The GEN14 conference held in Washington DC last week attracted over 1,100 attendees from 36 countries and presented the MEF’s vision of the “Third Network”: building on the strengths of both the Internet and CE 2.0 to define Lifecycle Service Orchestration and develop NFV and SDN implementations. The goal is to deliver Orchestrated Network as a Service.
Keynote speakers were passionate about the MEF and its goals. “This meeting is what we counts, not the 'net neutrality' debate down the street [in Washington],” said Bob Metcalfe, Professor of Innovation at the University of Texas. “Carrier Ethernet dominates WAN & enables cloud,” said Stan Hubbard, director of communications & research for the MEF and GEN14 program director. “Over 1000 network operators and tens of thousands of businesses support $40 billion CE market, with a double-digit CAGR.”
“All these new tech capabilities are our aspiration, but how do we generate value so shareholders will buy in?,” said PCCW Global CEO Marc Halbfinger. “The MEF is moving in the right direction,” he said, emphasizing the speed of change with a graphic of a sleek train rocketing down the tracks. “That's not a locomotive,” said Halbfinger. “It's a bullet train going from Shanghai to Beijing.”
Nan Chen, MEF president and executive vice chairman of CENX, described the “three pillars” of the third network as SDN, NSV, and LSO (lifecycle service orchestration).
Internet of abundant Things
Industry pundits and analysts have various predictions for the Internet of Things – the massive network of sensors and other devices that will increase datasets exponentially. But Sanjeev Mervana, senior director of SP marketing for Cisco, gave some metrics for said devices during a roundtable. “If we're talking about a unit with a sensor, a processor, a battery and some memory,” he said, “then we'll see about 50 billion by 2020...whatever numbers you use, it's a massive economic shift.”
Mervana said that smart cities – in conjunction with municipalities – would help make the “Internet of Everything” a $19 trillion market by 2022. “The IoE includes all the ancillary services,” he said, “including how to process & utilize data – utilization is a chain effect.”
“That change will be profound,” said Grant Lenahan, executive director of innovation for Ericsson. But there's diminishing returns due to scale, he added: “Actual revenue per device will drop rapidly, and the cost of provisioning and billing also needs to drop to maintain profitability.”