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 !
