2016 Network Wish List: Less Hype + More Automation

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Wishes don't always come true, but that's not stopping network operators from wishing for more. Their technology wish list for 2016 includes: unification of Internet of Things (IoT) standards, increased switching virtualization, more network automation and less hype around cloud computing.

Most experts agree that IoT is a big deal, with Gartner predicting that by 2020 there will be 25 billion devices connected to the internet, from home appliances to commercial equipment. This is up from 4.9 billion this year.

With so many devices connected to corporate networks, John Mulhall, information technology manager at Sno-Isle Libraries, wants the industry to develop unified interoperability standards for the IoT.

Sno-Isle Libraries, which has 21 community libraries in the Snohomis and Island regions of Washington, wants to control the lighting, heating and air conditioning of these community libraries from the organization's headquarters. Mulhall said it would be best if all vendors could follow the same standards to connect devices to the Internet.

"As a public agency, I just want to invest taxpayers' money once and make sure I'm investing it wisely," Mulhall said. Standards allow IT departments to say to vendors, "If you're going to bring your equipment into the workplace, it needs to support this standard."

Mulhall is following two interoperability agreements: one from the AllSeen Alliance, an open source cross-industry group, and the other from the Open Interconnect Consortium, which was founded by major technology companies.

Technology wish list: More network automation, virtualization

Joe Rogers, associate director of network engineering at the University of South Florida (USF), has a wish list that focuses on the core of the data center network. He wants to virtualize the operating systems in the 4,000 access switches the school uses, which cover 200 buildings within 1.5 square miles. Most of the access hardware is Cisco Catalyst and Brocade FCX and ICX equipment.

Taking the switches offline for operating system upgrades was a huge pain because the school did not have redundant hardware for each switch. Exacerbating the problem was the variety of devices used in the network, which ranged from PCs and mobile devices to fire alarms and card access systems.

Separating the switch operating system from the hardware and having it run on a virtual machine can minimize downtime by building redundancy into the switch. For example, a network operator wants to upgrade the operating system while the hardware continues to run on another copy of the software.

"This virtualization would be my biggest dream," Rogers said.

Rogers also wants to add more automation to the university's access switches, routers and wireless controllers. Right now, the university's developers use the open source system management tool Puppet to write scripts to automate certain tasks. Having these capabilities built into the hardware will significantly simplify management.

“It’s going to be cool,” Rogers said.

Less hype around cloud computing

As for the hype around cloud computing, Muhall believes it is not a good thing. Media stories that favor vendors often lead C-level executives or board members to believe that moving on-premises applications to the cloud will automatically cut costs. Unfortunately, no one technology is perfect.

“I think it’s best to get vendors to come to the enterprise and talk about real numbers on total cost of ownership and return on investment,” he said.

Cloud computing is also an option for Sno-Isle, which plans to consolidate dozens of servers running core business applications into an integrated management system called Polaris. Developed by Innovative Interfaces, Polaris supports all interactions between the library and its users, allowing cardholders to sign books in and out, manage online accounts to search and store materials, and even determine overdue fines.

Mulhall believes that Innovative Interfaces' cloud offering is more expensive than running Polaris in-house. "It's great for very small businesses, but once you start to grow, the cloud solution becomes less cost-effective," he said.

As an alternative, Sno-Isle might run parts of Polaris in the cloud and the rest on a converged system that uses virtualization to combine compute, storage and networking. Nutanix is ​​one of the hardware vendors Sno-Isle is considering.

Cheaper network equipment

Rogers' wish list also includes cheaper networking. It's expensive to run a network the size of USF, so he's been looking for cheaper hardware. The school uses 40 GbE for server connections in the data center and 100 GbE in the core of the wide area network.

"Unfortunately, 100 GbE is still pretty expensive, so this is just my hope, I hope that in the future 100 GbE will come down in price," Rogers said.

It is unlikely that Rogers and Mulhall will get their wish in 2016, but we are confident that suppliers will listen to such wishes.