Overview:

At an invitation only event in Palo Alto, CA on March 31st, Savvis, Inc.  announced its Cloud computing Alliance Program for channel partners.  Savvis is a  global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises (see About Savvis section below for more info on the company).  Through the flexible, multi-level program, Savvis alliance partners are able to offer Savvis cloud services, as well as managed hosting, colocation, network services and managed security services, to their clients. By registering as an alliance partner, participants receive access to Savvis’ assets and intellectual property through the partner portal at www.savvis.com/alliances.

“We are investing in the growth and successes of our partners globally,” said Jaywant Rao, vice president of global alliances for Savvis. “Our goal is to deliver an agile, streamlined and highly beneficial experience to our partners based on collaboration and the sharing of expertise.”  And it was quite impressive to hear testimonials from the numerous alliance partners that gave short speeches at Savvis’ March 31st coming out party.  Cisco and Oracle are amongst the infrastructure vendors that Savvis is using to delver cloud computing based services to their customers.  Thompson-Reuters, Cognizant, Forsythe Technologies and Gravitant are other partners that presented strong endorsement of Savvis’ IT infrastructure capabilities. Thompson-Reuters is working with the company to offer an Elektron Financial Cloud for ultra fast electronic trading/  Gravitant and Savvis have deployed a “Texas Cloud” available in that state.

The Savvis Alliances Program is customized to meet the unique, individual needs of system integrators, managed service providers, telecommunications companies, application providers, and technology vendors. Several companies have already joined the program at launch.

Savvis claims they “take cloud services to the next level with the converged cloud, our secure, high-performance cloud infrastructure. The combination of our global, low-latency distribution network, our managed virtualized hosting environment and our unique business model allows Savvis to design complete, end-to-end, quality of service-enabled solutions for our clients.”

Details of the Cloud Alliance Program: – Q&A
1. What Savvis offerings are targeted at partners?
Savvis offers enterprise-class IT solutions that are available through partners as part of the Savvis Alliances Program. These offerings broadly fall into the following categories:

• Managed hosting
• Colocation
• Cloud
• Network services
• Managed security services

2. How do the solutions benefit Savvis partners?
Savvis solutions help partners drive new offerings to the market by allowing them to bundle, integrate or white-label Savvis solutions. All of these offerings enable enterprise-class end-customer solutions to be deployed in a global infrastructure. These offerings are available to Partners with varying levels of margins and pricing options, helping Partners to drive net new top line revenue for themselves.

3. What is the profile of the target partner for this program?
Savvis carefully crafted the program to meet different needs for different partners. Not all partners are created equal, and it was really important to understand this in order to create a partner-oriented program rather than a Savvis-offering-focused program. The program is aimed at:

• Systems integrators
• Managed service providers
• Telco/carriers
• Application providers
• Technology providers

4. What partner engagement models are available?
Partners can work with Savvis under the following engagement models:

• Referral: Partners refer opportunities to Savvis in return for fees tied to the size of the deal.
• Reseller: Partners re-sell Savvis offerings on their contract to their end-customers and in turn get built-in margin pricing.

5. What are the three levels of the Savvis Alliances Program?
The Savvis Alliances Program features three levels:

• Strategic: Global partners that demonstrate a deep investment in sales and marketing enablement for driving Savvis offerings via their own distribution channels. For example, in the U.S. this typically applies to companies in the Fortune 1000 category.
• Preferred: Regional or vertical-specific partners that provide coverage for a given geography or application offering. Typically these partners focus on mid/small market.
• Affiliate: Partners that wish to engage with Savvis for a one-time transaction as a reseller.

6. How should partners engage with Savvis?
The best place to start is by visiting the Savvis Alliances Program website at www.savvis.com/Alliances. There, potential partners can learn more about the program, including levels and services, and register to become a partner.

7. What is the Savvis Alliances Partner Portal?
The partner portal (www.savvis.com/Alliances) is designed to support the partner community. For new partners evaluating a Savvis relationship, the portal presents an overview of the program, outlining the different membership levels with associated benefits and requirements, listing the resources available to members and providing an online application to engage with Savvis.
For existing partners, the password-protected section of the portal gives access to Savvis assets and intellectual property such as marketing and sales enablement tools, training courses and a collaboration forum for partners to network and exchange ideas.

8. What is your international strategy for partners?
International growth is a high priority for Savvis, and we have made several investments to drive growth in key global regions. We operate 31 data centers around the globe and, through partnerships, have direct access to many other data centers. Our reach extends to places such as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil and Germany. We are working with strategic partners in key geographies to enter additional markets, including India (Bharti airtel) and others. A large share of our international revenue is targeted to come from partners with multi-tiered distribution models, and we have invested in dedicated teams to drive that program globally.

9. How does the joint selling program work?
Savvis keeps a database of its partners and their core competencies (i.e., expertise in a vertical market or regional presence). Partners with a client opportunity can connect with other partners on joint selling when a specific core competency is required.

Interview with Savvis CTO Bryan Doerr:

In a one on one chat, Bryan agreed with me that the network aspects of Cloud Computing had been severely neglected by the industry.  In the absence of any standards or guidelines, each cloud service/ network provider has to make specific agreeements with EACH cloud customer.  AT&T does this and so does Savvis.  Clearly this doesn’t scale to accomodate many smaller customers that want to migrate their apps and storage to the cloud. 

Savvis uses an IP MPLS network that can offer various grades of network sharing/ separation, QoS and other metrics.  But in absence of a standard UNI or NNI, many questions arise. 

In a follow up discussion with Bryan and his networking experts,  we plan to report on the network aspects of Saviss”converged cloud.”  These include: guaranteed performance, QoS (e.g. latency, jitter, thruput, error rates, etc), availability, reliability,  protection/ restoration/ disaster recovery on failure of either servers and/or the network, SLAs, monitoring for SLA compliance (3rd party?), authentication and authorization, provisioning/reprovisioning, policy control, network management (including back end/ OSS/BSS functions), and security.

About Savvis

Savvis, Inc. (NASDAQ:SVVS) is an outsourcing provider of managed computing and network infrastructure for IT applications. By outsourcing to Savvis, enterprises can focus on their core business while Savvis ensures the quality of their IT infrastructure. Leading IT organizations around the world have selected Savvis to help them improve their service levels, reduce capital expense and deal with the rising costs of bandwidth, energy, real estate, staff and expertise. As a pioneer in utility computing, Savvis understands and harnesses the latest advances in technology such as virtualization, cloud computing and support process automation.  Savvis focuses exclusively on providing IT services to business enterprises. Because of its global infrastructure, management systems and business model, Savvis has the unique capability to deliver fully managed and integrated IT solutions to enterprises with offices around the word.  Facts:             

• Nearly 2,500 unique business and government clients, including more than 30 of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500
• More than 2,200 employees with deep expertise in technical operations, customer support, engineering and consulting
• $933 million in revenue in 2010.

Products & Services:                                                                                                                                                                                                                Savvis provides IT infrastructure services that can be used as part of a total outsourcing solution or to selectively support specific applications or business units.  Services include:
• Cloud – one of the industry’s broadest lines of enterprise-class cloud services
• Colocation, Managed Hosting and Utility Compute – facilities and operations; compute, storage and network
• Network – converged applications; community of interest networks; private lines; Internet
• Security – managed security services and consulting
• Industry Solutions – financial, government and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
• Professional Services – infrastructure, security, business continuity, compliance and program management

Infrastructure:
The Savvis infrastructure extends to 45 countries and includes:
• 31 data centers, encompassing approximately 1.5 million square feet of raised floor
• 22,000 managed circuits in a private network supporting multiple application service levels
• Tier-1 OC-192 Internet backbone with more than 17,000 miles of fiber

For more information about the Savvis Alliances Program, visit www.savvis.com/alliances. In addition to providing details about the program, the site includes a portal through which channel partners can access marketing, sales and technical materials.

Today the IEEE-SA Standards Board officially approved IEEE P802.16m/D12 as IEEE Std 802.16m. Publication is scheduled for early May.  The ITU-R previously recognized the 802.16m draft standard in progress as meeting the requirements of IMT Advanced  Now it’s a done deal.  (Note that the term “WiMAX” is the WiMAX Forum trade name for IEEE 802.16 Wireless MAN technology).

The new IEEE 802.16m standard is backward compatible with the most current version of  IEEE 802.16e-2005

 IEEE 802.16 Working Group’s Session #72 took place on 14-17 March 2011 in Singapore.  Here are a few selected task group reports:

1. The ITU-R Liaison Group met through the week and prepared a number of documents. For more details, see the ITU-R Liaison Group Report. Highlights include:

• A contribution to ITU-R Working Party 5D (WP 5D) contains the details of the WirelessMAN-Advanced specification to be included in the ITU’s IMT-Advanced Recommendation. In parallel, a formal notification was provided to ITU-R regarding the WirelessMAN-Advanced “Global Core Specification” (GCS).
• A statement was issued to the WirelessMAN-Advanced Transposing Organizations (WATO) – namely, ARIB, TTA, WiMAX Forum, and IEEE – summarizing the WATO meeting held on 15 March in conjunction with 802.16 Session #72.
• A contribution notified WP 5D of IEEE’s intent to update the IEEE 802.16 specification in the next update of ITU’s IMT-2000 recommendation.

GRIDMAN Task Group
The Working Group’s GRIDMAN Task Group met to discuss activity under the P802.16n project. The project is amending IEEE Std 802.16 to provide for “Higher Reliability Networks.” The TG reviewed many contributions and established two Rapporteur Groups to make further progress between meetings. Four teleconferences were scheduled. The WG called for contributions proposals for the Amendment Working Document (AWD) based on the completed System Requirements Document (SRD). The TG issued a closing report, with minutes to follow.

Machine-to-Machine Task Group
The Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Task Group met to address the P802.16p project, which is amending IEEE Std 802.16 to provide “Enhancements to Support Machine-to-Machine Applications.” The 802.16p Amendment Working Document (AWD) was progressed. The TG called for comments on the AWD and the System Requirements Document (SRD). It also issued a Call for Contributions for a new 802.16p Evaluation Methodologies Document (EMD). A closing report and minutes were issued.

More details at:  <http://ieee802.org/16/meetings/mtg72/report.html>.

IEEE 802.16 Session #73 will take place on 16-19 May 2011 in Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada
 <http://ieee802.org/16/meetings/mtg73>

Who Will Implement 802.16m?

At the CEATAC trade show in Tokyo last year, Samsung demonstrated a pre-standard 802.16m network that achieved a speed of 330M bps. The standard is designed to provide speeds of about 100M bps to end users. It can use several techniques to surpass the performance of current WiMAX technology, including MIMO (multiple-in, multiple out) technology for sending more than one stream of data. It can also be used with small base stations called femtocells and with self-organizing networks, according to the IEEE.

Comment: With all the large telcos opting for LTE and Clearwire having trouble raising funds to build out its WiMAX network, we wonder what telcos will actually implement IEEE 802.16m and will it be able to interwork/ handoff to LTE/ LTE Advanced. We think the entire WiMAX ecosystem should refocus their efforts on a low cost version of Fixed WiMAX that can be used to provide fixed broadband access to rural or underserved/ unserved areas in both developed and developing countries.

Upstart wireless telco LightSquared is seeking to become the leading wholesale network operator in the US.  By using LTE -a “4G” wireless technology that supports faster web access on smartphones, notebooks and tablet computers- the company expects to leapfrog Clearwire which is currently the largest U.S. wireless wholesale network provider.  Currently, Clearwire is selling wholesale WiMAX networks to Sprint, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable. 

LightSquared’s LTE mobile network will also utilize satellite spectrum acquired by New York hedge fund Harbinger Capital. The company plans to build a hybrid network that will integrate LTE mobile technology with a satellite-based service, something that’s never been done before and has attracted many skeptics. LightSquared launched a satellite last November, and three handset makers, including Nokia, are developing handsets for their network. AT&T’s proposal to buy T-Mobile USA was bad news for LightSquared, because it was hoping T-Mobile to be one of its first large wholesale customers.

Sanjiv Ahuja, LightSquared’s chief executive, says the company should begin trial services in the second half of this year, and that its 4G network will cover more than 80 per cent of the population by 2015. He claims LightSquared has two key advantages over Clearwire. First, by using LTE, LightSquared has selected a much more popular 4G wireless technology. Second, although Clearwire’s spectrum holdings are more than double the size of LightSquared’s, Mr Ahuja says the airwaves he plans to use are more attractive because they are at a lower frequency where wireless signals travel further. This means it should cost LightSquared less than Clearwire to build a network. “There will only be three 4G LTE providers in the US with a nationwide footprint: the top two [AT&T and Verizon] and LightSquared,” says Mr Ahuja.  Bye, bye Clearwire!

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/46eab1de-58a9-11e0-9b8a-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=crm/email/2011328/nbe/Telecoms/product#axzz1HuNwCO8A

As reported by CommsUpdate, last week LightSquared signed up retail chain Best Buy as a customer for its wholesale LTE network, and also struck a long-term roaming agreement with pre-paid mobile operator Leap Wireless to supplement its own planned LTE coverage. According to the terms of its licence the LightSquared network must achieve coverage of 100 million people by the end of 2012, 145 million people by the end of 2013 and 260 million people (not including satellite coverage) by the end of 2015. The network is expected to launch in the second half of this year (2011).

According to Bloomberg, Time Warner Cable (TWC) is in talks with LightSquared, Citing two people familiar with the situation, Bloomberg reports that TWC is interested in re-selling 4G services over LightSquared’s network. However, the unnamed sources have stressed that negotiations are not public, and no deal is guaranteed. Note that TWC currently resells Clearwire’s 4G Mobile WiMAX network. Cablevision is considering a partnership with LightSquared, according to a Bloomberg report, which cited an unnamed source. The report came shortly after another Bloomberg report, which said that Time Warner Cable, Cablevision’s rival, also was considering a deal with LightSquared. Audrey Schaefer, a LightSquared spokeswoman, declined to comment on the Bloomberg report. She told FierceWireless that LightSquared does not have a specific timeframe for announcing customers, and that the company follows the preference of customers on whether they want the deal to be publicly known.

The Financial Times reports that LightSquared is in talks with at least 60 companies that were interested in reselling the company’s mobile network to offer voice or data services to consumers or businesses. “There are 60-plus discussions, and 15 of those are at a stage where we are negotiating contracts with our customers,” LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja told the Financial Times.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/807dea44-5898-11e0-9b8a-00144feab49a.html#axzz1HuNwCO8A

LightSquared is conducting LTE trials in Baltimore, Denver, Las Vegas and Phoenix, with commercial launches planned by the third quarter of this year. The company has committed to cover 100 million POPs by the end of 2012, 145 million by the end of 2013 and 260 million by the end of 2015.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/lightsquared-ceo-were-contracts-talks-15-companies/2011-03-28#ixzz1HuTlrHw1

The US Telecommunications Association (TIA) is hosting the first Global Standards Collaboration Machine to Machine Standardization Task Force (MSTF) meeting in Dallas on May 18th, 2011.  The MSTF was created in Beijing, China in September 2010.  

The purpose of the MSTF is to provide a forum where work on M2M/Internet of Things standardization can be discussed in order to foster harmonization and avoid duplication of effort.  The M2M Standardization Task Force is for individuals who can represent their organizations (SDOs, IEEE, etc.) in various capacities.  It’s not open to the general public.

However, the organization states that “it would be of great interest to benefit from the views of IEEE or other related groups.  TIA is in the process of finalizing the agenda and is looking for knowledgable speaker s(15 mn) to share a standards committee/ task force/ working group/ study group position on M2M/IoT standardization.”

The MSTF meeting will take place, during TIA 2011, which is a telecommunications-focused summit and exhibition show (http://www.tia2011.org/), at the Gaylord Texan hotel, 1501 Gaylord Trail, Grapevine, Texas 76051 Tel: +1.817.778.2000.

Alain Louchez of Numerex ([email protected]) is the coordinator of the MSTF meeting.  Please contact him for additional information.

The key deliverables of the MSTF are: 

-To facilitate global coordination and harmonization.
-To openly share relevant M2M material through liaisons, meeting invitations, etc.
-To outline the worldwide M2M activity map and make recommendations on current and future activities
-To encourage broad participation in the MSTF by GSC members and beyond
-MSTF will report to GSC -16 (to be held  in Halifax, Canada at the end of October 2011) on its activities and recommendations.

Jeff Smith, Chair of TIA TR-50 Smart Device Communications Committee, was appointed Convenor of the MSTF.  Cheryl Blum is TIA Vice President for Technology and Business Development and in charge of standards at TIA (an update on TIA’s work on standards can be found. at:  http://www.tianow.org/videos/innovating-standards-feb-11-2011/1479/

While the MSTF is only open to standards professionals, the TIA 2011 Conference is open to the public at large.

Comment:  The entity that “reigns sovereign” over the IEEE standards committees (including 802)  is the IEEE-Standards Association. To the best of my knowledge, IEEE does not have a standards committee on M2M communications or devices with embedded communications capability..  Rather, existing IEEE standards committees (e.g. within IEEE 802;16) may have a M2M study group or task group.  For example,

IEEE 802.16’s Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Task Group

http://wirelessman.org/m2m/index.html

IEEE Communications magazine April 2011 issue will have a special section on Recent Progress in M2M Communications
http://dl.comsoc.org/ci1/info/cfp/cfpcommag0411.htm

Note:  This call for participation has been sent to the IEEE 802 EC reflector – the email list for communicating with the 802 Executive Committee (made up of the 802 officers and working group chairs)/

Market research firm Infonetics Research (www.twitter.com/infonetics) last week released its fourth quarter of 2010 (4Q10) SAN Equipment market share and forecast report, which tracks storage area network (SAN) switches and adapters.  According to an Infonetics press release, the SAN EQUIPMENT MARKET highlights are:

.    The combined SAN switch and adapter market grew 15% in 2010 over the previous year, to $2.76 billion worldwide
.    For the quarter, SAN switch and adapter revenue is up 10% in 4Q10 over 3Q10, to $749 million worldwide
.    Infonetics Research forecasts the worldwide SAN equipment market to grow to $8.4 billion in 2015
.    In the adapter space, the 2 kingpins QLogic and Emulex showed solid revenue increases in 2010 over 2009 (10% and 12%, respectively)
.    Worldwide FCoE SAN switch revenue jumped more than 200% in 2010, albeit from a small base
.    SAN equipment simplifies the complexity of consolidating and increasing the size of data centers, a huge trend that continues as data center owners grapple with exploding amounts of (largely consumer-generated) video and data content

“The SAN switch and adapter market rebounded nicely in 2010 after the drop in 2009, with revenue growth driven mainly by Cisco, which posted a 60% increase in SAN switch revenue in 2010. Brocade remains the market leader in the overall SAN space of course, but it lost 6 points of market share while Cisco gained 7. Cisco is in a good position here with its strong lead in the Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switch segment, widely seen as the future technology of the data center,” notes IEEE member Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst for carrier and data center networks at Infonetics Research.

AJW Comments and Opinions:

At the February 24-25 Ethernet Technology Summit, it was stated that Fibre Channel (FC), rather than Ethernet or FCoE or Infiniband,dominated SAN shipments and would continue to do so.  However, the Infonetics report states that “Worldwide FCoE SAN switch revenue jumped more than 200% in 2010, albeit from a small base.”  Furthermore, at March 16 IDC Directions, an analyst predicted explosive growth for FCoE in coming years. 

Jim Duffy of Network World writes:  “Cisco is unfazed by the realization that FibreChannel over Ethernet, the storage virtualization technology it helped define, standardize and evangelize, is essentially being given away for free. FCoE is designed to help unify a data center switching fabric by converging FibreChannel storage traffic over Ethernet, thereby saving the expense and operational complexity of running separate cables, deploying separate NICs and, eventually, SAN switches.

But FCoE, to the surprise of analysts and other industry observers, is being given away for free by leading adapter and switch vendors due to immaturity and market inertia. The virtualization technology is virtually the same price as a naked 10G Ethernet port, which undermines claims of high demand for FCoE – it’s essentially getting a free ride from 10G.”

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/71979

Opinion: We do see a booming business for 10GE LAN PHY for storage and servers in the new data center (over a decade after that IEEE 802.3 standard was completed!).  While Brocade still has the largest SAN equipment market share, it does look like Cisco is gaining ground in the SAN switch market.

About the Infonetics SAN market report:

Infonetics’ SAN equipment provides worldwide and regional market size, market share, forecasts, and analysis for Fiber Channel (FC) and Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) SAN switches, and 3 segments of storage networking adapters: Fiber Channel host bus adapters (FC HBAs), iSCSI HBAs, and FCoE converged network adapters (CNAs). Switches are tracked by chassis (director) vs. fixed (fabric), and all ports are tracked by type (10G FCoE, FC 2G, FC 4G, FC 8G, FC 16G, iSCSI). The report tracks ATTO, Brocade, Chelsio, Cisco, Emulex, Intel, LSI, Mellanox/Voltaire, Myricom, Neterion, QLogic, and others.

To download the prospectuses, tables of contents, etc. for related and upcoming research (below), please log in to Infonetics’ service portal (http://www.infonetics.com/login) and go to ENTERPRISE NETWORKING or DATA CENTER NETWORKS.

IEEE ComSocSCV has assembled a power panel of five telecom/photonics/networking industry experts to present and discuss the status, trends, and future directions of the “Network” in each of their subject areas. Included will be: the Mobile Broadband Operator’s Dilemma (and techniques to solve it), Photonics, Optical Components & Networks, DSL and evolution of high speed Internet access over copper twisted pair, Evolution of Ethernet (will it be everywhere?), Comcast’s Triple Play Delivery Network and Business Class services to enterprise customers.

The panelists will comment on the current state of each of these areas, how it has changed from prior decades, what’s driving it now (growth engines), and what may be coming in the near future (e.g. cloud computing, higher speed wireline Internet access, 4G mobile broadband, more video services, etc). For example, the mobile operator’s dilemma- the revenue is in voice services, but the demand is for high speed data with low latency. This will be our most informative and interactive meeting of 2011! Don’t miss it. More details and RSVP instructions at the ComSocSCV web site (where we archive presentations from previous technical meetings):

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/comsoc/index.php

Here are a few highlights of what type of what we might expect to learn from our distinguished speakers:

Stu Jeffery, IEEE Life Member and long time ComSocSCV Discussion list contributor, will talk about the huge dilemma facing Mobile Cellular Operators – The money is in voice, but the demand is in high speed data (often with low latency). This creates a demand for additional network capacity – both in access and backhaul- but it must come at a relatively low cost since operator revenues aren’t keeping up with the explosive growth in mobile data traffic.

Some of the schemes that operators might use to improve overall wireless network capacity include:

-Acquire more licensed spectrum (by buying it from Clearwire or waiting ? till next auction)

-Nano cells and nano base stations with Self Organizing Networks/ SONs which might assign a given subscriber to a Base Station in an adjacent cell, when the closest Base Station is close to being saturated with data traffic.

-Improved modulation methods – LTE, LTE with CoMP, LTE with WiFi offload

-Other capacity enhancement schemes, e.g. Blast, MiMO, CoMP, Spacial Multiplexing (beamformaing)

-Femto cell or WiFi hot spot off load of data traffic

-Use cognitive radios and UNLICENSED spectrum (was the intent of IEEE 802.22 Wireless Regional Area Networks, which evidently went nowhere

Stu wonders how cellular network operators can generate enough revenues and profits to stay in business, considering most are now running hybrid networks. e.g. voice on 3G cellular (TDM based) and data on “4G” (IP based) networks.

[Editors Note: Mobile WiMAX and LTE are actually enhanced 3G technologies according to ITU-R that is responsible for selecting RANs that meet the IMT-Advanced criteria)]. There are also application issue threats to mobile network operator business. For example, Skype may limit circuit switch voice revenues (e.g. VZW) for subscribers that have unlimited “all you can eat” data plans.

IEEE Fellow Michael Lebby of Translucent Inc will address key issues for the optical networking/phontonics industries:

-The optical network and photonic component industries have not fully recovered from the 2001-2002 telecom bubble bursting and dot com crash. What’s the status of the industry now and what market segments are driving demand for optical/photonic components and systems?

-What are the key optical components (lasers, amplifiers, detectors, MEMS, etc) that are now being used in various types of optical networking equipment? For example, DWDM transponders, OEO switches, photonic switches, OADM/ROADM, PONs, Optical cross connects, routers and servers with optical network interfaces, etc

-What is the status of various optical networks that have been deployed? For example, SONET/SDH (is it on the decline?), OTN (on the upswing?), Optical Ethernet (1G, 10G), 40G/100G Ethernet, any others? Which look promising going forward?

-Why hasn’t 40G SONET/SDH OC192 been deployed more on inter-city and long haul optical links/wavelengths? It was promised to be hot in 2001! Is it pure economics that 4 x 10G is cheaper than 1 x 40G or is there another reason(s)?

-Why haven’t telcos deployed more fiber to business buildings and cell towers? That would stimulate the market for Optical Ethernet access and Optical Backhaul of 4G traffic, but telcos don’t seem to be in a rush to build out their fiber plant- why?

-Whatever happened to the “all optical network” with photonic switches and under long haul without OEO repeaters? What is the status of optical network monitoring, protection and restoration?

-What type of optical networking or component start up companies are of interest now to VCs, private equity firms and/or Angel investors?

-What’s the outlook for the optical component and networking markets in the next few years?

Despite all the advances in fiber optic networks, copper (DSL) based Internet access seems to have a lot of live left. Wonjong Rhee of ASSIA-Inc is an early member of ASSIA Inc, a company founded by DSL pioneer and former colleague John Cioffi. Wonjong has held positions leading the invention and hands-on development of the company’s DSL network optimization product. The product has been successfully commercialized and now it manages 80% of the DSLs in the US and approximately 15~25% of all DSLs worldwide! We are eagerly looking forward to his talk “DSL Roadmap to 1~2Gbps and Management of DSL.”

Many thanks to ASSIA-Inc for co-sponsoring this meeting!

Long time IEEE member and ComSocSCV Discussion list participant Geoff Thompson will cover the evolution of Ethernet, where it is now and where it’s going, Geoff worked at Xerox in the late 1970s where the first 3M and 10M bit/sec Ethernet systems were developed. For several years he was Vice Chair and then Chair of the IEEE 802.3 standards committee. Geoff will hopefully also touch on the following new flavors of Ethernet:

-Industrial Ethernet- what it is and what it’s used for

-Synchronous Ethernet- importance for applications like real time conferencing, circuit emulation, cellular backhaul of TDM (as well as IP) traffic

-40G/100G- what do you think are the key applications and timeframes.

While Ethernet was invented for LANs, it is now being used by network operators where it is referred to as “Carrier Ethernet.” Telcos, Public Utilities and MSOs (cable network operators) are offering such business class services to enterprise and government customers. We’re thrilled to have a representative from Comcast- the leading MSO in the U.S.- to tell us about their Ethernet based business class services and network. Nicholas Tornetta, a Senior Sales Engineer at Comcast- will cover the status and future direction of Comcast’s business class services/ network for enterprise customers. He will also brief us on the network the company uses for the delivery of triple play services (voice, high speed data, entertainment video) to residential customers. These two Comcast networks will be contrasted and compared.

Many thanks to Comcast Enterprise Business Services for co-sponsoring this meeting!

The five short presentations will be followed by a highly interactive panel session with audience Q & A encouraged. The moderator will ask the panelists what IEEE could possibly do to progress the state of their respective industries and subject areas of expertise. Something beyond more or better conferences, technical meetings, webinars, publications, etc

This will be your best opportunity of the year to interact with highly knowledgable networking industry experts. It will also be the ONLY ComSocSCV meeting this year to be moderated and chaired by Alan J Weissberger, the manager and moderator of the Community ComSoc web site.

Please plan to attend this very significant Town Hall meeting and get your questions ready for the panelists! Plan to arrive at 6pm for our networking session with fellow attendees, panelists and IEEE ComSocSCV officers.

It’s no secret that  that both industrial and government R & D spending has substantially decreased in the U.S. Yet that spending is the engine of innovation, purveyor of productivity enhancements and technology competitiveness. R&D for a technology company is its seed corn, the source of its future growth and revenues in the form of products, intellectual property or services that are often years away from being monetized.   

While companies have substantially cut back spending on research, they are collaborating much more with universities in an effort to commercialize academic research projects. There is strong evidence that successful transfer of advanced research form University to Industry requires the faculty member(s) and students to directly engage in the transfer process by becoming entrepreneurs.

Professors Panel Session: Transforming Academic Research into Commercially Successful Products and Intellectual Property (IP)
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at TiE-SV in Santa Clara, CA (6pm-7pm networking dinner, 7pm-9pm program)

In this dynamic and enlightening panel session, four seasoned veterans of BOTH academia and Industry will tell their stories and provide perspective, opinions, do’s and don’ts to successfully transition from academic research into commercially viable technologies.
This panel will zero in on issues and answers in how this type of technology transfer has been successfully done with lessons learned and caveats revealed. 

All four of the panelists are now or were University Professors.   Three of the four panelists have done groundbreaking research in network communications technologies, e.g. congestion avoidance, optical switching, core routing, broadband wireless transport with VPN client, etc.  One of them was also responsible for defining the business model of the fabless semiconductor company. The other distinguished panelist has supervised research projects as Dean of Engineering at UCLA.   To learn more, go to:

http://sv.tie.org/event/professors-panel-session-transforming-academic-research-commercially-successful-products-and-i

If you are an IEEE member and want to attend, please email: [email protected] with your IEEE membership number to get the discount code for $20 (vs $50) on line registration at the TiE-Slicon Valley web site.

For more on the brewing R & D investment crisis and proposed solutions, please read this article:

http://viodi.com/2011/02/27/can-u-s-reverse-the-decline-in-rd-spending-global-competitiveness-at-risk/

For more on IEEE ComSocSCV, including meeting archives pdf’s,  please visit:

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/comsoc/index.php

The Deah of Network Infrastructure Companies- Will Only 3 remain standing?

Most network infrastructure equipment companies, with the exception of Chinese based Huawei and ZTE, seem to be either losing money or exiting the business.This includes the big three of Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia-Siemens and Ericsson, but also a whole lot of niche market players that have been around for a very long time, e.g. Fujitsu, NEC, Hitachi, ADC Telecom, ADTRAN, etc.

The telecom infrastructure market seems to be dominated now by tje Chinese dynamic duo of Huawei and ZTE which are breathing down LM Ericsson’s neck to be the leader in wireless infrastructure gear.  Chinese upstart UT Starcom is not too far behind them.

Many U.S. and European companies that were keen on telecom equipment have quit in the last few years.  After making many acquisitions in the late 1990s, Cisco has pretty much exited the telecom transmission business (they still sell some optical network gear and switches + routers to telcos). Intel spent over $10B on telecom equipment company acquisitions but sold those all off at a loss. Motorola Networks is being sold to NSN, but that’s being contested by Huawei. The smaller players have just disappeared.  It is not clear what the strategy is for NEC and Fujitsu, but we guess they are concentrating on sales in their home market in Japan and also looking to sell equipment in Asia-Pacific region (especially China).

Huawei

Network Computing reports, “Huawei is taking the wraps off of its 2-year-old presence in North America, with the unveiling of its cloud computing strategy and the opening of an R&D facility. The China-based telecommunications equipment vendor has been averaging annual growth in the 30 percent range, says John Roese, who was recently appointed head of R&D in North America for Huawei.

Serving 45 of the top 50 global telecom operators, the company had revenues of $22.8 billion in 2009 and was expecting revenues of $27 billion for 2010. Its mobile device subsidiary was predicting revenues of $4.5 billion, up 21.6 percent year-over-year. North American revenues are expected to exceed $1 billion in 2011.

Roese, who was previously the Nortel CTO, says Huawei is heavily focused on R&D and disruptive technologies. Our culture tells us it is a great thing to do something disruptive, he says: “I tend to seek out places that will have a lot of action … disruptive innovations.”

Almost half of the company’s 100,000-person global staff–47,000–are engineers, including almost 1,000 technical staff in North America. When the company was deciding where to base its disruptive expertise, North America was the choice, Roese said. After setting up operations in Canada in 2008, the company has been tripling its staff every year, hiring expertise from both the telecom and computing fields and looking for people who want to reinvent the industry.

Historically, Huawei has been focused on the carrier infrastructure space, with a strong device component including smart phones and smart cards. Going forward, the company is looking to move up the stack. “

http://www.networkcomputing.com/wireless/huawei-comes-out-of-stealth-mode.php

ZTE

In an article today, Reuters Canada states, “ZTE is gunning to be among the world’s top three telecom equipment makers in the coming years, a wireless executive told Reuters on Monday Feb 13, 2010.  It would be a major move for ZTE, which is smaller than its better-known Chinese counterpart Huawei, and holds roughly 5 percent market share in wireless gear, according to Bernstein Research.

“We want to be in the top three in terms of revenues and market share,” said Xu Ming, vice-president of wireless services in an interview with Reuters-Canada at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Founded in 1985 in the southeastern Chinese city of Shenzhen, ZTE earned about half of its revenues outside China last year by selling both handsets and fixed and wireless network gear. It benefits from a low-cost base like Huawei, but its margins are lower because of its lack of scale in many business lines, according to analysts.  ZTE’s ambitions could be bad news for other telecom gear makers, notably the smaller European vendors Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent, which have lost market share to low-cost Chinese rivals in recent years.  ZTE posted 2010 revenues up about 16.7 percent at $10.67 billion last year, while operating profit was up 26 percent at $396.5 million. Analysts called the results positive, given tough conditions in China, where operators cut spending by 20 percent after a binge in wireless buildouts in 2009.

Xu Ming, vice-president of wireless services for ZTE told Reuters, “”We want to be in the top three in terms of revenues and market share. Xu said international expansion was a major priority for the company. “Our strategy for the wireless business in the past 10 years has been to gain critical mass in China, then we expanded into emerging markets like Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Now we are bringing that push into developed markets like Europe.” 

Xu said he was confident ZTE could make its goal of reaching the top three.  “The trend is very clear. If you look at Alcatel Lucent or Nokia Siemens Networks, their growth rate is flat or shrinking, and even market leader Ericsson has a slow growth rate. For ZTE, if we can continue to grow at the very rapid rates that we have seen in recent years, we will soon take over one of the major vendors in terms of revenues.”

http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCATRE71D3U020110214

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LM Ericsson

Ericsson, still the world’s leading telecom infrastructure vendor, must surely be worried about the rapid ascent of Huawei and ZTE.  We believe Ericsson is in a better position than its European- American and Japanese rivals to resist the Chinese led onslaught, as its economies of scale give it higher sales and better profit margins.

Note: LM Ericsson is not to be confused with ST Ericsson, which is a joint venture of STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM) and Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC).  For the latest financial results of the latter company, please visit:

http://www.ericsson.com/thecompany/press/releases/2011/01/1481961?WT.mc_id=hugin_press_rss

Expert Analyst Comment

Tim McElgunn, Chief Analyst, Pike & Fischer had this to say:

“Yes, it has been a hard few years for network equipment vendors and some companies have exited or pulled back, but the trends are looking up somewhat.   Alcatel-Lucent  and NSN both turned in profitable 4Qs; Ericsson reported profits up more than tenfold in the fourth quarter, boosted by a jump in mobile broadband sales.  Adtran had a great year, and Ciena reported very strong revenue: its loss was primarily due to the costs of integrating its chunk of Nortel.

As for the myriad small guys who disappeared, most were acquired and the technology continues on as part of larger NEMs’ portfolios.

Rapid growth in HD video, wireless broadband, more symmetrical traffic patterns on the up and downstream, etc are all driving bandwidth demand and the resulting demand for infrastructure and integrations services at all points of the network.

No doubt, all need to improve efficiencies and cut costs. Alcatel-Lucent particularly has struggled to find the synergy benefits promised at the time of the merger.

Huawei and ZTE are obviously significant competitors, but I don’t think they are quite ready to take over the world. Like everyone else, they must compete on technology, product quality and innovation. They also face barriers created by national security concerns and other, less open protectionist concerns. Specific to the Moto acquisition, Huawei has raised some objections but is unlikely to have enough political juice in either the U.S. or EU to scuttle the deal.

The total number of broadband subscribers continues to expand, just more slowly.  That said, growth drivers include commercial services, advanced advertising, and content. Additionally, we are seeing valued added services coming to market, such as premium support (see Time Warner Cable Signature Home) or home security and automation, etc. that should help maintain ARPU and margins going forward.

In addition, if they are successful with their emerging strategies, service providers will be among those who benefit from OTT, leveraging their dominance of broadband access, existing content relationships, increasing multi-screen capabilities, and (reportedly) improving interfaces and ease of use to attract and retain users that might otherwise go to more pure play OTT options. Still, companies like Roku and Boxee at the new/small end and Google and Apple at the established/huge end will all benefit from over the top. Other beneficiaries include other tablet makers and consumer electronics companies, who are adding features to take advantage of OTT directly into their gear.  The business models for service providers are evolving incredibly quickly. Nearly all of that evolution translates into increased pressure on infrastructure. Smart companies on both sides of the equation will find ways to turn the resulting disruption to their advantage, those that cannot will lose ground rapidly.”

For a review of P&F 2011 Broadband Outlook report please go to:

http://viodi.com/2011/02/13/pf-2011-broadband-outlook-examines-over-the-top-vs-pay-tv-services/

Bottom Line

In conclusion, we wonder if only three players- Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE- will be the only dominant telecom equipment infrastructure vendors in coming years or if  there’ll be room for more vendors (as Tim McElgunn suggests) .  And what new services/technologies will drive revenues and profits?  What do you think?

Prof. James Won-Ki Hong and his students Yeongrak Choi and Yoonseon Han from POSTECH, developed and provided an iPhone application for ComSoc members with an Apple iOS device such as the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

The App was developed as part of a term project for a graduate course called, “Smartphonomics: Convergence using Smart Phones and Devices” in the Division of IT Convergence Engineering,POSTECH, Korea.  

A beta version of this application was demonstrated at the ComSoc committee meetings atGlOBECOM 2010 in Miami last December. It showed how ComSoc members might soon be able to access ComSoc online content via their smartphones. The ComSoc iPhone App is now available to our members from the Apple App Store for free. 

The team plans to provide similar native smartphone applications for Android-based mobile devices soon.

With the allocation of the last block of IPv4 addresses by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) , the move to IPv6 has become much more urgent. On January 31st, IANA assigned two large blocks of IPv4 addresses to the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre, activating a rule under which the agency will give out the last of its IPv4 addresses. The rule states that when only five large blocks of IP addresses remain, one will be handed out to each of the world’s five regional Internet registries.

With the latest allocation to APNIC, the number of remaining IP address blocks is down to five. IANA is expected to assign the remaining blocks within a matter of days. After that, the regional bodies will have no higher source of addresses to turn to when they have assigned the addresses they hold. An IANA official said last week that he believes ISPs are accelerating their requests for addresses as the supply nears its end.

IPv4’s 32 bit address space allows for only about 4.3 billion unique Internet addresses, which client and web servers use to connect over the Internet by routing data to the correct destination. The remaining IPv4 addresses have been dwindling over the past few years. While the last block of IPv4 addresses have been allocated to regional registries, they do still have some to distribute. And there are millions of unused IPv4 addresses. But those unused IPv4 addresses will likely be allocated very soon.

IPv4 address exhaustion will likely impact Asia first. With 24 million IP addresses used by APNIC in January 2011, and only around 50 million addresses left in its pool, exhaustion is expected to occur in the next few months. Europe will be next (probably towards the end of 2011), and North America will follow (in 2012).

Hence, it’s now more important than ever for ISPs to transition from IPv4 to IPv6 addresses. IPv6 has a 128-bit address space, which could be used to assign an almost unlimited number of addresses. To help make the IPv6 migration easier, many major technology companies – including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo – will be participating in World IPv6 Day later this year, a test to make sure their systems are ready to make the switch.

Many pundits say that making the switch won’t be easy for ISPs. Even though IPv6 was standardized more than a decade ago, there has been no real incentive to upgrade networks’ addressing compatibility. But with the proliferation of mobile devices, M2M communication endpoints, and other “connected” gadgets, there is a real need now for more IP addresses. Dave Thaler, software architect at Microsoft and Internet Engineer Task Force (IETF) co-chair, said, “The IETF has actually been preparing for this day for a long time. … [W]e’ve developed transition technologies to ease the transition to IPv6, while also looking at the impact of carrier-grade NATs [network address translations]. In short, the depletion of the IANA IPv4 address pool is not a crisis, and will not have any notable short-term effects.”

For an in depth presentation and panel session on this important topic, please attend the February 15, 2011 ComSocSCV meeting in Santa Clara, CA: The meeting is free, but we do request a small donation for food and drinks served from 6pm- 6:30pm.

IPv6 Migration, Business Continuity, Implementation Gaps

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/comsoc/index.php