router – it fundamentally raises the bar as to how services will be delivered in the future.
Benefit to providers: Put customers on (and bill for) a service faster for less cost, not to mention reductions in sparing costs, increased customer satisfaction, and more.
Reduces carbon footprint
Compared to competitive solutions, a single ASR can save the equivalent carbon emissions of upwards 17 tons of coal annually (or upwards of 77 barrels of oil).
Benefit to providers: This high degree of energy efficiency is important not just from a social responsibility standpoint, but also, because power takes up such a large amount of operations expense, it directly affects a provider’s bottom line.
As you know, we usually don’t talk about such product detail in this forum. It’s important to do so today though. While we spend most of our time in this blog discussing high-level issues affecting the service provider industry, it’s important to note that we are constantly innovating to help our provider customers have as flexible, capable, and robust of an IPNGN as possible to make the most of their business. The Cisco ASR 1000 is a great and timely example of that continued commitment. So while some may look at this as another product, we look at it as much more -- another proofpoint towards our architectural vision, another proofpoint towards enabling our customers to succeed.
Posted by Doug Webster at 01:13 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
March 04, 2008
Virtual. Viral. Visual (… it’s getting easier to be green with Web 2.0)
Communicating virtually, virally and visually empowers the end user to receive information at home, at work and on the move – and, in an environmentally friendly way.
Can these make up the mantra for the launches and marketing in the 21st century? At Cisco, we think so!
“Everything Web 2.0: and “Green everything”seems to surround us in traditional media, online and, as we increasingly discover, even in the grocery store around the corner. Certainly, this is the vision for Cisco, for industry and for the way the world will operate going forward. The launch of the ASR 1000 Series Router Series is a turning point for the way we will take products to market - virtually, virally, visually and green.
Take a look at some of the fun and engaging ways that Cisco marketing took innovation to the 21st century level and applied web 2.0 technologies and other leading environmentally friendly marketing tools to engage both Business Decision Makers (BDMs) and Technology Decision Makers (TDMs) in support of this exciting announcement.
- Funny, network heavy user "uber user" testimonials with tell a friend function for viral distribution, also posted to YouTube
- Engaging Facebook user group offers a forum to celebrate / discuss our network addiction
- Cisco Edge Quest 3-D game to highlight product innovation and encourage viral distribution
- Second Life launch event enables attendees to “experience” the platform in the virtual world
- Social media web widget (as shown below) leverages social media resources
- On-line, live product introduction broadcasts with Q&A in nineteen languages.
- Early "teaser" release on Cisco QuantumFlow Processor (QFP) to heighten industry buzz (i.e., how will this innovation be applied?)
- "Follow-the-sun" worldwide TelePresence sessions for international coverage
The blog world has been a-buzz with posts…(Jon Arnold, NetworkWorld, 6200 Networks, etc..)
Is Cisco the first company in the industry to do a virtual, viral, visual and green launch?
We’d love to hear your views!!
Posted by Suraj Shetty at 06:34 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
March 03, 2008
SP CTO Update
Since my last posting welcoming the Chinese New Year in January, I have been fairly busy and yes standards has been definitely top of mind. So in January 2008, the ITU-T SG 13 was hosted in Seoul, South Korea.
The crux of the meeting was around TMPLS OAM Requirements, draft G.8113 and TMPLS OAM Mechanisms, draft G.8114 in Question 5 of SG 13. IETF-IAB sent key leadership members to participate in the meeting as representatives of the Internet Society or ISOC. The IETF-IAB had expressed grave concerns around TMPLS, re-use of label 14 and interoperability overall with existing MPLS networks. The IETF-IAB had participated in an interim meeting held in, September 2007 jointly with ITU-T SG-15 leadership, where an agreement to collaborate in the form of a Joint Working Team, JWT-Ad Hoc team had been reached.
Study Group 13 approved to terminate the AAP (Alternative Approval Process) for two T-MPLS OAM draft Recommendations, G.8113 T-MPLS OAM Requirements and G.8114 T-MPLS OAM Mechanisms, which were consented in April 2007. At the subsequent SG-15 meeting in February 2008, there had been discussions around framing the JWT work in five work areas:
1. Forwarding Plane
2. OAM
3. Control Plane
4. Survivability
5. Network Management
The JWT-Ad Hoc team will be jointly lead by Malcolm Betts, ITU-T SG 15 Q.12 Rapporteur and David Ward, IETF.
So the work is just beginning….
Changing the topic, I will be participating in the Global Industry Leaders Forum on March 10 in Thailand, in a session on Universal Access to be chaired by CAT CEO, Mr Ph. Jorphochaudom.
This venue, will be followed by the Global Session of Regulators.
Cisco Sr. Director of Government Affairs will be participating in a panel discussion on March 11.
Stay tuned for disruptive technologies and business models in my next blog!
Posted by Monique Morrow at 08:02 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
