MAY/JUNE 2014
+ the mag azine for ict professionals
LIFE in the CLOUD
Also: Workplace 2.0
Passive Optical LANs
Misunderestimating technology Formerly
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E D I TO R ’S N OT E
Innovate vs. Operate here is a similar theme in several of the articles that appear in this issue and it revolves around the need for an entire IT department to be aware of an organization’s short-term and long-term business goals. Earlier this year, results of the 17th Annual Global CEO conducted by PwC and released at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland revealed that a full 85% of those surveyed were confident in their revenue growth prospects this year. Closer to home, the consulting firm noted that while innovation and technology are “hot topics,” 69% of Canadian CEOs surveyed are concerned about the speed of technology change. That is a concern, particularly when you consider that, according to PwC, they need to be innovators and agents of change if they are to be successful in the rapidly evolving global economy. “While the government has a role to play in terms of supporting innovations – success will hinge on the ability of companies to look forward and take action, while recognizing and managing the inherent and potentially costly risks associated
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with technology change,” the firm stated. “More important than implementing the latest and greatest technology is implementing the right technology to achieve a company’s strategic objectives.” As Michael Cremen, executive vice president of global sales with Hitachi Data Systems, put it at the recent launch of the company’s Continuous Cloud Infrastructure (see p. 16), the business unit today dictates what technology is needed and what it wants, which represents a major shift in who will ultimately control the overall IT spend. Technology for the sake of technology simply does not cut it anymore. “To stay competitive and become digital disruptors in industries that have gone through years of disruption from new entrants, CEOs need to become more engaged in creating and implementing their digital strategies with their IT teams,” said Stephen Gardiner, managing director of Accenture Digital, Canada in an article that appears on p. 17 that points out that Canadian CEOs have an edge over their counterparts elsewhere when it comes to the adoption of mobile technologies.” In our cover story, AJ Byers, president of Rogers Data Centres, states that the “biggest transformation we are seeing is that CIOs and IT leaders need to spend the vast majority of their time with the lines of business that they support. “The term we use innovate vs. operate. We think that operate should be outsourced and innovate should be your strategic comparative inside your organization.” C+
w w w. c o n n e c t i o n s p l u s . c a
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Formerly
Volume 1, Issue 3 May/June 2014
Magazine
the mag azine for ict professionals
Editor Paul Barker 416-510-6752 pbarker@connectionsplus.ca Senior Publisher Maureen Levy 416-510-5111 mlevy@connectionsplus.ca Advertising Sales Manager Vince Naccarato 416-510-5118 vnaccarato@connectionsplus.ca Art Director Mary Peligra Production Manager Karen Samuels
Vice President Alex Papanou President Bruce Creighton Editorial Advisory Board Keith Fortune, CET, Western Regional Manager, Electron Metal AIG Inc. Henry Franc, RCDD/OSP Senior Account Manager, Professional Support at Belden
Creative Advertising Services Mike Chimienti
Brantz Myers, B.Sc Math and Computing Science Director of Healthcare Business Development - Cisco Systems Canada Co.
Circulation Manager Barbara Adelt 416-442-5600 ext. 3546 badelt@bizinfogroup.ca
Peter Sharp, RCDD, AMIEE Senior Telecommunications Consultant • Giffels Associates Limited/IBI Group
Print Production Manager Phyllis Wright
Alex Smith, President • Connectivitywerx
Advertising Sales Maureen Levy www.connectionsplus.ca
Rob Stevenson, RCDD/NTS Specialist Communications Division Manager • Guild Electric Ltd.
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Subscriptions Canada, 1 year $44.95 + taxes (HST #890939689). United States U.S. $46.95. Foreign U.S. $73.95. Single copy in Canada $8, in USA $10 US, elsewhere $10 US. Printed in Canada All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced either in part or in full without the consent of the copyright owner(s). ISSN: 2292-2202 (Print) ISSN: 2292-2210 (Online) Postal information Return undeliverable mail to Circulation Dept., Connections Plus, 80 Valleybrook Drive, Toronto, ON Canada M3B 2S9. Canada Post Canadian Publication Mail Agreement No.40069240. From time to time we make our subscription list available to select companies and organizations whose product or service may interest you. If you do not wish your contact information to be made available, please contact us via one of the following methods. Phone: 1-800-668-2374 Fax: 416-442-2200 E-Mail: jhunter@businessinformationgroup.ca Mail to: Privacy Officer,2014 80 ValleybrookConnections+ Drive, Toronto, ON Canada M3B 2S94 Jan/Feb
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N E W S – I n f ras t ru c t u re S y s t e m s
The Millennial Factor An initiative called Workplace 2.0 could change more than the look of a typical office. It could impact entire industries. By Pau l Ba rk e r
Vancouver – A federal government’s initiative called Workplace 2.0 will provide both opportunities and challenges for architects, builders and anyone who specializes in cable design and installation. According to Robert Horne, executive vice president and cofounder of the Attain Group, an Ottawa-based professional engineering firm, this is a major project with far reaching implications and is just at the start of the implementation stage. Horne, who spoke about Workplace 2.0 here at the recent BICSI Canada Conference, had this advice for his audience: Start thinking about wireless because structured cabling may simply not work in office space designs that will cater to young Canadians about to enter the work force or soon will be. The federal government-wide workplace renewal is being lead by Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC), a department that has 1,843 locations across the country, employs upwards of 265,000 people and has a market value estimated at $5.9 billion. “They are the largest real estate firm in the country,” said Horne. “It is a huge, huge portfolio. This (Workplace 2.0) will just not impact offices in Ottawa, but will impact any Public Works building across the country.”
The Canadian CommTech East show made its debut in April at the Mississauga Convention Centre and attracted 80+ exhibitors involved in the ICT field including Transglobal Systems of Canada Inc. Shown at the TSOC booth are company president Imran Hasan (r.),and Philip McCord, the firm’s head of business development.
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The purpose of Workplace 2.0, a PWGSC fact sheet states, is to modernize how the public service works. The document itself demands a number of new workplace advancements and initiatives including: • Furnishings that enhance flexibility, mobility and collaboration. Furniture design will include more pod layout and collaborative areas. • The addition of sound masking systems to control noise levels • The installation of low-panel workstations. A reductions in the amount of file cabinets and overhead storage bins required to house files and binders • Collaborative space be made available for casual meetings and team activities. “The objective is to create a modern workplace that will attract, retain and enable public servants to work smarter, greener and healthier to better serve Canadians,” PWGSC states. “Workplace 2.0 will accomplish this by modernizing the physical aspects of the workspace, updating policies, processes and systems that support public servants in their work, and providing new technologies that allow them to connect, collaborate and communicate across government and with Canadians.” Demographics will play a key role. Workplace 2.0 is all about the Internet generation known as Millennials – born anywhere between the early 1980s to late 1990s – for their work demands are going to be far different than their parents and grandparents. They will also rule. It is estimated that by 2030, millennials in Canada will outnumber Baby Boomers by 22 million. Workplace 2.0, PWSGC said, addresses three main elements: the physical workspace, the supporting policies and systems to assist public servants in their work and the “new technologies,” which enable them to communicate and collaborate in new ways. To that end, the physical design will change considerably. As for technology, it added, secure wireless, VoIP and high-definition videoconference systems will provide employees with more flexibility to work from different locations. What that all means, said Horne, is a workspace that is not only attractive, open and dynamic, but also void of cable pathways: “They do not want to see them. The bottom line is that they don’t want to see anything.” “My view on this is that wireless is a reality and even though there are concerns about throughput and security we are going to see more and more of it.” www.connectionsplus.ca
Infra s t ruct ure Sy stems – NEWS
Fluke makes IoT ‘useful to maintenance technicians’ The Fluke Connect system, which was announced recently by Fluke Corp., allows maintenance technicians to wirelessly transmit measurement data from their test tools to their smart phones for secure storage on the cloud and universal team access from the field, the company says. Upwards of 20+ Fluke tools connect wirelessly with the app, including digital multimeters, infrared cameras, insulation testers, process meters, and specific voltage, current and temperature models. Fluke said one of its goals with the launch is to salvage wasted data: “The vast majority of handheld test tool measurements are taken in the moment and never recorded. The short term purpose (inspect, repair, commission) is fulfilled, but the longer-term opportunity of collecting measurement data per machine is lost.” Leah Friberg, a Fluke spokesperson, said the system makes use of the smart phone interface to display data in a way that a “test tool really should never have to do because that is what a smartphone is for.” According to a Fluke release, technicians can AutoRecord measurements and infrared images to Fluke Cloud storage from wherever they are working, without writing anything down. Also, everyone on the team with a smart phone and the app can see the data. As for any security concerns, Friberg summed it up this way: “There are two schools of operational thought right now. Utilizing the cloud and relying on the security built into that and using internal networks. Obviously the message is very, very clear that third-party access to internal networks is dangerous and yet data needs to be shared sometimes between service providers and internal systems. That is much bigger conversation than Fluke, which makes us feel quite happy that we are safely on the cloud side now ...” Further information is available at www.flukeconnect.com
Fiber optic test equipment’s future bright: Frost & Sullivan: The future of fiber optics is being shaped by the need for higher bandwidth, signal rates, and on-chip connections. Technologies such as fiber-to-the-antenna (FTTA), long term evolution (LTE) deployments along with 100 and 400 Gig installations are bolstering the global fiber optic test equipment market. A new report from Frost & Sullivan entitled Analysis of the Global Fiber Optic Test Equipment Market, finds that the market earned revenue of US$603.8 million in 2013 and estimates this to reach US$884.9 million in 2020. The fiber inspection probe is an emerging product that accounted for approximately US$45 million in sales during 2013 and continues to grow at a significant pace. Integrated or platform-based test products, in particular, are gaining momentum for their ability to perform more than one type of test using the same test equipment. Fiber penetration is increasing in the broadband and access space with significant roll-outs in mobility through FTTA, fiber-tothe-tower (FTTT), distributed antenna systems (DAS), and cloud or centralized-radio access networks (CRAN), the research firm said. Further information is available at www.testandmeasurement.frost.com.
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N E W S – I n f ras t ru c t u re S y s t e m s
BICSI BULLETIN
How far ahead of the curve are you? By Peter Levoy
t was a pleasure to see so many of you at the recent Canadian BICSI Conference in Vancouver. I was impressed with the presentations and the knowledgesharing that I experienced. I am also confident that attendees went away with a little bit more knowledge and insight into their businesses as a result. If you did not get a chance to attend the presentation by Robert Horne of The Attain Group in Ottawa on “Workplace 2.0 - The Government of Canada’s New Initiative and Its Impact on Our Industry,” you truly missed an informative presentation on the Government’s drive to modernize how the public service works will impact our industry and where we can prepare to meet those challenges. Horne discussed the new opportunities created by moving to more open work areas, using demountable wall systems and lower panel heights. He highlighted the introduction of secure Wi-Fi and
I Peter Levoy, RCDD, is the Canadian Region Director of BICSI and the vice president of channel sales with Anixter Canada Inc.’s Enterprise Cabling Solutions division.
the drive to provide employees with more flexibility to work from different locations means looking at more than just cabling to a workstation or Access Point. In addition to Horne’s presentation, conference attendees seemed to enjoy the presentation on “Building Information Technology: Designing Better, Faster and Smarter with BIM,” presented by Jon Melchin of FSR Inc., in North Andover, Mass. Melchin provided a look into building information modeling (BIM) and how this technology has changed the way that architecture is practiced. He highlighted how 3D modeling and design tool can facilitate collaboration of various project team members to share information about a building, its components and the energy efficient performance of the intelligent environment. BIM impacts audiovisual and presentation technologies incorporated into structures was also discussed as
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Infra s t ruct ure Sy stems – NEWS
”
In light of all the knowledge that was gained at the conference, it may help to ask yourself: do you and your staff and co-workers remain current with the ever-changing and evolving information and communications technology (ICT) industry standards and best practices?
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It was not all work in Vancouver. Nedco orgaanized a great event called A Night Of Classics, which featured a talk by former NHL great Mike Bossy followed by an autograph session and music by indie pop artist T-Riley.
well as a case study. In light of all the knowledge that was gained at the conference, it may help to ask yourself: do you and your staff and co-workers remain current with the ever-changing and evolving information and communications technology (ICT) industry standards and best practices? With the advancement of these standards and best practices over the past few years, I am certain that ensuring that you remain relevant to your customers is a high priority. If you or your company are involved with any type of communication transfer, be it designing, deploying or maintaining wireless infrastructure, outside plant, physical security or card access, PON or a complete data centre, you need to have the most up-to-date information and knowledge available. BICSI members are asking that we stay ahead of the curve and ensure that we are tapping into the brightest minds within our membership in order to produce the most relevant standards, manuals and training possible.
We recognize that the IP world is turning faster and with it the demand to remain relevant to you, our members. That said, it is important that you are aware that over the past several months, BICSI has increased headcount in key areas of professional development and training delivery and operations. To quote BICSI president Michael Collins, “as a board, we have placed an emphasis on BICSI being the industry leader for credentialing and curriculum.” In order to ensure BICSI continues to be your source for knowledge and education related to the ICT industry, we are enhancing the methods of how we create course material and changing our delivery methods. Look for these developments to be implemented in the coming months. Finally, visit www.bicsi.org/canada to view the list of upcoming region meetings being held across Canada this year. Relevant topic presentations will be delivered by knowledgeable industry experts. I hope to see you all at one or more of these educational events.
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May/June 2014
Connections+
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N E W S – I n f ras t ru c t u re S y s t e m s
STANDARDS
A revolution in wireless technology By Paul Kish
he IEEE 802.11ac wireless LAN specification was published in January this year. Compared to the previous generation 802.11n standard, it provides up to a three-fold increase in the data throughput for current generation 802.11ac devices and potentially up to a 10-fold increase in data throughput for future 802.11ac devices. The maximum theoretical data throughput with all the optional features implemented is 6.77 Gb/s. IEEE 802.11ac WLAN uses the frequency band between 5.17 GHz and 5.33 GHz and can accommodate 8 x 20 MHz or 4 x 40 MHz or 2 x 80 MHz channels or one 160 MHz channel. Table 1 below provides a summary of the data throughput as a function of: 1) the number of spatial data streams, 2) the channel spectral width in MHz, and 3) the modulation scheme.
Channel spectral width
Spatial Streaming
What about the cabling?
Spatial streaming is the principle behind multiple-inputmultiple-output (MIMO) technology. In a MIMO environment, multiple signals are transmitted simultaneously from one device using different antennas. These signals are multiplexed using different spaces within the same spectral channel. These spaces are known as spatial streams. 802.11n allows up to four spatial streams, whereas 802.11ac increases the number up to eight streams. Most 802.11ac devices in the market today are limited to 3 spatial streams.
For the rest of this article, I will address the cabling requirements to support IEEE 802.11ac Wireless Access Points (WAPs). In order to meet the high data throughput shown in Table 1, a 10 Gigabit Ethernet connection would be ideal for this application. In researching different brands of WAPs on the market, I did not find any Access Points with 10 GigE connections. The Access Points required either one or two Gigabit Ethernet connections. The Access Points with the two GigE connections implemented a 3X3 MIMO with 3 Spatial Streams to support all existing Wi-Fi client devices (both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). One reason for this may be the requirements for remote powering. Power over Ethernet switches or Midspan power injectors are not available today for 10GBASE-T links, but this will change in the future. There is a new IEEE 802.3 “4PPoE” Study Group that is looking into amending Clause 33 of the IEEE Std 802.3-2012 to include 4-pair powering, which is a more efficient way to power devices using all 4-pairs in the cable. A key objective of this study group is to support operation of 4PPoE with10GBASE-T. Even though 4PPoE is not available today for 10GBASET, it still makes sense to install at least one Category 6A cable run for each 802.11ac wireless access point. Category 6A cables will be needed to support the next generation of 802.11ac devices and would facilitate the migration path for these devices. C+
T
Paul Kish is Director, Systems and Standards at Belden. The information presented is the author’s view and is not official TIA correspondence.
Table 1 – Data Rates for different wireless configurations Channel spectral No. of spatial width (MHz) streams 1 20 1 40 2 40 4 40 1 80 2 80 3 80 4 80 1 160* 4 160* 8* 160*
802.11ac Modulation MCS 8/9* 86.7 Mb/s 200 Mb/s 400 Mb/s 800 Mb/s 433 Mb/s 867 Mb/s 1.3 Gb/s 1.69 Gb/s 867 Mb/s 3.39 Gb/s 6.77 Gb/s
* Optional feature
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802.11n Modulation MCS 7 72.3 Mb/s 150 Mb/s 300 Mb/s 600 Mb/s N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
For most implementations today, 802.11ac devices use a channel width of 80 MHz compared to 40 MHz for 802.11n, which effectively doubles the data rate. In addition, the IEEE 802.11ac specification adds the option of providing a channel bandwidth of 160 MHz with contiguous and noncontiguous 80+80 MHz channel bonding.
Modulation Scheme IEEE 802.11ac uses a more efficient modulation scheme MCS 8/9 (256QAM), which provides an additional 33% improvement in data rate for the same channel spectral width compared to 802.11n, which uses a less efficient MCS 7 (64QAM) modulation scheme. There is a lot more to IEEE 802.11ac technology than summarized above. The reader is invited to consult various helpful references via a Google search of the standard.
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N et w o r ks & T h e C l o u d
Committing to SDN Many organizations are banking big time on this emerging network architecture B y Pa u l B a rker
Las Vegas – Joel Godbout, the networking and communications team lead for PCL Constructors Inc., North America’s fifth largest construction company, is a true believer in Software-Defined Networks or SDN. With over 200 job sites spread out across North America in operation at any one time, keeping each operational from a networking perspective is critical, he said at an end-user panel organized by HP during the recent Interop Las Vegas IT Conference and Expo. In his role, Godbout manages a team of six who according to HP, run all aspects of the network across PCL’s 30 large/district and regional offices as well as each of the sites. “We have to provide communications, routing, switching and security out to all of these locations,” he said. “They go up and down. It seems every week we have a couple of sites finishing and others just starting.” The employee-owned company is in the midst of a massive expansion launched in the post-recession period. To coincide with the growth – PCL’s goal is to become a $10 billion construction company – it has invested heavily in technology and is currently in the process of an expansion at its Edmonton head office, which also contains an accompanying data centre. “We are building a new data centre as a result of the growth and replaced all of our switching infrastructure at our construction job sites,” said Godbout. “The commitment to SDN is important. We need to be future-proof and make sure whatever we purchase today is still going to be relevant two or three years down the road. “I am looking forward to SDN applications that can make the network more intelligent.” Kash Shaikh, senior director of product and technical marketing for HP Networking, conceded during the user panel that while networks traditionally have been viewed as “a cost centre for decades,” today, IT is being asked to do more with less. 12
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On the left, PCL Constructors Inc. head office and data centre in Edmonton is undergoing an expansion, while on the right, delegates to the Interop Las Vegas and IT Conference and Expo enter the exhibit area. SDN was discussed at length on both the show floor and in various presentations.
At Interop, HP announced new cloud-managed, SDN-enabled unified wired and wireless network products it said are designed to help organizations increase the agility of their network, while simplifying its management. The new offerings include the HP Cloud Managed Network Solution, IEEE 802.11ac wireless access points and SDN applications that are now part of the company’s unified wired and wireless portfolio. “Our customers are telling us that their networks are primarily cost centres that are too complex to manage, while they are at the same time facing increasing end-user demand for a better mobile experience,” said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president and general manager of HP’s networking business unit. According to the company, the HP 560 and 517 IEEE 802.11ac wireless access points enable organizations to support the growing number of mobile devices, while improving the user experience with speeds three times faster than 802.11n. To bridge the gap between wired and wireless control, new controller appliances were also introduced. These include the HP 870 Unified Wired-WLAN Appliance that supports up to 30,000 devices. For midsize to large enterprises, the HP 850 Unified Wired-WLAN Appliance supports up to 10,000 devices. In a report released in 2013, 451 Research noted that SDN emerged with a “bang three ago, quickly turning the networking infrastructure into one of the hottest technical and investment topics in IT. OpenFlow, a revolutionary implementation architecture for networking started it all, but has failed to live up to initial expectations. www.connectionsplus.ca
Ne t wo r ks & The Cloud
“SDN is being driven by the rapid evolution in data centre IT and the requirements this creates for evolution in data centre networking. Legacy network architecture is seriously constrained in dealing with scale and virtual endpoints, and solving these problems requires either the migration of network function to software running outside the physical network, or the basic architectural improvement of the physical network.” The research firm added that the SDN energy has now spread beyond OpenFlow into new areas including virtual networking and network function virtualization (NFV). On the first day of the conference, Eric Hanselman, chief analyst with 451 Research, moderated a panel on SDN involving Arpit Joshipura, vice president of product management and marketing for Dell Networking, Steve Shah, senior director of product management at Citrix Systems Inc. and Dominic Wilde, vice president of global product line management with HP Networking. “There is a still a sense of healthy skepticism about where SDN is going,” said Hanselman. “If you look at the move to SDN there have been a lot of stumbling blocks. A lack of understanding has been one of the issues and the haze of all the hype has confused what the realities are. How do you move forward?” The industry, said Wilde, has moved beyond the pieces and parts. “The discussion over the past couple of years has been around controllers and protocols. Now customers are running SDN live on their networks,” he said. “The good thing is we have moved beyond
Interop panelists from l. to r. Eric Hanselman, chief analyst with 451 Research, Dominic Wilde with HP, Steve Shah with Citrix Systems and Arpit Joshipura with Dell Networks are shown discussing the current state of SDN.
the data centre conversation. I think the industry got a little obsessed with SDN just being about network virtualization in the data centre. “The huge potential for SDN is to go way beyond the data centre. There are many things we can do in terms of new security models, better business experience, better QOS, better deployments models in the branch and the campus. People are starting to see the potential and realize that they can really simplify how they operate a network.” Shah, meanwhile, said there are tangible products in existence, which is critical. Arpit agreed adding “we have real deployments with real customers solving real problems and getting the agility and automation that the network deserved in the first place.”
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May/June 2014
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N et w o r ks & T h e C l o u d
A brand new old idea updated Passive Optical LANs: The technology is sound and the future looks promising. By Jim Hayes
Optical LANs are big news these days, especially the ones based on FTTH passive optical networks. But did you know this idea has been around for decades? Thirty years ago, a small company called Codenoll introduced a unique fiber optic local area network (LAN). Instead of just using fiber connections to hubs or switches, Codenet used an optical splitter to direct signals to all connected devices. It worked just like an electronic network hub but it was totally passive, no power required. This design became the first standardized fiber optic network, FOIRL or 10Base-Fx. Alas, this was about the same time as LANs discovered how to transmit high speeds over twisted pair and the cheaper copper alternative won total market acceptance. For the next two decades, LANs were built out of wire and cable derived from traditional telephone networks, although they were developed to handle digital networks at up to 10 gigabits/second, an enormous development from analog POTs (Plain Old Telephone Service) lines operating at up to 4 kilohertz! In the same time period, the old copper telephone system had been converting from copper to fiber optics, starting with the long distance links where fiber’s tremendous advantages in distance and
Block diagram of a passive optical LAN, showing how there is no electronics between the computer room and the work area.
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bandwidth made it much cheaper than copper, satellite or wireless. Once long haul links were converted, fiber made inroads to metropolitan phone systems, linking central offices and many big office buildings and business parks. It took a long time for fiber to be considered for replacing the final copper link to the home. The demand for higher speed on Internet connections to the home, the willingness subscribers to pay for both faster speeds and new services like IPTV and the falling cost of hardware led to widespread FTTH deployments. It was not too long before some IT consultants realized that a FTTH PON network could just as easily be used for enterprise LANs. It could deliver triple play services (telephone, Internet and TV) or it could deliver just Ethernet, depending on the user. After a few design proposals, the advantages of these designs became obvious. The optical LANs (OLANs) based on PONs (sometimes called POL for passive optical LAN) were substantially cheaper than traditional LANs, required much less space in buildings, were easier to manage and used much, much less power. The first few installations were done mainly in U.S. government and military facilities where the savings in costs were important, as were energy savings to meet green building goals. But like most government and military installations, fiber was preferred because of security issues; mainly it’s resistance to jamming or tapping. Once potential customers understood these optical LANs, other large network users began installing them, including hotels, schools, libraries and other public buildings. The uniqueness of these networks, however, requires some work to fully comprehend what is being proposed to replace a legacy LAN. Passive optical LANs (POLs) are not cabling. In the OSI network model, cabling is the first level. POLs are first and second level solutions, since they include the network connectivity (Ethernet) as well as cabling. Comparing a POL to fiber optic cabling plus media converters as some have done is an incomplete viewpoint, as a POL includes much more intelligence. A POL LAN is very similar to a FTTH system in a multi-dwelling building or complex of buildings. Each subscriber has an electronic box called an ONT (optical network terminal) that provides the conversion from fiber to standard interfaces. In FTTH, the ONT is typically “triple play” – phone, TV and Internet. In a POL, the ONT can have triple play if it is part of a college dormitory system or hotel, but an enterprise network is more likely to include an Ethernet switch and 4 gigabit Ethernet ports for the work area. Even ONTs with dozwww.connectionsplus.ca
Ne t wo rks & T he Cloud – NEWS
SD Library Tellabs OLT: In the computer room at the San Diego library, this is what an OLT serving 4000 ports looks like.
ens of POTs phone connections are available for users who still use POTS phones. The OLT in the computer room is a big change from typical IT systems. In a couple of feet of rack space, it combines routers to connect to the outside world, ports for servers and storage and ports for thousands of users, with each user port typically capable of handling 128 users with gigabit Ethernet connections. In some installations I have visited, one OLT replaces racks of switches. The “secret ingredient” of the OLT is the unique passive optical network architecture. By using the bandwidth of singlemode fiber and wavelength division multiplexing, the OLT transmits bidirectionally on one fiber through a passive optical splitter that connects up to 32 ONTs to one port on the OLT. Downstream the splitter splits the signal into 32 fibers serving up to 32 ONTs with up to 4 users each, 128 users in total. Upstream the splitter becomes a combiner, allowing all 32 ONTs to share one port. Since the downstream signals are sent to all ONTs, signals are encrypted for privacy, a plus for government, military and generally skeptical users. Between the OLT and ONT, the optical signals are generally using the GPON standard (ITU-T G.984) although it’s possible to also use EPON (Ethernet PON, IEEE 802.3ah/av). The FTTH PON standards are much more than regular Ethernet, including some very sophisticated network management necessary for efficient management of networks with very large numbers of users. POL Cabling Is Different Quite different! The only UTP copper is the patchcord connecting the ONT to wired devices, usually desktop PCs, wireless access points, IP CCTV cameras, or other Ethernet compatible devices. From the OLT, we need only one singlemode fiber to each splitter and one singlemode fiber to each ONT connected to the splitter. In the www.connectionsplus.ca
telecom room, there are no powered switches, in fact, there is no electronics anywhere between the OLT and ONT, only fiber and the splitters. In fact, you do not need a telecom room as the splitters are small and can be mounted on a wall, above a ceiling or anywhere convenient. Not only is there no need for UTP cables, the POL architecture requires many fewer fibers than a typical multimode centralized fiber networks. Pathways and spaces are minimized with so few fibers being required, a real advantage in upgrading older buildings. Singlemode fiber may be new to many users and installers, but in some ways, it is easier to install than multimode. Cables may be purchased pre-terminated in a factory and only need installation. If field termination is chosen, the prepolished/splice connectors used for FTTH have proven to be easy to install and inexpensive. Special small cables have also been developed for FTTH that use bend-insensitive fibers which can be bent around corners and installed in places that other cables are too big and bulky to be used easily. What About Contractors? Yes, indeed there is much less cabling to install so there is less work for the installer, which leads them to worry about their income. But most contractors who have installed POLs are moving up to also installing the POL electronics that recoups the lost revenue and more. Will POLs Take Over The World? Not yet, or at least not immediately. To date, the savings have been realized only on larger LANs. Until POL equipment becomes available for small numbers of users, POLs cannot compete with the traditional copper LAN. But the technology is sound and the future looks promising. Jim Hayes is a writer and educator and the president of The Fiber Optic Association. He can be found at www.jimhayes.com. May/June 2014
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N E W S – Ne t w o rk s & T h e C l o u d
HDS launches Continuous Cloud Infrastructure Shown at a Q&A session following the launch are from l. to r. Michael Cremen, executive vice president of global sales with HDS, Miki Sandorf, the firm’s vice president of Cloud, Shawn Rosemarin, executive director of architecture and services with VMware and David Parker, global vice president for Big Data with SAP.
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Hitachi Data Systems Corp. (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., has I can’t come in to announced new technology it said provides a closer link bethe organization and tween a “company’s business and technology objectives that rip and replace in demands a more responsive IT foundation.” order to turbo charge Called “Continuous Cloud Infrastructure,” according to an environment. HDS it is an “architecture” that quickly reacts to changing There has to be a needs without continual redesign and disruption. two-lane highway. Launched was the Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS), Virtual Storage Platform G1000, a new version of the Command Suite management platform and upgrades to the Unified Compute Platform converged computing offerings. “Our customers across industries have told us that to keep up with the frenetic pace of business they are aligning the IT and business functions more closely than ever,” said Brian Householder, chief operating officer at HDS.
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“In order to execute in this business defined world, IT teams are looking to new infrastructure strategies to deploy more continuous, adaptable and scalable infrastructure. Businesses need solutions that do not require constant and disruptive changes to the technology they support.” SVOS and the VSP G1000 are certified in initiatives such as Microsoft Private Cloud deployments, SAP HANA and VMware environments. At the recent launch in Toronto, Shawn Rosemarin, executive director of architectures and services with VMware, pointed out that there are some “great ways to run applications today” if built from the ground up. “But the reality is we have moved from the mainframe era to the client-server era and then the X-86 era and now to the cloud,” he said. “Some of the most core applications are business applications that need to stay on the platform they are on because that is the platform they have lived on and the platform they were built for.” David Parker, global vice president for Big Data with SAP, said in order for any organization to be successful its executive team needs to know what has happened in the past in order to determine what they need in the future. “I can’t come in to the organization and rip and replace in order to turbo charge an environment. There has to be a two-lane highway, one in which (an organization) can continue on an existing path and then ride right over to the new innovation when it is convenient for them to do so.” www.connectionsplus.ca
M o b i le M o vemen ts – NEWS
Mobile mindset change needed by Canadian CEOs: Accenture Canadian companies have a leading edge over their counterparts in other countries when it comes to the adoption of mobile technology, but an increase in senior executive sponsorship is required to enable them to become major disruptors among their competitors, the Accenture Mobility Insights Report 2014 has found. Almost all Canadian enterprise respondents (85%) have effectively adopted and deployed mobile technologies, markedly higher than the average global response of 69% among 14 other countries surveyed, Accenture noted. Despite this, it added, there is an opportunity for Canadian organizations to leapfrog international competitors, as currently less than one-third (31%) of Canadian respondents reported that their chief executive is directly involved in mobility strategy, slightly lower than the global average of 35%. “To stay competitive and become digital disruptors in industries that have gone through years of disruption from new entrants, CEOs need to become more engaged in creating and implementing their digital strategies with their IT teams,” said Stephen Gardiner, managing director of Accenture Digital, Canada. “The entire business strategy must be fully aligned and integrated in order to take advantage of digital technologies, including continuing the strategic shift to mobile that Canadian businesses are doing so well at.
“Mobile, cloud, social and analytics are rapidly – and permanently – transforming industries. Every business is now a digital business, and leaders who understand this and use it to capitalize on the benefits of digital are most likely to succeed in the long term.” Gardiner added that the percentage of CEOs actively involved in the mobile strategy of their companies was “consistent with global results,” but well back of other leading geographies.” As an example, in the U.S. that figure exceeds 50%, but in Canada it hovers at around only 30%. “The joint impact of mobile and social will have an impact on many if not most markets,” said Gardiner. “Such a low level of CEO involvement puts entire businesses at risk of being disrupted. Certainly, it almost prevents those businesses from being disruptors. “There is massive value to be had and it is not just in the business-to- consumer space. It is far more pervasive than that, which is why our industry review is as broad as it is.” Accenture conducted the study between the December and January with 1,475 executives from 10 industries participating. In Canada, 150 C-level executives were surveyed. The 10 were automotive, banking, communications, consumer goods and services, electronics and high technology, energy, healthcare providers, insurance, retail and utilities.
ITU releases 2014 ICT figures New figures released by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) indicate that, by the end of this year, there will be almost 3 billion Internet users, two-thirds of them coming from the developing world, and that the number of mobile-broadband subscriptions will reach 2.3 billion globally. “The newly released ICT figures confirm once again that information and communication technologies continue to be the key drivers of the information society,” said ITU secretary-general Hamadoun Touré. By the end of 2014, there will be about 100 million fewer fixedtelephone subscriptions than in 2009. Mobile-cellular subscriptions, meanwhile, will reach almost 7 billion by the end 2014, and 3.6 billion of these will be in the AsiaPacific region. The increase is mostly due to growth in the developing world where mobile-cellular subscriptions will account for 78% of the world’s total.
www.connectionsplus.ca
BY THE END OF 2014 THERE WILL BE ALMOST 3 BILLION INTERNET USERS
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N E W S – M o bi l e M o v e m e n t s
vs. C
O
P
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There is an upside and a downside to both strategies By C h ri s Th i e rr y
Mobility strategy can be a confounding question for owners and managers alike. While there are myriad ways to manage mobility, two in particular have become popular in recent years: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Corporate Owned Personally Enabled (COPE). There are pros and cons to each approach. Hopefully this piece clarifies these strategies and the decision. Let’s look first at BYOD. Under BYOD, employees use their personal mobile devices for work while the company is responsible for the cost. Research reveals that by 2016, 38% of companies expect to stop providing workplace devices to employees and by 2017, half of employers will require their employees to supply their own devices. Why do certain employees respond well to BYOD? For one thing, it is about the consumerization of technol18
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ogy. According to a Gartner survey, 58.7% of employees own their smartphones, 57.7% own their laptops and 33.1% own their tablets. Tech is for the everyman these days and has become cachet. It is hard for some people not to show off their latest gadget purchase. The second factor is familiarity. According to the same Gartner survey, employees believe that BYOD reduces usage costs simply because they would be more productive and efficient using mobile devices and apps they themselves purchased. Perception can become reality. The downsides of BYOD However, BYOD raises some serious security and manageability concerns. Telecom and IT assets tend to be a black hole in many organizations; statistics show that 52% of IT and technology managers from big North American firms monitor less than 25% of their companies’ active smartphones and tablets in real-time. Moreover, only 9% of IT managers have been able to monitor 75-100% of their mobile devices. www.connectionsplus.ca
M o b i le M o vemen ts – NEWS
Obviously, a lack of monitoring and security increases the risks that stem from mobile device loss/theft. The lost or stolen device may contain sensitive and confidential corporate data, which is dangerous, since only one in four devices can be remotely wiped clean. Additionally, BYOD can lead to the blurring of the personal and the professional. This could lead to legal issues of privacy among employees, which in turn engender overspending for companies. Meanwhile, under COPE a company enables employees’ personal use of mobile devices owned and supplied by the company. COPE is intended to provide employees with flexibility, while allowing the company to retain higher IT control. The key difference between BYOD and COPE is in the management of (primarily personal) data on the device. How does it work? Employees are allowed to ‘personalize’ companyowned devices by installing their own applications and storing a variety of documents. However, because the company retains ownership, it can wipe it or revoke access should there be security threats. What can COPE mean for employees? Depending on the degree of latitude given to employees, devices can be used for personal tasks such as e-mail, media, social media, and texting – all of which boost their satisfaction and consequently, work productivity. In this, COPE has similar benefits to BYOD if (a big if) the company takes a hands-off approach to restricting employee behaviours. However, employer access of personal information can obviously become a thorny issue. How does COPE benefit companies? Greater security. This is perhaps the biggest upside of COPE. An organization can monitor and protect devices, and can remotely wipe a device in the event of theft. It can check for malware and dangerous applications, sending warnings about certain apps to the device owner. Moreover, device controls can be set to restrict data availability to set parameters. Lower cost. The company has more control over costs and can negotiate better contracts with wireless carriers. Reduced legal liability. Employers can wipe out data in case of theft or loss of a device because it owns the device. Simpler IT management. In general, a company can more easily manage devices under COPE. Beyond the obvious requirement that the company must have a very clear, transparent, and extremely well-enforced usage policy in place, COPE only really works well when the company enables and sustains a culture of trust with its employees. In the end, maintaining the balance between security, the right flow of information and employee satisfaction have to be the guiding factors in developing a strategy. A hybrid cross between both BYOD and COPE could also be the best choice for your organization. Chris Thierry, is the president and founder of Etelesolv, a provider of telecom and IT expense management software based in Montreal. His team recently developed the new platform, Cimpl, which helps organization connect information, clarify the data and gain control over their assets. He can be reached at cthierry@etelesolv.com.
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What types of organizations benefit most from BYOD? Size matters. BYOD is not for everyone. It works well for small organizations, but not large ones. Low(-er) security requirements. BYOD creates a more porous mobile strategy and so it is not for organizations that prioritize high degrees of security. Fitted for the Role. BYOD can be tailored in accordance to the role of an employee in an organization. It is better suited to the administrative role that does not have a mobile phone as a primary number than a road warrior contacted regularly by clients. Remote work environments. BYOD tends to work well in organizations with remote work environments. Employees who operate in virtual environments rely entirely on their devices to perform routine tasks, and so getting them devices they are accustomed to using can be a big boost to productivity. BYOD success is more likely when the firm pays a portion of device cost (responsibility is shared between employer and employee). When organization and employee share costs there must be a very clear, transparent, and extremely well-enforced usage policy in place. In this, a culture of communication and transparency is required for BYOD to succeed.
BYOD Pros: Increased employee satisfaction Increased employee work flexibility Increased employee productivity Possibility of reduced cost for employer
BYOD Cons: Security: Risk of loss or breach of company data Employee privacy breach System manageability Blurred line between work and personal
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N E W S – M o bi l e M o v e m e n t s
New tools for the worker bees Cisco launches Android-based collaboration devices, new cloud-based meeting space
Cisco Systems Inc. has launched three new personal collaboration tools, which it says are designed to help get collaborative work done without technology hassles getting in the way. Two of these tools sit on the physical desktop and one resides in the cloud. “People who are working together on the same team or task are not necessarily on the same continent let alone in the same room – but they need to feel as if they are so they can do their best, most inspired work,” the company said in a release issued at the Cisco Live 2014 user conference in May in San Francisco. “Now more than ever, businesses must provide every worker – not just top executives – with tools that allow them to collaborate at a moment’s notice, without technology hassles, so they can get work done. Excellent collaboration technology for all is no longer a “nice to have” – it’s a “must have. “Business success relies upon this – both today and tomorrow, as future generations will continue to push the envelope in terms of where, when, and how work gets done.” Launched were: • The DX70 and DX80 desktop collaboration devices. The Android-based DX70 and DX80 streamline and simplify work lives by providing access to all the top tools and applications highly collaborative work require, Cisco says. • The IP Phone 8800 audio IP phone series. It includes USB ports on select models for mobile-device charging, and Cisco Intelligent Proximity for Mobile Voice so workers can import contacts and call history or move the audio path of a voice or video call-in-progress from their mobile device to their 8800 Series desk phone. 20
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The DX70 desktop collaboration device is shown in a desktop setting in the photo on the left. Above, Rowan Trollope, who heads up Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group told Connections+ recently that the “consumerization of IT is one of the underlying factors of everything that I am doing.” He also wonders why the most advanced products cannot seem to do the simplest of things.
• Collaboration Meeting Rooms (CMRs), which provide users a “personal, private, always-available video collaboration space in the cloud.” The rooms give individuals the ability to host meetings where attendees can join from the device of their choice. Rowan Trollope, head of Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group, wrote in a blog posted on the day of the launch that for all the promise of today’s collaboration technologies to make our lives easier, “we are often frustrated by the fact that the most advanced products cannot seem to do the simplest of things; starting a meeting on time, connecting me with anyone anywhere, or allowing me to share my stuff easily. “While technology companies race around to one-up each other introducing the next whiz-bang feature, they mostly overlook the one essential: what their product should do really well.” In an interview with Connections+ in April at the Cisco Connect IT conference in Toronto, Trollope said that the consumerization of IT is one of the ‘underlying factors of everything that I am doing. “I am saying make it more consumer-like, make it more friendly, make it something that a consumer could buy on their own – not that I am going after the consumer market – because that is what users expect and when you do it the results speak for themselves. Adoption goes up.” www.connectionsplus.ca
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COVER STORY
t i m e to b u i l d yo u r o rg a n i z a t i o n a l st ra te g y a ro u n d i t i s n ow.
By Carmi Levy
one of the hottest buzzwords in the industry, cloud – or more likely “the cloud” -- has also become one of the most difficult to define terms in all of tech. Ask 10 IT professionals what cloud is and you will likely get 10 rather different answers. It begs the question of whether we will ever be able to define what “the cloud” really is. And as cloud-based solutions loom ever larger on IT’s radar, CIOs and decision-makers can be forgiven for being frustrated at the lack of consensus. They can stop wondering, because there is not, and likely never will be. Still, it is no cause for concern. We simply need to look at it from a slightly different perspective. “Cloud is not a thing,” says Paul Lewis, chief technology officer at Hitachi Data Systems of Canada, a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. “It is a set of characteristics, a set of attributes to which you can then describe any technology, whether it is infrastructure, or platform, or software, it does not matter. It is the characteristics that detail what a technology is.”
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The dangers of oversimplification Roy Purtill, Cisco Systems Canada Inc.’s vice president of cloud services, agrees, and says as cloud culture continues to gather momentum, it faces a perception challenge. “I think that one of the biggest challenges we face when we are talking to customers is the industry – and its marketing – has oversimplified the word cloud. Everybody thinks that all clouds are equal and there’s just this one cloud. In reality, it is a very complex undertaking underneath this very simple word of cloud.” That complexity can get in the way of IT’s ultimate goal, says David Senf, vice president of IDC Canada’s infrastructure solutions group. “The top goal of Canadian executives is to wring out more productivity and efficiencies throughout the business, even ahead of reaching new customers,” says Senf. “IT operations is one of those places in the business where many improvements are able to be made. Manual updates, poor server to admin ratios, inefficient capacity utilization, slow application deployment times and system performance issues nag the best of IT shops. “Enter cloud,” he adds. “It boasts pay per usage elastic billing, rapid deployment, automatic updating, self-service and ease of use. Cloud computing is elastic, self-service and rapidly deployed IT services.” Senf says the confusion arises from different type of clouds, including public, private hosted and private on-premise. “There is a hybrid menu of cloud options,” he says. “All of which are cloud, whether run by the IT department or subscribed to externally. SaaS, PaaS and IaaS options have blended together, causing more confusion.” www.connectionsplus.ca
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Cloud adoption has Transition already underway
tion of cloud as a reasonable place to start. gone past the point “Cloud is on-demand resource pooling,” he Complexity notwithstanding, Senf says Cansaid. “It is broad network access. It is automaada’s cloud market surpassed $1.5 billion in of no return. It is a tion and elasticity. And it is self service and mea2013, most of it from software as a service service.” (SaaS) offerings. Purtill sees this as a sign model that is so sured Where a given organization fits along that specthat the right questions are increasingly being asked as decision-makers at all levels of attractive and so trum largely depends its specific business needs. “If I were to explode my business by 300%, the organization become more cloud-savvy. would you be able to handle that?” he asks. “If “I think the question in the boardroom flexible because of the answer is no, and you believe it necessary to used to be ‘what is this cloud?’ The question that we’re hearing more often than not the high degree be true, then it is probably not a cloud. It is what makes sense for your requirements and for your now is how many workloads can we move to the cloud?” of automation it business. It is not really the definition that is the debate, because the definition is pretty obvious. It is This transition is being driven by rising levels of competition and growing demands offers businesses. the application of those characteristics in terms of its level of doneness that sometimes can be confrom lines of business. fusing. And the only reason that it is confusing is “Most of the IT organizations of our cusbecause people have different requirements.” tomers have been investing heavily in techIncreasingly, those requirements are being nology for the past decades, so now they driven by an accelerating wave of big data, which have a legacy that is essentially their data leaves companies of all sizes little choice, as only centre,” says Eric Leduc, national sales lead for application and cloud with Microsoft Canada Inc. “That is cloud-based strategies will allow them to cope. “Companies capture a lot of data from right and left, but they can’t how they build the services. The issue that they have is that that legacy is costing them a lot of money. But their internal customers – absorb that data because they do not have the means to do that,” the marketing, sales, and operations folks – are a lot more demand- says Leduc. “If IT applied the same principles that they used to apply, ing now. They want to be able to innovate because their competitors then it would cost them a lot of money just to be able to take that data and make it ready for consumption for their internal users. are innovating.” “But if they use different means like the cloud, they can turn things That leaves IT stuck between managing the legacy investments and being able to address the new needs that come in. Leduc says around very quickly without having to build an infrastructure. You can enable capacity just as quickly as you can turn it off, which is imporcloud can solve both of these seemingly divergent requirements. “In a sense, the cloud can help a customer move much faster in tant because big data generates equally big volumes of data, and innovating or embracing a new business model or to be able to do that volume can change on a regular basis.” things differently, and it can also help them reduce costs for older stuff they have to maintain.” History continues In many respects, today’s debate over cloud adoption is no different than discussions that have been taking place within IT – and between Big data. Big driver. Purtill says cloud adoption has “gone past the point of no return. It IT and the businesses it supports – for generations. Simply put, busiis a model that is so attractive and so flexible because of the high nesses need to understand their requirements first. “It starts with business strategy, then goes to technology strategy, degree of automation it offers businesses. The fact that we have got this deluge of data coming at us is driving a need to look at new scal- then goes to picking technology,” says Lewis. And as the industry strives to get its head around the concept of the cloud, it’s just as ability models.” Cisco, which recently announced Toronto would become home to clear that how it’s perceived – and purchased – by IT is undergoing one of four global Internet of Everything Innovation Centres, is stak- rapid change.” AJ Byers, president of Rogers Data Centres, recalls that two or ing its future on the cloud going mainstream. “We see cloud as the platform from which this will be launched on three years ago, the majority of usage was test and development. “A a massive global scale,” says Purtill, adding an expected 50 billion lot of people were just buying, consuming that product by the hour, by Internet-connected devices online by 2020 will only fuel the data glut. the month, going online and purchasing it, often with a credit card,” “The only technology that really can deal with that scale on a global he says. Byers adds that since then, there has been a “major shift to distributed basis is really an intercloud, or a network of clouds that cloud being an option for mainstream business production applicacan consume and deal with that data.” Meanwhile, Lewis, who recommends thinking of cloud as more tions. Companies are really now thinking about moving everything of a continuum or spectrum of doneness instead of a definitive entity, to the cloud.” That shift is driving fundamental change in how the organization points to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s defini-
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COVER STORY
is structured and how it works. The CIO and IT directors need to be shifting themselves from being super tech savvy to vendor management savvy and even understanding the lines of business that they support,” says Byers. “It is now about being strategic on how to leverage technology for businesses versus just being pure core technology people because a lot of the pure core technology is now being done in the cloud and service provider arena. For the companies themselves it is no longer strategic to them, so they do not need to worry about the core technology anymore.” As they spend less time on the core technology, IT decision-makers inevitably align with the businesses they serve. Byers defines this as an ideal partnership. “The biggest transformation we are seeing is that CIOs and IT leaders need to spend the vast majority of their time with the lines of business that they support, and not sitting inside of the technology organization,” he says. “They need to be understanding what is happening in the business, understanding where the business is going, and making sure that their team is prepared to assist those lines of business forward strategically and offering up technology advice as to how they can drive the business forward faster.” Byers says this kind of thinking is helping IT organizations reshape how they relate to the rest of the organization. “The term we use is innovate vs. operate. We think that operate should be outsourced and innovate should be your strategic comparative inside your organization.” Between two and five years ago, Byers says 80% of IT resources were devoted to operations, with the bulk of the remainder allocated to true innovation. “We are trying to help companies flip that upside down,” he says,” and help organizations move the keeping-the-lights-on part of IT into an environment that they could consume through a vendor and contractual relationship. That way they do not have to worry about keeping the lights on anymore. They can rely on a vendor and leverage that innovative time to create strategy for the organization and improve the performance of the organization itself.”
Game changing “Firms are slowly starting to ‘get’ it,” says Senf. “Cloud is largely held as just another tool in the toolbox rather than game changing. Over the coming years cloud will change the game, however.” And as the game continues to evolve, the organization will have to evolve, as well. “IT needs to consider the architectural, skills, budgetary, security and many other implications of as-a-service,” he adds. “Virtualization shook up the world of hardware. Cloud is doing the same to applications as well as hardware. Have a cloud strategy. Follow a maturity model of your choosing. Set a baseline of where you are today and where you want to get to in two-plus years time, then draw a plan back from the future point.” James Staten, vice president and principal analyst, infrastructure and operations with Forrester Research, suggested in a recent blog entry that the game-changing benefits of cloud-enabled strategies will only become more compelling with time. “The economic model of cloud computing yields greater efficiencies through shared consumption, pay-per-use pricing, and volume economics,” he wrote. “It will increasingly be difficult to justify not leveraging cloud services. As the largest clouds continue to invest in efficiencies that can only be achieved at their massive scales, the gulf between the cost efficiencies that can be had from the cloud and what is possible onpremise or through other outsourcing and hosting options will widen dramatically.” Whatever your next cloud-related move is, Senf says the clock is already ticking for the traditional methods of IT service delivery. “In 10 years time, almost no new application, platform and infrastructure deployments will be deployed on-premise,” he says. However you define cloud, if you define it at all, the time to build your organizational strategy around it is now. C+
Carmi Levy (@carmilevy) is a London, Ont.-based independent technology analyst and journalist.
C l o u d By t h e n u m b e r s • • • • • • • • • • •
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$1.5 billion. Cloud-related sales in Canada in 2013 (IDC Canada) $4.6 billion. Contributions to Canadian GDP from cloud-related business, 2013 (Information and Communications Technology Council) $8.2 billion. Contributions to Canadian GDP from cloud-related business, 2018 (ICTC) $58 billion. Global size of the public cloud services market in 2013 (Forrester) $191 billion. Global size of the public cloud services market in 2020 (Forrester) 50. Percentage of Canadian companies that have adopted identifiable cloud services (ICTC) 71. Percentage of Canadian IT firms that have adopted identifiable cloud services (ICTC) 61. Percentage of Canadian companies that have reduced IT costs by switching to cloud (ICTC) 38,400. Number of jobs within Canada’s cloud economy in 2013 (ICTC) 57,000. Number of jobs within Canada’s cloud economy by 2018 (ICTC) 71,000. Number of direct and indirect cloud-related Canadian jobs by 2018 (ICTC)
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TR E N D I NG
IPv4
versus
IPv6
Because they are such different animals, a variety of transitional technologies are used to get them to co-exist across the Internet. By Dave Webb
you read this, the last blocks of address space based on Version 4 of the Internet Protocol (IPv4) are being allocated in Latin America and Africa. In the early days of the Internet, no one had anticipated the volume of Internet-connected devices would reach the volume it has today; they certainly had not forecast the billions of sensors, readers, valves, industrial machinery, etc., that are still to come online. When IPv4 was developed, mainframes and minicomputers ruled the computing roost, according to Phil Roberts, technology program manager with the Internet Society. The widespread success of the personal computer, let alone Internet-connected mobile devices, was not on anyone’s radar. The 4.3 billion addresses afforded under IPv4 seemed sufficient. Fortunately, Version 6 was waiting in the wings. IPv6’s 128-bit addressing scheme, in development since the early 1990s, provides considerably more address space than IPv4’s 32-bit scheme. In fact, IPv6 allows for 340 trillion, trillion, trillion IP addresses -- 48 billion, trillion, trillion for each of the seven billion individuals on earth. It’s virtually inexhaustible. Still, there are issues. The two protocols are not compatible; transition technologies have to be used to allow the two to co-exist on the Internet. And while IPv6 was launched
AS
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TRENDI NG
”
Whether they
need the address
signed disproportionately large blocks of IPv4 adwith a flourish in 2012, the vast majority of Inspace or not, dress space for the number of devices they are ternet traffic – about 97% as of March 2014 serving. The IPv4 address depletion crisis has not – is still travelling on IPv4. organizations hit home in Canada. Rewind to 1993, when work on the new That is the good news. “The bad news is (orprotocol was beginning, says Alain Durand, will have to ganizations) have not voluntarily gone down that now a Juniper Networks Inc. distinguished to IPv6 adoption, McCloskey says. Whether engineer, then a representative of Sun Mideal with IPv6 path” they need the address space or not, organizations crosystems Inc. on the advisory body creathave to deal with IPv6 traffic from other jurising IPv6. The public Internet was new and traffic from other will dictions. growing exponentially; the number of hosts “Enterprises need to own the technology themwas doubling every 18 months. jurisdictions. selves and not rely on the ISPs,” McCloskey says. “The thinking was, ‘we are going to de“ISPs are in the business of delivering traffic.” ploy this IPv6 thing very quickly, maybe it would take about 18 months, 24 months max,’” Durand says. The legacy IPv4 network Transitional Technologies would be a small, irrelevant portion of the InBecause they are such different animals, a variety ternet, so compatibility was not a priority. of transitional technologies are used to get them to “Obviously, we were wrong then. It took much, much longer to co-exist across the Internet. get deployed.” Back in 1993, the only compatibility mechanism created was a With an estimated 20-year-window until address depletion, carri- dual stack – a network that could forward IPv4 and IPv6 side-byers and enterprises simply did not bother. “Going to IPv6 is not free,” side, says Durand. It Is like being bilingual: “I’m French, I can speak says Roberts – there are considerable development and deployment French to my family, but I can speak English to you.” costs. “In the absence of need, costs are not going to be paid.” Tunneling – encapsulating IPv6 traffic within IPv4 packets, and In Canada, uptake has been infinitely small. According to Vyncke. vice versa -- is another way to bridge the divide. org, a Belgian Website that displays IPv6 traffic to search giant “Tunneling is a very powerful technology,” McCloskey says. TunGoogle by country in near-real-time, IPv6 penetration in Belgium was neling technologies including 6in4 and 624 allow traffic to initiate in about 15% in March 2014, and about 7% in the U.S. Canada’s IPv6 IPv6, transit in IPv4, and unpackage in native IPv6 at its destination. penetration was a miserly 0.45% The encapsulation does add some overhead, resulting in a latency “It is a fluke of history and geopolitics,” says James McCloskey, that a consumer user probably would not notice, McCloskey says. executive advisor with London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research But for a grid or high-performance computing architecture, it might Group Ltd. Due to our proximity to the U.S. and a history of ad- be too much. vanced technology, Canadian Internet service providers were asMore recent trends in transition technology revolve around lay-
”
Whatever happened to IPv5? There is a quiet mystery in Internet Protocol history we have been too polite to ask about in the jump from IPv4 to IPv6: Whatever happened to IPv5? “Back in the very early days, the Internet was not about multimedia,” says Alain Durand, distinguished engineer with Juniper Networks Inc. “It was about e-mail and transferring files. So there was some experimentation that was done with real-time multimedia.”
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The two existing protocols, ST1 and ST2, weren’t suitable for normal IP traffic. Hence, IPv5, since abandoned. And if we ever need to replace IPv6, next up would be IPv10. “When we developed IPv6 back in 1992, 1993, there were a number of proposals on the table,” Durand says. All were assigned numbers; IPv6 managed to win out over IPv7, IPv8 and IPv9. Of course, IPv6 isn’t going to run
out of addresses any time soon. “That is not likely to happen in the next 100 years,” he adds. “The address space in IPv6 is large enough that, until we go into intergalactic communications, we should be fine. And even then, we don’t expect that much of a problem.” Of course, he notes: “In this industry, when we look ahead more than the next quarter, we are usually wrong.”
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”
TR E N D I NG
It has been a long,
slow transition to IPv6,, but ered network address translation (NAT), one that will says Matthew Wilder, senior engineer for be accelerated the office of the CIO at carrier Telus Corp. “It is a way of doing it that is much as exponentially like tunneling, but actually consumes a lot less resources on the CPE, on the more devices network, by using essentially stateless address translation,” Wilder says. There are connected is less computing required to process the packets, and failover is better because to the Internet. there’s less “state” to keep track of – the network treats every transaction individuThink every light ally without reference to session information, he adds. switch, every door One example on the mobile side is 464XLAT, which is a combination of NAT lock, every motion in the mobile device and NAT in the network. The handset is native IPv6. If an sensor ... app needs access to an IPv4 resource, the handset maps that IPv4 address into an IPv6 packet. When the packet hits the network, it translates the packet back into IPv4 to push through the network. That allows Telus to offer purely IPv6 connectivity, Wilder says. It is a flip of what’s carrying what from tunneling, where IPIv6 is encapsulated within IPv4 packets, says Wilder.
”
It has been a long, slow trans tion to IPv6, says Rob Soderbery, senior vice president of the enterprise networking group at Cisco Systems Inc., but one that will be accelerated as exponentially more devices are connected to the Internet. “Think every light switch, every door lock, every motion sensor, every video camera, every outlet, everything connected to the Internet,” he says. Enterprises are not going to spend the upgrade money just for a new management protocol; they are looking to take advantage of new business applications. BC Hydro has 2.4 million smart meters and counting under management. One large airport in Europe has 6 million managed endpoints. “IPv6 becomes a driver for new business applications and then a mandated part of the system,” Soderbery says. “Now we are seeing the excitement turn to, what is the next business application, what is the provider use case that is driving the adoption and the rollout?” See also p. 38. C+ Dave Webb is a Toronto-based freelance writer. He can be reached at dave@dweebmedia.ca.
Two very different species
Infrastructure Issues Not every piece of hardware in the stack is affected by Ipv6 compatibility issues. “IPv6 is a Layer 3 protocol, so essentially when you hit Layer 3 in the stack, that is where (you are affected),” says Durand. A bridge or a dumb switch would not need upgrading, but an intelligent switch or router that plays in Layer 3 might. But most routing silicon has been IPv6-compatible since the mid 2000s, says Durand. (Operating systems later than 2005 support dual stack, as well.) It is not the same story for consumer routers and SMB gateways, Durand says. “They are limited in capacity and may not be upgradable to IPv6.” Software-defined networking – or, more specifically, network function virtualization (NfV) – to the rescue. “If we could replace this physical box by a virtual function somewhere in the cloud, we could get some benefits,” Durand says. “It may be an easier way to deploy IPv6.” But the infrastructure issues do not end with the hardware, says Roberts. Supporting infrastructure, like customer support and billing, is also affected. “There is a lot of stuff that has to be touched,”he says. “The good news is a lot of the work has been done.” 28
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The feature that makes IPv6 virtually inexhaustible is also what makes it incompatible with IPv4 – the two are different species. IPv4 addresses are based on four numerical octets separated by periods, ranging from zero to 255 – eight bits. Hence the familiar quad-dotted address: 192.16.225.1 Thirty-two-bit addressing gives IPv4 the capacity of 4.3 billion addresses. But IPv6’s addressing scheme uses eight hexadecimal octets separated by colons: 2607:f0d0:1002:0051:0000:0000:0000:0004 Leading zeroes in any octet can be deleted: 2607:f0d0:1002:51:0000:0000:0000:4 And all-zero octets can be omitted: 2607:f0d0:1002:51::4 (The above address resolves to cyberciti.biz) This results in 128-bit addressing, an exponentially larger space than IPv4’s. In addition, IPv6 packets are structured differently and are never fragmented by routers.
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TH E B ACK PAG E
Misunderestimating
technology By Dave Webb
“They misunderestimated me.” U.S. President George Bush, in a speech in Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000. used to think that the verb “to misunderestimate” was simply a semi-literate construct from the semiliterate mind of the 43rd president of the United States, renowned for verbal foibles as he was. I have come to realize that there is some truthiness to its etymology. It is neither to underestimate, nor to misunderstand. It is both. Misunderestimation has gone on throughout the history of information technology. On page 27 of this issue, Alain Durand, now a distinguished engineer at Juniper Networks Inc., recounts how, when a working group was trying to define the next generation of Internet protocol, which would come to be known as IPv6, the length of time it would take to be adopted was misunderestimated. “In this industry, when we look ahead more than the next quarter, we are usually wrong,” he told me dryly. Thomas Watson, Jr., (and his dad, for that matter) has a special place in my heart. The son of the founder of International Business Machines Corp. played a huge role in keeping bread on my table as a youth, when my Dad was an IBMer in Rochester, Minn., White Plains, N.Y., and Toronto. But not only that, he had a Keynesian approach to business economics, as he recounted in his book A Business and its Beliefs. When the Great Depression struck in the 1930s, while most were shedding jobs left and right, Watson hired more salespeople. They called him soft in the head. Their businesses went under. IBM emerged from the depression well-positioned to be a dominant force in business. I sometimes wonder if he would be thrilled or simply roll his eyes at the fact his namesake computer won Jeopardy. Still, Watson misunderestimated technology. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers,” he said in 1948. Or did he? There is little in the way of evidence to support the allegation he ever made the statement, and many variations of the quote are attributed to many different people. Still, there are enough references along this line to suggest it was a
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commonly held perception among technology leaders at the time. They misunderstood the central role of computing power to society, and underestimated the value to the general public. Bill Gates is arguably the most significant icon of the technology age (yeah, bring the Steve Jobs, fanbois). His affable nerdiness defined the techy persona, and, love it or hate it, Windows opened up the world of personal computing to the masses. Famously, he said of the IBM PC in 1981: “640K ought to be enough for anyone.” Or did he? Gates has vigorously denied he ever made the statement. Perhaps it is a mangled version of a quote attributed to him in a 1985 issue of InfoWorld: “When we set the upper limit of PC-DOS at 640K, we thought nobody would ever need that much memory.” But even the provenance of that quote is unclear, according to Web site Quote Investigator. Regardless, Gates was guilty of misunderestimating the growth in demand from RAM-hungry applications, and was not above admitting it. As he told the University of Waterloo Computer Science Club in 1989, “I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64K to 640K felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it did not – it took about only six years before people started to see that as a real problem.” The original addressing protocol for Internet traffic, IPv4, is possibly the grossest misunderestimation of all. Its creators pictured a network of academic, government and business mainframes and minicomputers, not one of PCs and laptops, let alone mobile phones and sensors. They underestimated the volume of connections because they misunderstood the way the network would be used in the future, never realizing how central the network would be come to life and lifestyle. IPv6 solves the volume problem, and then some, with 48 billion trillion trillion addresses for each person on earth. That sounds inexhaustible. But do not misunderestimate technology. Dave Webb is a Toronto-based freelance writer. He can be reached at dave@dweebmedia.ca.
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