< PreviousNetworks under strain: why CSPs must futureproof their systems Chris Landry VP of Telecommunications Capgemini Communications Service Providers (CSPs) are often considered to be at the forefront of the digital revolution, providing “anytime, anywhere, any device, any content” access to the connected world. They are tasked with providing the backbone that enables digital lives and digital enterprises, and providing a foundation for the cutting-edge technologies and applications that are changing our world at incredible speed. Now, more than ever, the demand for communications services is skyrocketing, as both consumers and businesses rely on them to reach families and friends and to facilitate remote working arrangements. For CSP leaders there is more pressure than ever, and supporting an increasingly complex and surging ecosystem of applications is difficult with backend business support systems (BSS). While digital technologies have evolved significantly the constraints posed by traditional billing, ordering and provisioning systems are challenging for CSPs. In order to deliver the powerful experiences consumers and business users expect, CSPs need viable architectures, reliable technologies and repeatable delivery lifecycles. These three key elements feed on each other, with the goal of making solutions modular to enable rapid realisation. Despite the current pandemic, CSPs mustn’t take their eye off the ball. Practical steps have to be considered if CSPs want to transform core elements of their platforms to meet the complex demands of the digital world and future-proof their business. We are seeing that the CSPs that had already adapted were the most able to quickly adjust their business processes, such as enabling more transactions through self- care channels, as their retail outlets were shuttered and care channels overwhelmed and understaffed. Why legacy BSS won’t work CSPs historically achieved success by building robust and reliable infrastructure that included a delivery network, and also supporting software systems for selling their services, supporting customers and managing billing and revenue. These systems offered reliability, scalability and efficiencies by creating structured and highly customised application stacks by line of business (LOB) and/or channel silos, with each having its own mechanism for customer relationship and billing management. This worked well in the days when various fixed and mobile services were sold separately, with no expectation of an integrated customer view. But as digital convergence progressed, supporting customers in these siloed BSS systems became increasingly challenging. Introducing any new processes to improve the customer experience within the various systems for sales, service and billing required complex integration with the legacy BSS systems, demanding specialised knowledge, careful coordination with downstream system owners and significant effort to perform regression testing. Additionally, the technology limitations of these systems meant that integration often required expensive custom development, increasing the total cost of ownership and time to market. Operationally, the excessive dependence on backend legacy BSS systems for customer-facing applications resulted in lower productivity due to frequent downtimes and the need for complex procedures to avoid fallouts and order failures because of backend dependencies. The recent emergence of technologies like IoT, SDN and NFV and new business models spanning connected commerce, telemedicine, smart cities, and more have brought a new sense of urgency to this issue. Today’s technologies demand real-time access to customer data and the flexibility to implement changes with extremely rapid time to market. A new digital architecture Adoption of a new digital architecture offers CSPs the opportunity to fix these problems and futureproof their systems. CSPs are taking their cues from the likes of Google to lay the right foundation and to apply best-in-class software engineering practices. Forged from highly agile companies with hyperscale needs, these architectures are well suited to both the organisation context and customer experience needs of modern CSPs. There are a number of open, branded and even proprietary models to build a digital architecture, ranging from the TwelveFactor App and its derivatives to Google’s Site Reliability Engineering. Each model centres on creating a reliable approach, either across the entire delivery lifecycle or a limited focus area, for software engineers to maintain the balance of modularity, functionality and resiliency. Digital technology The next step is to contextualise the selection of technology with the purpose placed on it in the architecture. This means clearly understanding the component’s function and what operational characteristics it must provide to be successful. CSPs should consider how the broader context of business opportunities, principles, demands and preferences impact technology choices. There can be seemingly endless networks under strain www.networkseuropemagazine.com 30technology choices for something as simple as data management but focusing on the target architecture and business context can help narrow the options. Success requires CSPs to create a value proposition and develop an appropriate solution, and to continually and rapidly adapt that solution based on measured results. A digital delivery model and way of working is needed, not only to deliver better and faster outcomes, but also to attract and develop digital talent and skill sets. The COVID-19 crisis has put mounting pressure on CSPs to ensure their solutions are as cutting edge as possible, enabling remote self-service for all scenarios. The future requires CSPs to engage with their customers across multiple, potentially all digital channels, provide instant access to information from backend systems, apply insights from real-time analytics and manage the security and privacy of customer data. n networks under strain www.networkseuropemagazine.com 31Corporate WAN at home Adrian Brookes Solutions Strategy and Pre- Sales Director Infovista With the rapid switch to remote working, many IT departments are struggling to support staff who are now seeing their home networks become an extension of the corporate intranet. Home broadband and WI-FI is no longer just for Netflix, gaming, and social media but now an essential work resource that is competing for bandwidth against other activities in the locked-down home. Although SaaS and cloud-based technologies can help, each displaced user needs a uniformed and managed method that allows secure and reliable remote access – while organisations need to ensure that remote working doesn’t become a security gap for exploitation by cyber criminals. Capacity without intelligence The immediate response from IT departments to a massive surge in remote working was to deploy additional VPN capacity. Both through additional licences for on-site appliances and, in some cases, new or additional capacity through VPN as a service product. Although this provides a more secure tunnel from homeworkers across the internet to corporate resources; VPN does not solve any performance issues. A home router / WIFI access point will typically treat each connected device equally. So, a household where multiple users are streaming Netflix or YouTube videos each at several MBps, ends up quickly consuming all the available bandwidth. Considering that according to data from Akamai, a content distribution service, the average UK household only has a 17MBps connection. However, raw bandwidth is not the only issue. Not only are devices treated equally but so is all the application traffic. This means a critical Zoom-based conference call with an important client will have the same delivery priority as another user sending data packets for an online gaming session or streaming cat videos from Facebook. A few of the more advanced home broadband gateway devices may have the ability to block out certain types of traffic but it is unfeasible for an IT department to login and remotely optimise each remote worker’s home broadband connectivity, and then put it all back to normal at the end of the day. The unfortunate reality is that a large segment of the workforce is currently struggling with home working purely from a connectivity standpoint. In terms of remedy, installing a dedicated work-only internet connection is an option but at present the major UK telecoms providers have largely suspended new installs due to rightly focusing on fixing faults. A more draconian option is to ban other household members from using the internet during certain times. A situation that is almost impossible with teenagers or in a multi-tenant shared housing situation. A smarter WAN Edge An emerging alternative that was used successfully prior to the current health emergency is WAN edge optimisation technologies. In simple terms, these are small appliances that are shipped to each remote worker that plug into router/access point that effectively take over the decision-making process of what types of traffic should be prioritised for sending over the internet. The device is typically remotely configured using an automated process and includes security capabilities that can help organisations to remotely enforce secure access process. WAN edge optimisation appliances can also include corporate WAN www.networkseuropemagazine.com 323G/4G connectivity which can be used if the main internet connection has low bandwidth, excessive latency or is saturated by other traffic. Rolling out these types of appliances in normal times is relatively straightforward and even though it is a bit more involved in the current situation – they are still a lot more reliable and easier to manage than having to manually tweak each remote users’ unique broadband setup. Additionally, some solutions also enable a “software defined” use case where the remote worker is provisioned centrally and treated as an unequipped site on the network. Another more technical challenging issue is that of corporate network congestion caused by many formerly “office” users now connecting remotely via VPN. This is a harder problem to overcome as most organisations’ networks are architected with the assumption that only a few users need to connect remotely. As such, shifting to a design where there are now 95% of users accessing via VPN can lead to poor performance, not just affecting a few remote users, but everybody within the organisation. SD-WAN at home The longer-term solution is to re-architect the network with more capacity for inbound connectivity. However, this is a time-consuming task and, by itself, may not solve the issue if there is no intelligence around how applications and users are prioritised based on the needs of the organisations. For example, staff that are processing orders need these transactions to be given network priority over other tasks such as ongoing incremental data backup. These types of solution reside with the Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) area of technology and have typically been used by larger enterprises for over a decade to streamline network traffic between a branch and a head office. SD-WAN allows IT departments to set granular rules around how each user and application consumes network resources, and this is then dynamically and automatically managed based on the current network and internet conditions. SD-WAN technology can also leverage a new approach, called “transparent hybrid WAN” (TH-WAN) that makes it simpler and faster to deploy by eliminating the need for reconfiguring network devices. The use of both WAN edge optimisation and SD-WAN for managing a vast number of remote workers offers many advantages and with newer TH-WAN versions also has the advantage of rapid deployment. For IT managers desperately trying to solve the seemingly impossible tasks of making the corporate WAN extend to the home worker, they should be seriously considered. n Adrian Brookes has been in the communications industry for over 25 years gaining experience in multiple vendors and service providers environments. He currently leads the Solution Strategy and Solution Engineering activity at Infovista focussed on delivering SD-WAN solutions. corporate WAN www.networkseuropemagazine.com 33As CSPs move towards a more complex ecosystem, Blockchain proves to be an important element for its success. CSPs are not only innovating their offering with the inclusion of new-age services such as the connected ecosystem, enterprise offering through network slicing capability, and content, but they are re-inventing the core as well. Blockchain-based settlement for wholesale can significantly reduce the occurrence of the dispute and mitigate frauds such as Wangiri, smart FAS, to help with the quick realisation of blocked revenue. As digitalisation progresses, CSPs face a surging wave of new competition from other service providers in the digital world. These over-the-top (OTT) providers encompass fast-moving, innovative companies that launch successful services that rely on the CSP network but the lion’s share of the revenue goes to them, not the operator. CSPs, therefore, are urgently exploring new business models that have sought to define a new role for themselves in the digital value chain. This march of transformation from CSPs to become digital service providers (DSPs) is well underway, but their heritage gets in the way. In the past, CSPs’ partners were typically other CSPs who formed interconnect relationships based on a peer-to-peer model. Both organisations spoke the language of telecom and had well-understood partnership issues to address. These included long contract durations, disputes caused by data mismatches, and long settlement processes. The digital world is different and digital players behave differently to CSPs. They want to get to market fast, but they typically don’t have the ecosystem to manage billing disputes and settlements. They’re not looking for cosy marriages for the long-term, they’re looking for the spark and excitement of a romantic affair. The success of that affair means getting to know each other better and understanding each others’ strengths and weaknesses. The essentials for this partner management include: gaining an understanding of each partner’s activity, building transparency and trust across deals and transactions, ensuring communication to detect anomalies and eliminate issues, ensuring financial and legal compliance, increasing direct control by reducing dependence on intermediaries and eliminating insecurity in transaction manipulations. A mechanism to help achieve these essentials is needed, and Blockchain can provide this. In essence, Blockchain is a database that can hold several transactions but, in contrast to a traditional database, it is decentralised, and a single entity does not control the information. Everyone in the Blockchain is a stakeholder in the transaction. This has obvious appeal for the multi-party business chains of the digital world because it helps build trust, security, and transparency across all transactions. In Digitalisation has opened the door for collaboration across the telecoms industry, so partner management is now a key tool for sustaining a winning and powerful partner ecosystem. Rohit Maheshwari explains how a partner management system, combined with Blockchain, can address potential challenges and help communications service providers (CSPs) maximise their partnering opportunities. Rohit Maheshwari Head, Strategy and Products Subex partner management www.networkseuropemagazine.com 34CSPs unlock partner potential with Blockchain addition, by streamlining the partner management process through a decentralised process, CSPs can eliminate traditional partnership barriers, resulting in Opex savings and improved partner relationships. A good example of blockchain-powered partner management is partner billing and settlement capability using permissioned Blockchain. This scenario sees partners, which could be other CSPs for interconnect business or content providers as examples, onboard the permissioned Blockchain. Instead of the traditional situation with its long settlement and dispute resolution cycles, combining partner management with Blockchain’s immutable, near- real-time data reconciliation guided by smart contracts, means the entire process is not just automated but also ensures faster identification of discrepancies and drastic reduction in disputes. This is because the partners can see the transactions and associated errors in near-real-time and therefore have visibility into the billing issues that should get rectified. Another example of using permissioned Blockchain is for partner onboarding. Historically, this was difficult because the relationship was between partners that did not have trusted relationships. Complex and lengthy contractual negotiations were required with suspicion at the heart of monitoring these. Blockchain is designed to be a trustless system – the partners trust in the technology, not a central authority, to ensure each behaves as outlined in the smart contract. With the advent of 5G, telecoms networks have radically transformed from being tightly controlled environments constrained by the limitations of function-specific hardware to become software-defined networks that increasingly are being opened up to third parties via application programme interfaces (APIs). This software control allows for enormous flexibility and new offerings and services to be introduced and killed rapidly as market demand dictates. 5G is enabling a complex ecosystem of NW slicing where multi parties, including a CSP, Slice Requester, and Slice Enabler, have to work together, and these slices will be guarded by QoS and SLAs, this makes the whole ecosystem challenging if not handled in a right and transparent way. This is where Blockchain can play a significant role in ensuring multi-party reconciliation and enablement of applicable contractual obligations in terms of rating, discounting, and penalising. Although the concept of Blockchain has been familiar for several years, it is only now beginning to be practically applied to telecoms. The headroom is, therefore, immense, and CSPs are exploring the application of Blockchain across the partner management landscape. It is now clear that investing in Blockchain will be the most logical strategy for CSPs that are looking to participate openly and fairly in the wider digital value chain. The transparency and trust enabled by Blockchain provide the means for CSPs and their partners to rapidly bring services to market – in advance of the competition – secure in the knowledge that revenue can be assured and streamlined operational efficiency achieved. In contrast to the convoluted, siloed, and untrusted traditional contract landscape, Blockchain provides a means to short-circuit the lengthy process of building trust. n partner management www.networkseuropemagazine.com 35Controlling Power and Gathering Data at the Cabinet is Essential controlling power at the cabinet www.networkseuropemagazine.com 36Controlling Power and Gathering Data at the Cabinet is Essential Martin Kandziora Dipl.-Ing. MBA Senior Manager Marketing, Panduit EMEA Data centre availability crucially requires a secure power supply, which begins with the feed-in and distribution. Whether core, cloud or edge data centre - the current market drivers require three attributes from data centre infrastructures: to be smarter, more efficient and more secure. In the expanding world of networked IT, it is estimated that by 2025 there will be up to 75 billion end devices (source: Statista), generating vast amounts of data. According to an IDC study, within five years the global data volume will be 175 Zettabytes (175 x 1021). Operators, managers and designers of data centres face enormous challenges when designing or modernising their IT infrastructure. A reliable power supply is a crucial element of every data centre. Power supply and distribution starts with the main power supply, including the UPS as well as the sub- distribution systems which connect via the socket systems into the IT racks and directly to the IT hardware. Depending on the design and application, a data centre or single cabinet solution, large core or cloud data centre there are different security and availability requirements. Power Distribution Units (PDU) play an important role in a smart, efficient and secure data centre infrastructure: the latest Intelligent PDUs use additional sensors to collect and control a variety of other information about the IT environment, which can integrate with DCIM (data centre infrastructure management) systems to provide insights into the past and current operating status of the power supply and the connected equipment. In smaller size installations, such as floor distribution units, PDUs with integrated analysis functionality offer several advantages, as they can be monitored autonomously. Such intelligent and modular power distribution systems make it possible, on the one hand, to plan the power supply according to the application, while at the same time recording and, if necessary, reducing energy consumption. Performance, availability and efficiency in IT infrastructure often seem to be a contradiction in terms. controlling power at the cabinet www.networkseuropemagazine.com 37More Efficiency with Intelligence Growing data traffic is driving the increasing power density of IT equipment installed in a cabinet. The increase in capacity per rack poses specific challenges for rack power designers. Many planners therefore design three-phase networks right into the rack in order to accommodate significantly more power in the same space compared to a single-phase solution. The energy consumption of a PDU with port-integrated measuring capabilities can be clearly assigned and controlled. Intelligent energy measurement and monitoring of the PDU provides information on: • Energy measurement of kilowatt hours (kWh) • Power measurement (W) • Power measurement (V, A, VA, kWh, pF) for input phases • Power measurement for circuit breakers • Exact measurement attributes for billing purposes • Integrated storage protocol for the recording and display of historical data including individual alarms and documentation The OLED display of Panduit's 5th generation iPDUs can be conveniently read within the cabinet or floor distribution unit. In addition, the display on 3-phase PDUs provides information about the utilisation of the individual phases. Technicians can quickly and easily balance the load of the individual phases directly within the cabinet. Some co-location applications require PDUs with energy consumption measurement (kWh) and power measurement (W) per slot. - on this basis, the influence of individual components on the DCiE (Data Centre Infrastructure Efficiency) or PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) factor of the data centre can be determined and measures taken to increase efficiency. In parallel, power used can be billed to the customer with an accuracy of +/- 1%. Future security Intelligent PDUs offer comprehensive capabilities for remote monitoring and in-situ control and can be integrated into operators DCIM systems. This allows individual slots to be switched on and off remotely or the reboot delay after a power failure to be configured sequentially and user-defined for the IT devices. This prevents overloads due to high in rush currents. Individually assignable user profiles and access authorisations additionally increase system security. The control gained and the extra data help with hardware management and on-site troubleshooting. Today’s PDU has taken on a completely new role as an important feature of the security of the IT infrastructure. For example, IT components can be identified more quickly and errors in switching on or off can be largely eliminated. The network capability of the PDU plays an important role here, especially in distributed edge applications, which are geographically and spatially distributed, the PDUs can be monitored remotely and support intervention if necessary. IPDU’s access security is often achieved through SNMPv3, RESTful API and TLS as well as certificate-based, asymmetric encryption, which is monitored and strengthened with several security check tools. This is supported with various complex passwords and modern authorisation options - locally, via LDAP and via Active Directory. The intelligent PDU implements comprehensive network management and alarm functions with support for HTTP, HTTPS, SSH, Telnet, SNMP, FTP and e-mail. A redundant 1G network access in 2N configuration provides network redundancy and is suitable for co-location applications. Both the co-lo operator and the customer can access the same PDU data with their respective networks running completely independently and depending on the level of authorisation monitor or control the power supply to the consumer’s equipment. The importance of cyber security is increasing due to the rise in hacker attacks and security breaches. Therefore, this authorised access secures sensitive data and systems of the data centre or micro-data centre from incorrect or criminal access. The iPDUs support environment and security management with optional plug-and-play environmental sensors, e.g. for temperature, humidity, potential-free contact and leakage. The sensors can be integrated into the infrastructure either by cable or wirelessly. For physical security management within the data centre, controlling power at the cabinet www.networkseuropemagazine.com 38the intelligent PDUs monitor rack access with door contact switches and potential-free contacts that can, for example, control signal lights or air conditioning. Smart mechanics and intelligence Today’s iPDU offers high density solutions with smart slot configurations. Output cables fit into almost any rack size at the top, bottom or front to minimise cable congestion and the flat construction of the modular iPDU design saves space in the rack. This design provides easy access to the individual modules, connectors and control unit at any time. The network module can be exchanged quickly and easily using the hot-swap method allowing the PDU to be used even without electrical expertise. The PDU can be quickly installed by simply hooking them in, which reduces assembly time as well as cost and logistics effort. A further benefit, under full load, the PDU can withstand temperatures of up to 60 °C and can therefore also be used in high-performance environments. Conclusion Power distribution systems can be found in any data centre, server room or edge data centre. In view of the increasing energy costs and required power densities, intelligent PDUs are gaining in importance. The trend shows that conventional socket strips are used much less and the reasons are obvious: In networked and distributed IT infrastructures, the demand for remote monitoring and remote control is growing in importance. In addition, modular and network-compatible power distribution systems significantly increase flexibility and scalability. Integrated measuring functions of the PDU optimise energy consumption and reduce overall energy consumption. At the same time, the integral sensor technology leads to better infrastructure monitoring and, together with the cyber security functions, to more secure systems overall. The bottom line: the intelligent PDU in future data centre infrastructures will be smarter, more efficient and safer. n CloudCooler by ADIABATIC AND FREE COOLING SOLUTIONS FOR DATA CENTRES Proven Low Carbon Solution | Trusted UK Manufacturer www.ecocooling.co.uk sales@ecocooling.co.uk 01284 810 586 As used by BT, CGG, Cambridge University, Etix Blockchain, Hydro66, TalkTalk and more. Visit our website for case studies. EcoCooling FRESH AIR COOLING I N D A T A CE N T R E S controlling power at the cabinet 39Next >