DAY ONE
NetEvents Press & Service Provider Summit EMEA 2014 rolled into the Ria Park Hotel, in Quinta do Lago, Portugal, on 24 September 2014
Keynote Presentation by Tom Homer, Head of EMEA and the Americas, Telstra Global
‘2020 Vision for Cloud Services to the Enterprise’
Homer’s theme was 2020 Vision for Cloud Services in the Enterprise, and he talked about trends in cloud computing and how Telstra’s global reach enabled cloud services.
After an on-stage Q&A session with NetEvents Editorial Director Manek Dubash, Homer moved onto the panel for the first debate.
Click here for full transcript.
Conference Debate Session I – Transforming the Telco network
Introduced and Chaired by: Emir Halilović, Research Director, Telecoms and Networking EMEA, IDC
Panellists: Chris Purdy, Chief Technical Officer, CENX; Nicolas Fischbach, Director of Strategy, Architecture and Innovation, Colt; Jörg Ruhmann, Senior Technical Director, EMEA, Infinera; Nigel Oakley, Director of the Cloud Center of Excellence (EMEA), Juniper Networks; Kevin Vachon, Chief Operating Officer, MEF; Ruth Gamero, Technology & Innovation Strategy, Global CTO Unit, Telefónica; Tom Homer, Head of EMEA and the Americas, Telstra Global
After Halilović’s opening presentation, Purdy said that service providers need to be more dynamic, and the key is service orchestration.
Fischbach highlighted some of Colt’s achievements and pointed out that: “There’s only so much change a company can absorb each year. People processes are harder to change than technology, he said.
Oakley said that telcos have large, multi-vendor networks which take a long time to transform. A solution is a network overlay to enable new services.
Vachon said that the MEF has provided a services fabric that telcos can use as a platform. “Demand for Ethernet is growing,” he said. “It’s a perfect storm.” Different operators deliver services over different platforms, legacy hardware with packet overlay or green field – it depends on circumstances, he said.
Gamero, speaking about network function virtualisation (NFV), said that Telefónica has been working on this for 5 years, and now has trials in Brazil. “It’s a challenging project,” she said.
Homer: Challenges? There are not many use cases for customers in telco transformation. “The challenge is making it pay now. Many will wait and learn from others’ experience, we are not yet convinced on the business case.”
Click here for full transcript.
Conference Debate Session II — Is SDN ready for the Enterprise?
Introduced and Chaired by: Camille Mendler, Principal Analyst, Ovum
Panellists: John Bukowsky, Group VP and GM, Citrix; Arpit Joshipura, Vice President, Dell Networking; Perry Eekhout, Regional Manager Central Europe, Emulex; Perry Romano, Director of Business Development, Service Providers, Gigamon; James Thornborrow, Director of EMEA, Glue Networks; Jacob Rapp, Global Leader of Marketing, HP
Presenting the debate, Mendler said that there’s lots of hype around SDN. She compared the SDN market vendors to the spaghetti western, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, where legacy vendor (The Bad) are as eager to sell SDN as the startups.
Telcos have stolen the limelight around SDN, she said, because they are large enterprises with very large networks. SDN benefits include reduced network costs, improved integration with cloud services, more service flexibility, shorter lead time for new services. Key issues for enterprises are security and acceleration for business-critical applications, managed storage solutions, she said.
Asked about his position on SDN, Bukowsky said that the combination of IoT, virtualisation and SDN = virtualised workspace. “Work is what people do, not a place,” he said.
Eekhout said that changes in servers are that they are now in more complex environments, and need more connectivity. “We try [with our host adapters] to offload network connectivity,” he said.
Romano said: “We are the sheriff of the cowboys here.”
Thornborrow said that his company allows service providers to provision networks faster and to prioritise applications on the network. “We automate this to eliminate human error and delay with, for example, template management,” he said.
Rapp said: “2007 is when we started collaborating with Stanford on the development of [the SDN protocol] OpenFlow”.
What is an SDN application and what’s it for?, asked Mendler.
Rapp said: “Security, cloud and mobility are key problems to solve with SDN apps”.
Romano said an SDN application involves interoperability with the SDN controller “such as that providing interoperability with our network monitoring systems”.
On how to sell SDN, Joshipura said: “We are at the point where we need to know how get to the end point that SDN delivers and how to sell to the enterprise. The challenge is to understand who’s in charge of the network and what skill-set is required.”
Eekhout said Emulex goes to market via OEMs “so we listen to them.”
Joshipura said all verticals will choose different paths. The software-defined datacentre consists of virtual servers, storage and networks.
Bukowsky said that VMs move around so a datacentre needs a fabric that attaches a VM to its network policies – “that’s what a network controller can now do with SDN,” he said.
Click here for full transcript
Clash of the Titans – Dell and HP go Head to Head
Who’s leading the SDN revolution to the enterprise? And where’s it heading?
This session saw Dubash moderating between Dell’s Joshipura and HP’s Rapp. Each gave a two-minute presentation on their approaches to SDN, HP’s being a vertically integrated approach, while Dell front-ends technology from a variety of vendors.
After Q&A between Joshipura and Rapp, from Dubash and from the floor, conference moved to the day’s final debate.
Click here for full transcript.
Conference Debate Session III — Boosting Telco Cloud Economics
Introduced and Chaired by: Pim Bilderbeek, Analyst, The METIS Files
Panellists: Frank Wiener, VP Strategy, Cyan; Mike Capuano, VP Corporate Marketing, Infinera; Lee Myall, General Manager Cloud Computing, Interoute; Hugo Tavares, Chief Technical Officer, Lunacloud; Andrew McFazden, Head of Global Marketing – Network Services, Orange Business Services; Chairman, MEF
Bilderbeek asked his panel why none of them had made as much revenue as Amazon and what they would do about it.
McFadzen said: “Enterprise customers are cautious so they aren’t rushing into cloud. However enterprises need to understand that the risks of cloud aren’t as significant as they think.”
Tavares said Lunacloud was a startup doing public cloud services in storage. Enterprises have bought managed service solutions and it’s not easy to move on.
Myall said: “IaaS is what we do, also managed hosting. We have a strategy to ensure that we don’t allow others to cannibalise our business as we transition to cloud. If I’m still here in five years, you’ll know it worked.”
Capuano said: “Amazon’s growth is via service providers who provide express routes to their datacentres. It will be a long time before legacy applications disappear. We are seeing growing demand for datacentre interconnects as part of cloud growth.”
Wiener said: “Telcos have struggled to differentiate between themselves and OTT players but SDN is changing that balance.”
So what was the telco advantage?, asked Bilderbeek.
Myall said: “We have the advantage of owning the network.”
McFadzen said that telcos have a network for customers and for internal management purposes.
On cloud economics he said that prices will drop with scale so why go into that market?
Myall said: “AWS and Google are very price-led but there’s still differentiation to be had. Enterprises care about SLAs – the devil is in the detail.”
McFadzen said: “It’s not just about price but profitability.”
Tavares said: “Providers need to add value, such as private cloud storage.”
Capuano said: “Ultimately you need hardware to make photons, so the market will always be there. We try to make stuff easier to buy and deploy.”
Myall said: “We do compete with AWS – we all win business from them from customers who want in-region storage. AWS was there first though, so that’s why our revenues are lower. But we have a different offerings but it’s growing as more people come into the cloud.”
What needs to change, if anything?, asked Bilderbeek.
McFadzen: “We will see more end-to-end SLAs, not just SLAs attached to parts of the solution. Also customer support is a key consideration – enterprise wants to be able to fix problems.”
Tavares: “We don’t compete with AWS. We only do digital marketing, we have no sales force, so our lower costs mean lower prices. But we don’t have end to end visibility but we still don’t know who 99% of our customers are, that’s why we are in a specific market.”
Click here for full transcript.
Special Exclusive Global Announcement
The end of the day saw an exclusive announcement from the MEF, which launched its new THIRDNetwork initiative at the conference. The one-hour event featured a video featuring Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, Nan Chen, President of the MEF, and Andrew McFadzen, Head of Global Marketing, Orange. They predicted this would transform the future of network services.
Metcalfe, Chen and McFadzen then conducted a Q&A session from the floor and from press online concluding the day’s plenary event.
DAY TWO
Special Guest Speaker Presentation by Mike Capuano, VP Corporate Marketing, Infinera and Nicolas Fischbach, Director of Strategy, Architecture and Innovation, Colt Datacentre.
Interconnection and the need for speed
Capuano and Fischbach stood at separate lecturns and explained that Colt’s datacentres are driven by the need for speed, in turn driven by Web 2.0. High speed interconnects in Europe are just starting, he said.
As an example of Web 2.0 traffic, Capuano explained how one 1k Facebook request becomes 930 inter-server transactions. Datacentres need to be distributed due to power limitations, and this leads to lots more east-west traffic, he said. 100GbE networks started in the core in 2012 and will move to metro-level datacentre interconnects by 2015-16, he predicted.
Camille Mendler, Principal Analyst, Ovum, grilled the two guest speakers. The key message for the enterprise is the need to simplify, reduce cost base, provide hybrid cloud services, she said. Fischbach said there are lots of dark fibre connecting Europe’s biggest cities, and much of it is being unbundled by incumbent telcos. Carrier Ethernet is 2/3 of our revenue, he said, and the MEF standards becoming the norm, so Carrier Ethernet is very important.
Click here for full transcript
Conference Debate Session IV — Getting the Cloud Infrastructure Right – It’s Neither Easy Nor Intuitive
Introduced and Chaired by: Emir Halilović, Research Director, Telecoms and Networking, EMEA, IDC
Panellists: John Bukowsky, Group VP and GM, Citrix; Hamid Lalani, HP Networking – GPLM; Nigel Oakley, Director of the Cloud Center of Excellence (EMEA), Juniper Networks; Jörg Ruhmann, Senior Technical Director, EMEA, Infinera
Halilović said it was neither easy nor intuitive to get cloud infrastructure right. Cloud maturity is a journey in stages: ad hoc, opportunistic, repeatable, managed, optimised.
What about cloud’s impact on the datacentre network? It needs to deliver more bandwidth, and be more flexible, capable, secure, scalable, simpler to manage/change.
He asked the panel for their cloud infrastructure learnings.
Lalani said: “Where you go in network development depends on where you are – Cisco users will buy more, a non-user might go to the cloud.”
Oakley said: “Networks have become complex, with more protocols, eg VMware VxLAN, BGP, MPLS… How do you interconnect them? You need more engineering skills to understand all layers of the network – finding those people is like finding unicorns.”
Halilović asked: Is the shortage of skills a key issue re network management?
Lalani said: “People who have done CLI all their lives have to move on, just as they moved from Fortran to C to Python.”
Bukowsky said: “Skills are critical. AWS etc have set the standard of how clouds should operate. Management interfaces are getting easier to use, and can be used anywhere, and they scale as cloud scales.”
Ruhmann said: “Cloud provider equipment is moving closer to enterprise level kit? Yes, skills shortage is a problem. Kit needs to be as easy to operate as enterprise IT, and even simpler.”
Click here for full transcript.
Conference Debate Session V — Advances in Wireless and Beyond 802.11ac…
Introduced and Chaired by: Ian Keene, Vice President, Gartner
Panellists: Dominique Vanhamme, General Manager EMEA Networking, Dell Networking; Jacob Rapp, Global Leader of Marketing, HP; Roger Hockaday, Director of Marketing for EMEA, Ruckus Wireless
Keene said that wireless standard 802.11ac wave 1 would be succeeded by 11ac wave 2. So what to do?
Vanhamme said: “It’s a Betamax problem, the risk is that people will wait for the next generation of wireless. The solution is not to see technology as a solution but as one element.”
Rapp said: “If you need 802.11ac, then buy it, there’s a migration path to next gen 11ac if you need it.”
Hockaday said: “It’s price-driven – 11n has the advantage of value but 11ac has no value point – though you will get better performance using 11n on 11ac silicon.”
Vanhamme said: “Getting the best performance is about doing the preparation and managed deployment, site surveys, good system design etc.”
Rapp said: “The enterprise environment is changing, so WiFi is more prevalent with BYOD and hotdesking, there’s a lot more wireless out there so you need to look at user quality objectives.”
Hockaday: “With 11ac, you probably don’t need more than 1Gbps – you won’t overload it, even wave 2 won’t be overloaded in public spaces. You may not need PoE+ but should consider – good WiFi implementation is all about design not kit.”
Future-looking
Vanhamme said: “Mobility is in the top ten priorities of most CIOs, it’s more efficient, cheaper, better customer intimacy. Wireless and wired networks will blend.”
Rapp said: “I agree – what’s exciting is that wireless will unlock more opportunities. Will companies still feel that they add value with a physical building?”
Hockaday: “Soon, those coming out of university won’t know what a cable is. What users want is a simple connection to the network – which is where Hotspot 2.0 comes in, makes it very simple.”
What about security – denial of service attacks?
Vanhamme: You can fix it but it’s expensive, military grade tech – probably not economically feasible.
Click here for full agenda
Conference Debate Session VI — Network security – revenue for the telco, service for the enterprise
Introduced and Chaired by: Bernt Ostergaard, Analyst and Service Director, Quocirca
Panellists: Jan Guldentops, Director, BA Test Labs; Steve Broadhead, Founder & Director, Broadband Testing; Jordi Gascon, Sr Director, Security, CA Technologies
A lively and relaxed discussion opened with Ostergaard pointing out security today is about control of devices and encryption. The problem for security services providers is that the key success metric is that nothing happens.
Broadhead said: “The key problem is when data is moving between layers of the network, between public and private networks.”
Guldentops said: “We keep making the same stupid mistake, that never changes. The solution is common sense – not the security provider. The CEO needs to understand the problem, not outsource it. People use easy passwords, resulting in hacked companies.”
Broadhead said: “Maybe I should set up a company delivering Common-sense as a Service.”
Gascon said: “Companies need to do due diligence but they don’t like it. From the vendor perspective we try to minimise risks, but people make mistakes in configurations etc.”
Guldentops said: “People need to look at their devices and react in the right way when they have a problem – and it’s when not if. They shouldn’t react in haste but document everything.. It comes down to common sense.”
What abut the role of the managed security provider?
Broadhead said: “It means selling a service to the right type of company ie SMBs who are 93% of all businesses.”
Gascon said: “Big companies need to manage millions of entities – it’s an impossible job, that’s what an MSP can do.”
Guldentops said: “Security is down to efficiency and having the right knowledge.”
Broadhead: “Security is no different from any other function when it comes to outsourcing.”
Click here for full transcript.
Conference Debate VII — Analyst Round-up
Introduced and Chaired by: Manek Dubash, Editorial Director, NetEvents
Panellists: Emir Halilović, Research Director, Telecoms and Networking EMEA, IDC; Ian Keene,Vice President, Gartner; Camille Mendler, Principal Analyst, Ovum; Pim Bilderbeek, Analyst, The METIS Files
Dubash worked his way through the event’s agenda, asking each of the analysts for their thoughts on the issues raised, and for their predictions for 2015.
Click here for full transcript.
The conference sessions closed and were followed by individually scheduled round-table discussions between vendors, press & analysts throughout the afternoon.
