We have a new paper titled, "Cost Effective Network Solutions - Solve problems, improve service, and prepare for convergence", that was just published yesterday, authored by my colleagues:  Vicki Jones, Zahir Virjee, & Krista Colona.

If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to comment below or to contact me directly.

Home Appliances, Wireless, FCC, FDA and more

Recently I was provided the opportunity to “get my geek on” in the home appliance category. As our 5+ year plan for a kitchen renovation started a couple months ago, I was tasked with finding new appliances by the boss (wife).  This was a very enlightening exercise.  If you have read up on technology trends over the past decade, no doubt you stumbled across an article or two regarding built-in WIFI in home appliances.  It’s really only recently that this is starting to show up in the appliances peddled at your local Lowes or HomeDepot.  See Samsung’s latest creation - - as an example. Not only does it have WIFI, but a picture frame. Odd or not, it’s out there, and it actually makes some sense to me.

At a recent meeting I had a “hallway” conversation opportunity with Julius Knapp, who is the current  Deputy Chief of the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) .  The informal conversation started on the soon to be release Network Broadband Plan, and moved into the motivation of behind the plan. Among many other things, there is an open acknowledgement that there will be a monstrous increase in wireless devices everywhere, including homes like refrigerators.  The Samsung mentioned above would be a wireless network element in the unlicensed spectrum, but we should expect there to be built-in licensed wireless chips in appliances.  See Amazon’s Kindle as a prime example. 
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• Markets within the US were open with government defined demarcation between Inter-eXchange-Carrier (IXC), Local-Exchange-Carrier (LEC) and the customer site.
• Mid-Tier US enterprises did not purchase carrier delivered managed services for sites within the US as they opted to leverage their own resources.
• Larger US enterprises were outsourcing their entire communications infrastructure to large integrators (e.g.

Ran across and interesting article regarding a datacenter in a box solution developed by Dell.

Dell has built as datacenter that fits into a 40lb breif case that includes: 2 servers runing dual-core Intel processors , 32G RAM , 4TB of disk, 5 port switch, solid state drives and only consuming 325 watts!

Wow, in the last decade we went from tons of equipment, power and real estate into a small box.

Anything missing? Well , yes.  I would think a WAN connection that could support converged solutions as well as a security component or definition of a perimeter.

What's next the datacenter suit that you wear?

Today, both MPLS IP VPNs and, increasingly, Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS), are taking center stage as the technologies of choice for enterprises and are becoming ever more appealing to enterprises looking to gain a competitive advantage.

In our white paper, "Why IP Convergence Hit Its Stride with the Early Majority," we share the evolution and present the reasons behind why IP Convergence technologies are the clear choice for enterprises who want to gain a competitive edge in their markets.  Click here to download the whitepaper.

IPConvergence - once just a buzzword - now is considered a strategic component of most businesses’ cost optimization efforts and has become a mainstay of business vernacular. IP Convergence seamlessly converges data, voice and multimedia applications on a single IP-based platform to better enable enterprises to save costs on operations, infrastructure, and facilities; as well as to more easily expand human resources, maintenance and other systems. IP Convergence also eases the operational efficiencies of applications, such as Multi Protocol Label Switching IP Virtual Private Networks (MPLS IP VPNs), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Internet applications, such as Mobile IP and Video. In addition to the cost savings associated with IP Convergence, enterprises are seeing a marked increase in employee productivity, communication and collaboration.

 

Read more http://www.globalcrossing.com/whitepapers/whitepapers_landing.aspx

The 8 Most Important Publications to the Internet

Only because I can, and I have a particular affinity to the number eight right now, ;) I decided to share what I believe to be the eight most important publications to the Internet.  Have a read and enjoy the fun!

Adam Uzelac

1)     A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection

Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn  IEEE Transactions on Communication Technology, 1974 Online copy (PDF)

2)     Internet Protocol

RFC 791, Information Sciences Institute, Marina Del Rey, California, September 1981 Online copy (HTML)

3)     Transmission Control Protocol Read more and comment...

Within the last month I have met with over  20 customers, and all but one had the same  requirement: “How can you help me manage my communications costs?”

There are many ways that an enterprise can better manage their communications costs:

1.    Billing accuracy  - Insure monthly invoices are accurate with correct up and running inventory & usage .  Some larger service providers offer an extended service (for  a fee)  to insure their bills are accurate.

2.    Managed services – Managed services offer an enterprise an opportunity to outsource the risk of CapEx for CPE as well as the risk of OpEx in operationalzing new technologies.

3.    Convergence – Combining voice, video and data onto a single enterprise WAN eliminates ISDN PRIs for Voice,  ISDN BRIs for Video and separate access for data and internet onto single access solution into a site.  That’s about 4 unique access solutions into 1. And given the costs of access as a ratio to an overall solution – that is a pretty nice number. 

Convergence does come with a price,  new routers may needed ,  however managed services can help mitigate this cost.  And the addition of VoIP and IP Video requires new PBXs and Video end points.  My recommendation is start off combining data and internet onto a stable QoS VPN solution then add VoIP and IP Video as your business analysis allows for.

Stay tuned our latest whitepaper on convergence should be released shortly and it will have some great analyst references as proof points that convergence has gone mainstream.

SIP Virtualization

I believe that most folks within the “computer” field have heard of Virtualization.  I would like to introduce what may be a new term to the industry; SIP Virtualization.  The concept we have conceived here at Global Crossing borrows from many of the same constructs from the popular definition.  For reference, a brief history of Virtualization is in order.

Virtualization was conceived back in days of the Mainframe (1960s).  The mainframes of the day were expensive and underutilized.  To increase the value of the investment, a logical (read as, not physical) partitioning of the computing resource was developed.  This partitioning created “Virtual Machines” within the greater single physical form factor. In order to achieve this, an abstraction of the physical elements and the software-based operating system was introduced.  In this manner, Operating Systems were able to leverage and share common hardware.  It was no longer necessary to dedicate a hard-drive or a network interface to a specific instance of software.  This notion has since enjoyed a rebirth using x86 computing architectures.

How ambiguous is the term ‘virtualization’ or ‘virtual’ within the computing industry?  Here’s some that am personally aware of and use often…
-    Virtual Reality
-    Virtual Memory
-    Virtual Private Network
-    Desktop Virtualization
-    Virtual IP Address
-    Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol
-    Virtual Router

For sake of this discussion, I will cherry-pick a rather simple definition from whatis.com.  

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When telepresence was first conceived, the goals were lofty, the vision was exceptional and the general feeling was that this was a technology that would transform the industry, and not just the communications world. The predictions intimated that industries such as airline and hotel could be greatly impacted and the societal changes would be unfathomable (think of the Cisco commercial of Telepresence in a tent from a 3^rd world location). Read more and comment...

The question is “What WAN technology should you use MPLS or VPLS”.
 
Let’s start off by saying that there is no debate between the exclusive use of the technologies,  they both have a place in enterprise WAN applications.
 
Let me explain by describing the legacy and current WAN environment.
 
Legacy WANs utilized ATM and/or Private lines between data center locations,  these technologies are layer 2 and layer 1 respectively,  Frame Relay was used to connect sites (at layer 2) into the datacenter assets.  Clearly Frame Relay is used as the access network while ATM/Private line shore up datacenter assets.
 
Introduce a network based Layer 3 VPNs (aka MPLS,  which really are utilizing RFC 2547bis to bind sites to a VPN association for a customer which is transported over a MPLS core) clearly Layer 3 VPNs were developed to address the weaknesses in legacy WAN , specifically on the access network side to displace Frame Relay and provide any to any, easier remote access and extranets (all 3 of which are difficult with a frame relay solution). 
 
In this case Layer 3 VPNs were also introduced into datacenter to datacenter applications as providers and enterprises tried to solve world hunger with a single technology approach.  Well any IT organization that is dynamic (i.e. new applications introduced into production datacenters) found using layer 3 VPNs across datacenters difficult as they would have to work with the provider at layer 3 and limit/constrain their ability to manage applications in production datacenters.
 
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We are looking at the calm before the storm  when it comes to Enterprise VoIP adoption.

A traditional VoIP Solution (aka Cisco, Nortel, Avaya) deployment can cost an enterprise between $800 to $1200 per user.  Pretty hefty price tag when you consider a mid-tier enterprise with 3,000 employees - that is about $3M.

In this economy, a $3M cost of deployment to realize savings or efficiencies is a tall order to justify.

Here are some events we need to take note of:

• February 2009, enter stage left, Microsoft OCS 2007 R2
• Microsoft's  investment in the OCS R2 platform is demonstrated by the breadth of enterprise required features. Microsoft is also investing in their goto market resources and partners as well.
• April 2009,  I had the pleasure of presenting to Microsoft's North American Voice Specialists . The topic of discussion was Global Crossing SIP trunking and how Global Crossing has been supporting Microsoft during their customer Beta's.
• June 2009,  Aspect Unity IP and their roadmap to OCS integration is another example of Microsoft's investment in the future of the platform.

So what does this mean?

Let's get back to the discussion of Enterprise VoIP adoption, By changing the paradigm, Microsoft : Read more and comment...

Sorry for the long delay between postings.  Within the last 10 months I have moved into more of a customer facing role and find myself always with a customer and no time to blog. I recommend you start the series by reading Virtualization - Part 1 - The Abstraction of the Internet and Virtualization - Part 2 - The Abstraction of a Computer.

This is the third of a five part series on the evolution of virtualization.

Let's start off by reviewing the definition of an Application Programmers Interface (API) from http://www.wikipedia.org/ :
An Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of functions, procedures, methods or classes that an operating system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer programs. Read more and comment...