On-demand networking has been in development for a number of years now. Early adoption of network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) goes back to 2015, although Colt had been pioneering the idea back in 2012 in advance of industry-wide standards, says Mirko Voltolini, VP innovation, Colt Technology Services.
Initial use cases revolved around moving away from a world of physical connectivity to something more virtualised, for example the trend within the data centre sector to hook networks up to virtual service offerings.
Among carriers, drivers for a more flexible type of connectivity centred largely around the capital expenditure to be saved by moving to a virtual network infrastructure model. Less reliance on hardware led in turn to greater flexibility in service offerings. Faster activation of services meant faster revenues. Pretty soon the whole basis on which networks were operated was being transformed. A new type of carrier business emerged which saw service propositions being adapted and new capabilities brought to market. It became a matter of changing or getting left behind, transforming the whole business, not just the technology, or losing out to rivals.
The next evolutionary step was introducing open source software technology and agile development practices into the mix. The telecoms market was already seeing a different and more open approach to handling OSS and IT systems, and the trend started to manifest in the network side as well.
Where does that leave us today? Clearly the development of SDN-based APIs has accelerated the adoption of on-demand connectivity. We’re now able to create end to end services across multiple carriers. It’s no longer about what you can get from one carrier, but instead there is a global scale to it. You can create an end to end connectivity service and add virtualised capabilities on top of it in fully automated ways across different carriers.
Thanks to the collective industry effort driven by MEF (www.mef.net), standards and toolkits have evolved to allow this, with APIs, SDKs, and other technologies that can be deployed to enable something truly integrated. At least 27 carriers have done this at API level and are using the result to manage the whole lifecycle of a service, from obtaining quotes to checking service availability to placing orders and managing the entire chain. It’s enabling the reduction of costs, greater efficiencies, and of course the provision of a better service, delivering an ‘on-demand experience’ that people want across the entire buying journey.
That’s all on the carrier side. There’s also the enterprise aspect of on-demand. Enterprises now want to consume telecom services in a digital fashion, from a portal or via APIs. There’s a lot more to it that just being able to flex bandwidth up and down. It’s also about services end to end, going on a portal to place an order and activate a service in seconds, provided the infrastructure is available. The pandemic and the rise of hybrid working patterns have helped to make the case for flexible bandwidth capability stronger, but the real USP from our perspective is the automation of the entire journey. Enterprises are behind the carrier curve in understanding the possibilities of this type of service, but they are catching up.
Digital transformation use cases are popping up everywhere, such as simplifying consumption of applications from the cloud. Many of these new use cases work well with other innovations in areas like AI, IoT, edge compute, security, Private 5G and blockchain. In smart manufacturing, for example, AI and IoT are part of the maintenance and inspection use case and are being used to control production lines in an efficient way. Digital infrastructure, a mix of fixed and wireless, is important here because it glues everything together, from the head office at the centre to compute power at the edge. The case for flexible networking becomes stronger with these changing requirements in the enterprise. With cloudification you have the take care of the connectivity before anything else.
It’s all still at an early stage, with many enterprises experimenting. I would expect to see further changes at the back end, in the IT stack. As for the future, we anticipate increasing richness of features in on-demand services. It will become not just about connectivity but also security and support for multi-cloud. Where before you would go and buy a firewall as an appliance, now you have a mix of sophisticated security services in a cloud environment. These services can be automated, and on-demand comes into play there for a smooth experience at every stage of the customer journey.
I foresee network service providers striving to become more agile, to keep up with business transformation in the network and in the back office. They are already leveraging APIs to integrate platforms with the end goal of full automation giving a seamless experience, with applications directly controlling the consumption of network services. The on-demand journey is well underway and there’s no going back from here.
The author is Mirko Voltolini, VP innovation, Colt Technology Services.
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