Mobile networks can be seen as a play ground for the well conversed, a black hole for newcomers and a challenge to others. As you venture further from the middle (core) the complexity and diversity increases.  The core is few nodes and more capacity the “last mile” access is the opposite, masses of nodes but relatively small capacity (Bandwidth).

Having read the text books on network design and the different mobile versions: 2G, 3G, HSPA and LTE it dawned on me that the jargon was based on a network that if you connect it correctly it will work end-to-end. This vision of utopia probably only exists in under graduate text books in reality the picture is quite the opposite. The reality is all mobile networks are constrained by commercial, technological and country wide uniqueness’s (lay of the land, number of subscribers etc.). Within the core the reality is almost the same as fixed lines the ability to move packets, quickly and cost effectively with ever increasing data numbers.

If you’ve been in the networking industry as long as I have, you’ve no doubt been in conversations kicking around the idea of Packet-Optical Convergence many times over the years. The hope for lower cost structures (capex and more importantly operational costs), collapsing layers, a common control plane, high performance and resiliency, and common management all fuel the business case and desire to see it happen.  But there are many levels of convergence ranging from router transponder integration which had always been viewed as the first steps in bringing these worlds together, all the way thru to the god-box concepts of having a single network element that combines all the intelligence of IP routing and forwarding together with OTN switching and WSS Switching in the same system. .........

A recent edition of the UK The Economist had an interesting article called “The Server Market; Shifting Sands”. What the article highlighted was the fragile and fluid nature of the global server market.  What stands out in the article is the decline in server revenue for the two leading server manufacturers HP and IBM when comparing Q1 2013 to Q1 2012 ($3.0 B down from $3.5 B). What is surprising is the declines are at a time when the demand for data centre based content is growing.  While not directly analogous to the server market growth, however content is processed and accessed by the server, so the demand for processing resources and storage go hand in hand. Understanding the growth in content helps frame the challenge the data centre engineers face as they plan ahead. At the end of 2012, an article in Computer Weekly referenced a study by EMC estimating 2.8 ZB of data was created in 2012 (2.8 trillion gigabytes) and will double every year until 2020. The Economist article continued to comment on the trend of the mega data centre builders, such as Facebook and Google. These companies are building mega data centres to host a large percentage of this ever expanding content. What The Economist highlights is that some organisations are avoiding the mainstream manufacturers and designing their own servers and buying directly from contract manufacturers in Taiwan to reduce cost. The reported revenue decline of the top two server manufactures was approx 15%, and out of the next three largest server manufacturers (based on revenue), only Dell managed to increase their revenue. The underlying question is whether this is the start of a shift in server buying patterns or whether it remains limited to a small subset of the large data centre builders.  

Whenever I interview a candidate for a role in the company I work at, the very first question I ask them is how much they know about the company they are looking to join.

The purpose of that question is twofold.  Firstly, have they done their research, their data gathering? Then, have they synthesized that data into information and opinion about the company and its role, offers and business etc.  Key here is that the data is out there for those that care to look.

That leads me on the second and more crucial reason for asking the question: Relevancy.

...or how to simplify the gateway in and out of branch offices

Today’s enterprises are anything but centralized. From retail to financial services, utilities to distribution, engineering to R&D, organizations operate wherever business is conducted. This has a major impact on how you secure the branch.

Now, you would think that starting a new job would be a daunting prospect but not as daunting as starting a new job with your first task being to redesign and upgrade the core network.

Like the Wild West of the 1800s, today’s campuses are becoming lawless places. Employees and visitors roam free armed with multiple devices, user owned and company supplied, and expect to connect to the corporate network, wherever and whenever they want to.

A security breach on LTE can ruin Telco’s Brand Reputation

A few weeks ago horse meat traces where found in multiple products sold in Europe. Some well known food brands have been identified but probably the one that suffered the most has been a famous furniture chain! 
Do you want to be the first LTE provider serving horse meatballs? Consider LTE Backhaul Security...

Trust.

Subjective, emotional, personal yet crucial that it exists for inter-personal or business to business transactions to be conducted on an ongoing basis. 

The first curious thing about trust is that in many ways it is not a monetarily expensive thing to establish. It is built on the emotional pillars of integrity, authenticity, and transparency.  Those pillars can and often do take time to establish but once established they provide a strong foundation for that ongoing transactional engagement.

Yesterday was Day 2 of Infosec13 in London and it was great to see and feel the buzz on the Juniper booth where we have been sharing our latest innovative security solutions with the show delegates.

If you can't make the show, and with my Data Center hat firmly on, here’s a quick overview of what the exitement is all about in Data Center security from Juniper....

Enterprises are facing new needs and challenges; those may translate into new opportunities for Managed Service Providers. But, are telecom providers well positioned to capture those opportunities?

It gives me great pleasure to announce Juniper Networks and Imtech ICT at Infosec, April 23rd – 25th 2013, on stand E61. We will unveil our groundbreaking security innovations for 2013. We’ll walk you through live demonstrations showcasing our scaled-up protections for data centers and networks of any size and explain how we’re shutting down attackers on a global scale.

My parents acquired a Samsung SmartTV a year ago without paying much attention on the ‘smarts’ of the device. A few weeks ago, after a (never ending) family lunch at their home, I started to play with their new TV and configured the SmartTV section. Only after them alerting menot to break anything, they suddenly discovered a window to a brand new world that I just enabled. How long did it take last time they tried to unsuccessfully connect their laptop? With the magic of the SmartTV button, they found an easy way to connect to Internet content, VoD and even family pictures, although the system is still far from perfect.

Big data is big business and one of the fastest growing areas of the ICT market. But why should you care about the network when you are planning you big data application deployments? As long as you have the right connectivity and ‘enough’ bandwidth then what more is there to consider? Well, quite a lot as it turns out.

On 25^th January 2012, the EU Commission announced a “comprehensive reform of the EU's 1995 data protection rules to strengthen online privacy rights and boost Europe's digital economy”. Citing the rapid deployment and technological advancements made over the past 10 years that have fundamentally changed the way data is collected, used and stored; the announcement outlined four proposed areas of regulation:

• the right to be forgotten – helping to manage data protection risks online so people can delete their data if there is no need to retain it
• explicit not implied consent – consent will have to be given to process personal data rather than assume it can be used
•  right of data access and portability – easy access to an individual’s own data and easy access to transfer personal data from one service provider to another
• 24 hour notification of a data breach – organisations will have an obligation to notify the national authority on serious data breaches if feasible within 24 hours.