NetEvents EMEA Summit Frascati - Press and Vendor meetings summary.

Vendor meetings summary:

A key element of the NetEvents press summit formula is the meetings between press and vendors, so here we present a summary of some of the vendor meetings.

ECI Telecom - Matthias Nass, VP Field Marketing, EMEA

About the company: we have 2,600 employees, we do internet transport and wireless infrastructure, BT is a key customer and uses our equipment for next generation access. We are strong in utilities - especially those moving towards becoming a u-telco. We are strong in India, China and Latin America. We see telcos moving to the cloud - such as Deutsche Telekom's T-Cloud service.

Vision: we need more fibre to the kerb - or at least closer to the end user - if cloud is to succeed. What do telcos need to become successful? End user acceptance. Today, SMBs are quickest to the cloud. Telcos need to move away from the network and add more value.

Yet telcos are focusing on big enterprises not SMBs. They are slower to the cloud because they have problems of regulation and net neutrality that SPs do not. Russia and Asia have fewer regulatory brakes so end users are getting fibre where Europeans are not - but problem there is multiple providers aiming for the richest / low-hanging fruit.

VMware - Joe Baguley, Chief Cloud Technologist, EMEA

VMware recently made a vCloud global connect announcement where three service providers announced a global cloud: BlueLock, SingTel, and COLT. The aim is to allow you to move VMs easily to an service provider in the cloud. Some telcos provide secure/ guaranteed bandwidth which they can then put a service wrapper around as Orange Business Services does - it sells cloud as a service: you don't rent servers but a service.

People don't want to manage operating systems so telcos and service providers will move away from infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Rather, people want managed services, for example CloudFoundry, which is an orchestration a layer above a bunch of virtual machines (VMs) and allows the hardware platform to provide the resilience etc.

We need to learn how to orchestrate VMs - you can then sell it to enterprises and service providers. Everyone is moving up the stack from IaaS upwards. CloudFoundry is doing this - is the biggest growing part of cloud and telcos will move there.

The future will see MVP - mobile virtual iPhone / Android - which allows you to deploy a work phone onto your Android, which is good for BYOD (bring your own device) environments. Mobile providers and telcos need to understand how this works as there's only one SIM. We are talking to providers about that - they are arguing and bidding as to who can be first to do it. Samsung and LG are first hardware vendors involved.

Other news

Check out VMware AppBlast - delivery of apps to any html5 device.

We bought SlideRocket, Zimbra - have Project Octopus (from EMC Mozy) - is a corporate Dropbox that does collaborative documents, chat etc.

VXLan - also launched at the recent VMworld - can move VMs around without breaking VLANs and IP addresses.

Tata Communications - James Walker, Head of Managed Network Services

We are working with global companies just below the top tier. We aim to be more flexible, more aggressive, eg selling network services on a per-seat basis. Companies that do a lot of M&A are interested. It means the customer no longer has to dictate the network topology - we do all that.

We launched a virtual Ethernet platform last year that allows multiple datacentres to be treated as one virtual datacentre, good for companies spread across multiple facilities. It allows us to do deterministic routes.

This is all on our own network - we own about 25% of the world's capacity - large proportion is used by our own IP business, about 2.5Pbits/month, plus clear channel services which adds up to about 80% of the total bandwidth, while the rest is consumed by MPLS and voice. We will shortly own a ring of fibre all the way around the planet.

Datacentres - we bought TeleGlobe and Tyco Networks so we inherited those, and built 15,000 sq.m. datacentre facility in Singapore, and others in India and S Africa, all on our network.

This supports our new InstaCompute scalable cloud offering in Singapore, and covering neighbouring countries: Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. The IaaS service enables Asia Pacific businesses to use a global infrastructure via the Internet without the cost and complexities associated with IT provisioning.

Tata aims to be in top five of all the businesses we are in. Competitors operate in Europe and are unsuccessful but we have a $100m business here - we sell well in France.

Mobile is not strategic for us - we are focused on fixed line.

There's a gap in the market for mobile experience because in developed nations it's very computer-centric not mobile-centric.

In Africa, mobile backhaul is going mostly satellite based using Google's upcoming EchoEye satellite.

Verne Global - Jeff Monroe, CEO; Tate Cantrell, CTO; Lisa Rhodes, VP Sales/Marketing

JM: We are bringing dual power 500 sq.m. datacentre to Keflavik, Iceland - it arrives in October. We covered negotiations on tax policy, power utilities, running cables to Iceland. First customer is DataPipe - services US and UK with management and cloud services. The cable was laid in 2009. This is the world's first mission critical data centre with zero-emissions to be manufactured and constructed in less than four months.

We got Icelandic tax law changed so that VAT could be refunded if equipment was deployed - ie this is in line with the rest of Europe. We had to install power and telecoms lines. The site is former NATO air base. Dual power source is geothermal and hydro - but we have diesel generators as backup - customers demand it just in case the Earth stops generating heat! Iceland has a very robust electricity supply because there is constant demand: there are a lot of aluminium smelters using big power - they use 85% of the total constantly so the whole varies little, unlike eg the UK.

DataPipe offers green services. We have multi-terabit cables that deliver point-to-point connectivity.

Customers save money because we don't add a green premium. We are a wholesale datacentre provider. We use COLT modular datacentres as the basis. We looked at lots of other modular datacentres and the plus point for COLT was our ability to collaborate.

There is not much waste heat: power cost and environmental impact are zero. So is PUE important? We quote the PUE to customers - have not yet announced it. we can do better than the COLT PUE: 1.21. The main energy cost is humidification, and inside the box temperature will be maintained to ASHRAE standards.

Do people care about green in a recession? There has to be a cash advantage, so the renewable part of this is a key advantage for us.

This is a 40-50 year investment so we think about things in long timescales. We know what the cost of electricity will be in 20 years time - no-one else can do that. The price we pay for electricity is under 50% - all other things being equal - compared to UK power cost.

Wellcome Trust is the majority investor.

About COLT: we see a strong demand in the colocation market and we required a partner who could provide highly resilient, flexible data centre space, configured to our specific technical requirements.

Infoblox - Steve Garrison, VP Marketing; Francisca Calkoen, EMEA Marketing

Preamble: the need for IP address management is growing as rates of change and the numbers of IP addresses increase. It means there's a need for automation, driven by trust of the system. (we do DDI=DNS, DHCP, IPAM) - it's a network provisioning control plane tool.

Our systems run as a grid so that they understand what's happening using a distributed database. It's a resilient network fabric. It means we can segment network services and the grid can get as big as you like.

New: the new product is Multi-Grid Master (MGM). You can install 50 grids, each of which has 250 devices = 12,500 devices. It's a virtual mainframe... Price: $25,000.

Brocade - John McHugh, Chief Marketing Officer

Customers are worrying about economic issues and technology ageing. Looking at Cisco's VCE - it's a Ford Model T. It achieved success through being limited but customisation came along. VCE is fine for a first step but it needs to be customised.

Brocade is about CloudPlex - the best systems (storage, computing, networking) need to get together. We worked with Avnet to build an integrated stack with twice the performance of VCE at the same price, with flexibility and an open architecture.

Cloud moves IT to opex not capex - IT used to be like building your own power plant but now you don't need to do that, you can acquire applications etc on a per-use model. This is transformational. You can even buy your networking on a subscription model with Brocade Network Subscription, announced at VMworld four weeks ago. This is appealing to those in the managed services business as they won't get cashflow positive until the second or third year. This is where resellers are going as it means they don't have capital charges. the proof is that MSPs are pressing other vendors to do likewise.

We designed Ethernet fabric chips after the acquisition of Foundry Networks, so our network fabric becomes a flexible hardware-based, lossless distributed switch chassis. It knows about the port configurations and topology. It means the system is multiply redundant. This is good for internal network traffic inside the datacentre - which is not what Cisco's Nexus architecture is designed for - it's designed for north/south traffic not east/west traffic.

Brocade Ethernet Fabric called VDX - we have 200 customers (60 in EMEA) for this - not big numbers but this is datacentre stuff - equivalent to Juniper QFabric. VDX is doing well: Q211 revenue for this up 78% Q311 up 119%. The system has Fibre Channel ports so it can link into existing storage networks.

Growth of cloud will be service providers and SIs building new datacentres not enterprises.

MEF – Kevin Vachon, COO and Phil Tilley, Global Marketing Co-chair

Kevin presented an impressive set of market data and predictions for further growth in Carrier Ethernet (CE) equipment and services. Vertical Systems Group’s recent report confirmed that the worldwide market for Business Ethernet services is on target to reach $44.3B by 2015 with double-digit global growth despite recent economic uncertainty.

Having just celebrated its 10^th anniversary, the MEF continues to gain momentum through its increasing membership and other initiatives, including an expansion of its successful certification program to include MEF – CECP’s – Carrier Ethernet Certified Professionals important new standards wok in the areas of access services and 4G mobile backhaul. MEF’s strategy for fully enabling Carrier Ethernet to support Private Cloud Computing also forms a major component of MEF’s current work plans.

The MEF is on track with important technical and educational work that will enable mobile operators to more easily implement MEF’s widely adopted Class of Service models in wireless backhaul environments, to drive down mobile backhaul costs. Also, with work nearing completion on the next generation of MEF’s Mobile Backhaul Implementation Agreement, mobile operators will be have the necessary technical guidance to now support both 3G and 4G.

Building on the Global Interconnect Program of 2010/11 significantly, MEF will be introducing a new access service specification in early 2012 that will standardize wholesale access service implementations and enable shortened cycles for the sale and provisioning of such services. This new area of work is seen as one of the final major puzzle pieces in support of Carrier Ethernet globalization.

Day two of NetEvents October 2011 press summit in Frascati opened with a set of meetings between vendors and press (more info in next blog), followed

KEYNOTE: Joe Baguley, Chief Cloud Technologist, VMware.

The morning's keynote was delivered by Joe Baguley, chief cloud technologist from virtualisation software company VMware. Baguley talked about how virtualisation in the cloud will change how everyone works.

One of his main points was that in future the desktop operating system will be pulled apart as its various elements -- memory, disk and CPU -- are pushed into the cloud, and applications will be available anywhere on any device. This will remove the need for desktops, he said.

He also said we would also be seeing mobile virtual phones -- Android phones running another phone image -- very soon. Some corporates already do this with laptops so that one image is locked down and secured, designed for company usage, while the other is for personal use.

He was lightly grilled by the event host, Manek Dubash, who asked about the confusion that remains between cloud and virtualisation, the problems of over-reliance on unreliable networks, and Microsoft, VMware's biggest competitor.

HEAD 2 HEAD ‘Clash of the Titans' : Datacentre Architecture Shoot-Out

An entertaining session headed by Daniel Beazer, senior research analyst at Tier1 Research. Beazer played the role of an Australian media baron looking for pitches from cloud service providers, in the shape of Verizon Business's David Howarth and Brocade's John McHugh.

Howarth's pitch offered access anywhere, any time, any place, and to overcome the barriers of change, governance and trust. McHugh offered a flat, low-latency network which he said would allow capacity-based scaling. After a show of hands from the audience as to the more effective pitch (which McHugh narrowly won), two analysts played the role of consultants examining the two vendors' offerings. Keith Humphries (Eurolan) asked about legacy integration, while Rob Bamforth (QuoCirca) asked how the vendors planned to quantify existing assets.

After John McHugh declared systems integrators were going to be the road kill of the cloud, a final vote was taken, in which McHugh increased his margin of victory.

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE “Into the ether then into the cloud – the vital role of Ethernet”

Analyst James Eibisch from IDC was up next, and discussed the role of Ethernet in the cloud. For him, the question was whether high speed Ethernet can deliver at the core, and what benefit it brings to the cloud.

On the panel, Kevin Vachon of the MEF said that Ethernet will be critical to the cloud, while James Walker of Tata Communications said that cloud services are being taken up quickly as providers deploy Ethernet within and between their datacentres. McHugh said that Ethernet is great where appropriate, enlarged upon by Alcatel-Lucent's Phil Tilley who reckoned that Ethernet gives high bandwidth, secure and reliable services. Tilley added that Ethernet is ideal for known – i.e. not mobile -- locations. John McHugh added that it's not as simple as that as you can't just let people create and run their own Ethernet. It needs a multi-protocol architecture, he said.

After further discussion, Eibisch polled the audience, who agreed that Ethernet will be essential to cloud where its application makes sense.

Service Assurance with the Cloud. Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Communication, Collaboration and Convergence, Quocirca

The summit's penultimate session was led by Rob Bamforth, principal analyst at QuoCirca, and concerned service assurance in the cloud. He asked the panel how much was needed.

Panel member Marco Wanders from Acision said that the cloud needed application performance, availability and security, with cloud access being the key reason for the network's existence. Available capacity will always be used, he said, so you need to classify traffic to allow SLA and prioritisation to work.

Vodafone's Tim Gigg said his company has a cloud offering for multinationals but that latency is an issue when selling to Asia-Pac and Africa. He agreed that quality of service is important, so Vodafone places content caches close to its base stations.

David Howarth, of Verizon Business, said you need to define the experience you want to have and work backwards from there. We will backhaul traffic to the best place to get it to the Internet but we need application developers to collaborate, he said.

Ahmedou Oul Ahmed Sidi, from Mauritel, said his company was still thinking about cloud. His concerns were how cloud technology will affect the operator value chain and the telco business model. He was also concerned about security, service creation, the cost of migration from legacy infrastructures, and whether quality of service in the cloud was good enough for financial transactions. We wait to be convinced, he said.

Improving Profitability & ROI for SPs. Michal Halama, Principal Analyst, Business Network IT Services, Current Analysis

The final panel of the day came courtesy of Michal Halama, principal analyst at Current Analysis. Entitled Show Me The Money, this session concerned service providers' business models. The key factors for service providers are timing, revenue, cost-saving, and investment, he said. They need to blend existing services with new cloud services, and customers need to perceive the value.

From the panel, Alessandro Canzian, of BT, said that the cloud is a hub containing services from a number of players. Developers need to be creative in finding new services and not worrying about servers, while systems integrators need to integrate the legacy and cloud worlds.

Matthias Nass, from telecoms equipment vendor ECI, said that broadband is commodity, price-driven, with lots of user churn. This means there is a need to enhance revenue streams with services such as security, managed bandwidth, and datacentre strategies, Nass said. He said that a successful cloud needs to be easy to use, offer comprehensive functionality, automatic service provision, and integration of relevant services. He was favour of net neutrality but said that it was an international regulatory issue.

Panel member Simone Bonnannini, from Interoute, said that the service provider's role is not just to sell the bricks of the cloud but houses – i.e. not just services but the cloud itself. He saw the cloud as a black box to solve customers' problems and that's the key to making money. The problem with getting money from over-the-top operators, he said, is that if there are multiple operators, one will offer free transport and the rest must follow.

Jim Machi of Dialogic said that the cloud is a sandbox to allow developers to build applications. The first applications are non-essential, such as fax services, he said, followed by unified communications and new mobile services such as video messaging/SMS, and mobile videoconferencing.

After further discussion, the panel concluded. This wrapped up the summit for members of the press, although service providers and analysts stayed on for further discussions.

NetEvents EMEA Press Summit in Frascati opened on 5 October, keynote speaker James Walker of Tata Communications

NetEvents' press summit in Frascati opened on 5 October 2011 as the company's first event on the Italian mainland since 1999.

First on the cloud-focused agenda was keynote speaker James Walker of Tata Communications who spoke about the cloud behind the cloud -- or how cloud buyers need to consider the impact of the network and other services. During his keynote, Walker said that the cloud is complex and difficult to configure, as a result of which some customers are sticking with their old ATM point to point network because it works.

He was joined onstage by NetEvents editorial director Manek Dubash who asked him how cloud buyers could trust service providers who are reselling services from multiple partners, and how well providers can be trusted, given the uncertainty that exists over the size of the market.

This session was followed by Gartner VP Ian Keene, who introduced a plenary session on cloud infrastructure, security, transport and content delivery. Keene explained how the cloud had now passed Gartner's peak of inflated expectations and was heading for the trough of disillusionment, as negative press and disillusionment starts to appear. Keene said it means there are some questions to be asked/answered.

From the discussion panel, Steve Garrison from Infoblox talked about his company's VMware plugin with the aim of reducing the time to obtain an IP address. He said that the problem with optimising cloud is that it's about people, pipes, politics, and process, so savings come from automation.

Jeff Monroe of Verne Global said that his company had just built a datacentre in Iceland which offers free cooling without chillers. The problem is that people are putting servers in sub-optimal locations, such as city centres, he said.

Mattias Nass from ECI Telecom said that the big problem for cloud is the access networks which are giving users bandwidth problems. The challenges are who will pay for cloud services, opex and regulatory concerns. He pointed out that bandwidth is limited even in developed countries. The cost savings from the cloud mean no additional specialisation or spending on IT, especially in SMBs, he said.

Sean Larner of wireless company Xirrus was next onstage being interviewed by Manek Dubash, who was keen to understand how cloud and wireless fitted together. Larner said that the proliferation of devices in the enterprise as cloud access grows means there is demand for denser wireless networks. He said that the market will grow and that, as a vendor, branding the company as cloud-focused was important. He added that demand for wireless was already growing in a variety of areas, not just the executive suite.

Peter Hall, analyst with Ovum, introduced the next session which discussed self-service and auto-provisioning. Hall outlined how these were key questions for cloud implementations. Clouds are not automated, he said, and today we only have first generation services but you need end-to-end management and automation, and service providers who take responsibility to ensure applications actually work.

On the panel, Steve Garrison, Infoblox, said that what customers want is to stop fixing mundane processes and to automate, although this still needs to gain trust. Customers don't want to go to the public cloud because they don't know how to measure it, and they have no visibility of what's in there, he said.

Phil Tilley, Alcatel-Lucent, said that enterprises need a systems integrator to bring the various elements together to build a cloud solution. Service level agreements are a marketing gimmick unless you can measure it, he said, and that a key technique to prove application performance is deep packet inspection.

Andreas Stern, from testing company Spirent, said cloud providers need to partner. Discussing reliability, he pointed out that failover is an issue: even six nines (99.9999%) availability amounts to 52 minutes per year. Failover can even failover to the wrong network but, like a plane, you have to believe in the pilot and the technology. Defending the cloud will always be a challenge, he said.

That concluded the morning's proceedings, and the plenary broke up for individual meetings.

“IT’s All In The Clouds” – NetEvents EMEA Summit, Italy, promises less cloud hype and more cloud wisdom

The hype around Cloud computing is “deafening”, according to this Summer’s

”Hype Cycle” report from the Gartner Group. From multinational consulting firms and systems integrators down to freelance consultants, they all claim a suite of cloud related services, and Gartner warns that such ”cloudwashing” risks accelerating the entire industry into a trough of disillusionment.

But it isn’t a simple case of a desperate IT industry struggling to make sales in a reluctant market, the push is equally felt within organisations. According to Gartner Group analyst Rolf Jester: "[CEOs] want to know that somebody knows about it and has thought about it properly and that there is a plan and the plan makes sense". The professional services sector has been swift to respond, with assessments of clients’ business needs and recommended roadmaps for adopting cloud technology, meanwhile vendors have piled in with a lot of highly persuasive material.

Indeed, Ovum research director Steve Hodgkinson says that there are now so many seminars and workshops being laid on that their target audience is feeling saturated: "Most people have got the general case on cloud computing and why it appeals – now they're looking for the reality of how it feels to actually do it...with the undercurrent being: how do you see through all the hype?" He believes users have more to learn from other users and on-the-ground insights. "There's very strong interest in interactive knowledge sharing… People want to sift through all this and talk to their peers about their experience.”

What’s true of the market applies equally to our industry. NetEvents has always discouraged its speakers from delivering off-the-shelf product pitches – and some find it hard to kick the habit – but the fact is that the true value of any NetEvents Summit comes from a real two-way sharing of ideas, and as much listening as speaking.

That’s what sets this week’s NetEvents EMEA Summit apart from the tide of Cloud promotion: it’s a real opportunity for the industry to lay aside the hype and practice listening – to each other and to a world-class lineup of panelists, analysts and IT visionaries.

Starting with James Walker from Tata Communications – the man responsible for the strategy, management and development of Tata’s massive VPN portfolio with over 3,000 Ethernet access nodes in 52 countries, direct MPLS services to 100 countries and managed extended access and network integration offerings in more than 190 countries – we look forward to a wealth of real world facts about the vital role of “The Cloud behind the Cloud”.

For the second day’s guest speaker we selected from The Next Web’s April list of the 25 most influential cloud computing voices Joe Baguley – Chief Cloud Technologist EMEA from virtualization masters VMware. And, among the analysts presenting we have top names including : Michal Halama, Principal Analyst, Business Network IT Services, Current Analysis; Ian Keene, Vice President, Gartner; James Eibisch, Research Director, EMEA Business Network Services, IDC; Camille Mendler, Principal Analyst, Informa; Peter Hall, Principal Analyst, Ovum; Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Communication, Collaboration and Convergence, Quocirca; and Daniel Beazer, Senior Research Analyst, EMEA, Tier1 Research. Topics addressed include a challenge on the role of Ethernet, debate sessions on service assurance, network automation and datacenter architecture, and a “Quick Fire” opportunity for innovators to prove they have the means to boost SPs’ profitability and ROI.

Day three ends the conference session firmly positioned in the real world, with a series of short case studies from top service providers, including: Alessandro Canzian, Head of BT Global Telecom Markets (GTM) Italy; Tim Gigg, Head of International Transport Programmes, Vodafone Group; Tate Cantrell, CTO, Verne Global; and Akber Jaffer, Vice President Strategy, Colt Data Centre Services.

Gartner’s Rolf Jester sums up the current global situation by saying: "Visibility and awareness of cloud computing are very high – that doesn't mean that knowledge is very high, but that everybody is talking about it."

This week’s NetEvents EMEA Summit in Italy offers a golden opportunity to set that record straight.

So stay tuned for this week’s event reports from Manek Dubash, Editorial Director, NetEventsTV…