Have you noticed that when you want more speed on a network, or fast bit
rates, in your connection to the internet, you don't want fast rates really?
What you REALLY want is the fastest possible access to the CONTENT seating
on those servers across the networks.
The next next generation networks will be just that: SANs interconnected
with other SANs via Cerent, Optical Networks, Ciena or Sycamore machines. At
interconnection pooling points, operated by an independent third party
responsible for scheduling bandwidth connections, monitoring the quality of
service (QoS) of each transaction and maintaining the physical security and
operational integrity of the transactions such as Equinix.
The Idea:
Please, bear with me, because everybody says that no one knows how it is
going to look like. The pieces are following in place now. I've been
following IBM, EMC, CSCO, Intel and DWDM start ups. Even the cost of optical
fiber connectors.
Picture that in, say, 2007. You have Storage Area Networks (SAN), say
servers farms, huge amount of content stored in there, linked to other SANs
which its own server farms via fiber. Machines such as CERENT, Sycamore (or
Optical Networks, that start up KPCB funds) pumps data in and out this
bandwidth monster DWDM on steroids access nodes. Robust stuff cum security.
Look to IBM, all those mainframes with SNA legacy, with the whole installed
base of software, the data of insurance companies, banks, airlines,
carmakers etc etc. Imagine the mainframes that process billing for public
utilities which will be de-regulated and unbundled. That, plus all the data
that needed to be accessed and "massaged" by people all across the internet,
could be, and need to be accessible. Because e-commerce and e-business is
going to need all that.
Under this perspective CSCO and its KPMG recent partnership is looking
clearer now, you know, in the end how taxes will be collected has to be
sorted out. Thus an accounting firm come in very handy. This next next
generation network will allow companies to do business in a very cost
effective way and obviously the first one to assemble the whole thing in a
coherent whole will have the potential to take the market in a similar way
Microsoft did.
To that you would add entertainment applications, where the content will be
stored and accessed on demand rather than by getting it by broadcast. Oh,
the price of optical fiber connectors. What does it have to do with all
that, you may be asking. The fast the prices of fiber connectors comes down,
the faster this network become feasible: fiber straight to the back of the
server perhaps fibre channel.
Now look to the market out there: all those companies gravitating around
CSCO, which they call the business Eco-system, add Equinix (which is not
yet IPO'ed, consequently not yet on the news) to the picture and bandwidth
being traded as a commodity and you will see the next next generation
networks in place.
This next-next-generation network is not a project undertaking. It is not a
turn-key project that we will draw a blue-print an assemble it We will get
to this next next generation network by trial and error. Much like nature's
evolutionary process. A few of its components, that from today's perspective
(VoIP), look like winners will fade and be extinct. Others that we are now
overlooking (XML and New Generatioj Voice NGV) can well be the winners. No certainty here, but
the arrow of time points right into to that direction: And it is pointing to
that next-next-generation network. |
