The race to automate

An autonomous network was once seen as part of a utopian ideal, albeit one far off into the future. It would make up the backbone of everything we did, managing a hyper-connected world in which everything from the minutiae of knowing when the milk in the fridge needed replacing, to the ability of the network to automatically ramp services up or down, without the need for human intervention.

In a recent ACG Research survey of network service providers, internet content providers, cloud service providers and large enterprises, 100 percent of respondents said they felt the need to pursue automation, and 100 percent are optimistic about automation’s future. Additionally, 75 percent of respondents indicated that they’ll have full or significant network automation within the next five years.

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We live in a world in which we’re regularly streaming Netflix in 4K, using the power of the phones in our pockets to augment our realities with virtual gaming, and even watching basketball from a virtual courtside seat. Our networks have evolved to cater for these technologies, and each evolutionary step has brought with it a technological boom enabled by greater capacity, speed, automation, intelligence and programmability.

The next step has arrived and it’s just in time, because when you thought we were finally content with, well, content, new technologies have emerged that push beyond what we ever thought possible.

At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Intel Studios unveiled what it’s calling Volumetric Video – and it’s nothing short of stunning. Volumetric Video uses multiple cameras to shoot a 360-degree field of view, but it differs from standard 360-degree or VR video in that it captures footage “from the outside in”. To picture how it works, visualize the action scenes from The Matrix, in which the cameras pan around a frozen-in-mid-air Keanu Reeves. But now imagine being a viewer with the ability to zoom in on any part of that scene or look at any part of the footage from any angle you want, at any point in the action sequence.

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The holiday season is as good a time as any to take stock of what we witnessed in 2017, and from a technology perspective it was a year unlike any other. We saw the value of crypto currencies skyrocket and the opening of a crypto-futures market. The first shipments of 400G technologies into the wide-area-network with AT&T and Vodafone New Zealand, the continued deployment of Software-Defined Networking, a technology we’ve long championed, an early example of augmented reality go viral with Pokémon Go and Virtual Reality start to reshape the way we interact with the world around us – such as changing how we watch live sports.

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Whether you are streaming the latest boxing match or watching the most recent Game of Thrones episode, during its first run, the network is going to play a major role in determining your quality of experience like never before. There is unprecedented demand for content, and with the proliferation of smart devices capable of displaying video, every pair of eyeballs on the internet is a potential consumer.

The widespread availability of video combined with streaming technology means our viewing expectations are now much more demanding on the infrastructure. We expect content to be there, wherever and whenever we want it. We want to watch it, pause it, play it in slow motion, watch it again, analyze it, save it for later, share it with friends.  We want to watch it at home, on the train or at work – because there’s always the underlying risk of spoilers, or missing out on the next-day office discussion should we be unable to view it.

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It’s best practice that every year we see our primary care doctor for a full physical exam. According to the CDC, regular health check-ups can help find problems before they start and improve the chances of treatment and recovery from illnesses. So, with just an annual exam, we should be in great shape, right? Most Americans, of all ages, are in poorer health when compared to their counterparts in comparable countries. So, where’s the disconnect, and what lessons can those of us in the technology industry take away?

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Every year around this time we “gaze into our crystal ball” to identify key trends for the coming year. But this year I’ve decided to do something different. So, instead I’ll share some suggestions for New Year’s resolutions that we, as an industry, should work on together in 2017.

What’s the difference, you ask? Trends are defined by the general direction in which something is shifting or changing, whereas the dictionary defines resolution as “a firm decision to do or not do something” or “the action of solving a problem, dispute or contentious matter.” So while the trends of the past few years have prepared us to expect the unexpected when it comes to today’s networks and what users demand, now is the time for us to be bold in our solutions.

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These days, more than ever before, the terms “game changer” and “disruptive” are thrown around with abandon. Everyone is fighting to be known as the Uber of X.

But whenever a game changes, the need to learn new rules arises. And when something is disruptive, the routines we’ve picked up over the years are thrown off kilter. The need to teach a new way of doing things becomes vital. It’s one thing to go through the implementation of a new system, infrastructure or standard. It’s another thing entirely to get everyone used to a whole new system. It is a case of “adapt or die.”

+ Also on Network World: The IT skills gap is a reality, but doesn’t have to be +

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Creating choice is one of the fundamental drivers of innovation. Choice sparks debate, fosters competition and drives innovation. There’s always someone else in the market looking to offer us a choice from what is already here, and the decision people typically make is to go with the choice that makes life easier.

For example, consider the choices people make when it comes to their mobile device. In the beginning, the majority of us in business had only one choice to access work email and applications—Blackberry. Today, with devices like iPhones and Androids that utilize open APIs, we have more choices than ever. Furthermore, each person’s mobile device can be unique and personalized to their liking.

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2015 will be remembered in the networking world as the year in which the Internet of Things began its move into the mainstream. While the concept of “IoT” has long been predicted, it became an unavoidable part of tech parlance in the past 12 months with an estimated 4.9 billion “things” worldwide connected to the network in 2015. The increase is not expected to slow anytime soon, with analysts now forecasting that anywhere between 25 billion and 38 billion “things” will connect to the network by 2020.

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Cast your mind back to the last time you were offline – not just when your connection was down, but a time when you were truly, unequivocally disconnected. That time may have been spent sending letters, physically going into a bank to make a deposit or withdrawal, and actually meeting with people to share information.

Nowadays, we're far more efficient thanks to our reliance on connectivity and the network. During the past 20 years or so, information has evolved in line with the network, and become largely a digital commodity that can be sent and received with the click of a mouse. Electronic communications now cross organizations and oceans with relative ease, in volumes that seemed unfathomable during the days when postal mail was king. But all of this need for connectivity comes with a downside: criminal elements seeking to steal that data – and make no mistake, something as seemingly innocent as a personal email can be as valuable to a criminal as a bank transaction.

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