NBN, cloud and the future of the network

The shape of the network in years to come will be largely determined by a new wave of technologies - like the NBN, cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) - according to a new study from research firm IDC.

In a recent vendor-sponsored paper titled ‘The Future of Networks’, Graham Barr, Director of Telecommunications at IDC Australia, argues that every 20 years or so the ICT industry goes through a period of “creative destruction” that sees old industry technology delivery models replaced by new models or platforms.

According to Barr, we’re now entering the third of these technological epochs, which IDC has dubbed ‘The 3rd Platform’. Where the 1st Platform in the 1960s was typified by the dominance of the mainframe, and the 2nd Platform in the 1990s saw the rise of the client/server architecture, this 3rd Platform is characterised by (but not limited to) four primary components: mobile, cloud, big data and social technologies.

“The transition to the 3rd Platform will create another mass IT extinction event that will first sidestep and then wipe out many of the suppliers of today’s 2nd Platform technologies and services,” Barr writes.

That’s not to say older technologies are going anywhere - but “they are increasingly just being taken for granted and new spending on them is often made grudgingly.”

“The reality of this shift is that enterprises, organisations, and government will need to re-architect many aspects of their core business processes and networks.”

The NBN’s role

In Australia, the NBN will play a role in shaping the network.

“Realistically it is unlikely that any large-scale deployment of FTTN or other alternate technologies will take place during 2014 and building will only start to ramp up through 2015,” Barr notes, adding that “only 43% of premises will have 25 Mbps or better by 2016”.

This timeline, and the Coalition government’s multi-technology NBN model, will impact network planning for the many businesses that had been assuming NBN services would be offering high-speed access in the relatively near future, Barr says.

“Many businesses that do not currently have access to fibre access will turn to other technologies to upgrade their internet and network access.”

Organisations will become increasingly interested in Ethernet over Copper services, Barr says. These services provide symmetrical business-grade Ethernet via the existing copper network, by aggregating copper pairs. Service providers are offering solutions with maximum speeds of between 20 and 80 Mbps.

Internet of Things

The network will also be influenced by the continued expansion of the IoT; IDC expects that by 2020, the IoT will comprise 30 billion autonomously connected endpoints.

“The momentum for growth in 2014 from IoT will be driven by a number of factors, including the big technology providers pushing the agenda but also the ability of IoT technologies and solutions to dramatically change business models and the way cities function, driving an increasingly connected culture and population,” Barr writes.

The analyst predicts that IoT will fuel the emergence of partnerships between disparate vendors.

“New industry partnerships will emerge as traditional IT vendors build partnerships with key telco service providers and semiconductor vendors to create integrated offerings in the consumer electronics space.”

“The addition of billions of devices to the network edge will drive the need for more enterprise systems to deploy, manage and make use of these devices.”

The cloud, too, will influence the network in the years to come. The near future will see several changes in the cloud provider landscape.

“Cloud is a scale game, and players without massive scale will be uncompetitive,” Barr writes. IDC predicts that there will be only six to eight major global players in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) by 2017.

What Barr calls “cloud brokerage” will also become more important over time.

“Cloud brokers act on the customer’s behalf to assess the various offerings and help to advise on and aggregate what’s best for that organisation as well as what cloud options exist to suit that organisation’s needs. This makes it easier for companies to understand, integrate, build and maintain cloud services, particularly when they wish to use multiple providers and cloud services.”

Image courtesy Fabio Marini/Flickr.