Steven Taylor: February 2011 Archives

As networks rush into a cloud-based environment, there's a major question to be answered: "How do you ensure performance in this brave new world?"

Of course, the simplest form of ensuring network performance was always to use dedicated transmission services - from T1/E1 to SONET/SDH links - between sites.  Each link (so long as it's in service) has a guaranteed number of bits per second that get transmitted between sites.

But the problem (of course) with dedicated services is that most of the bandwidth is idle most of the time, so the services were/are relatively quite expensive.

The next stage of evolution and and the first of virtualization was the introduction of packet-based services - including frame relay, ATM, MPLS, and IP-based networks, both "private IP" and Internet-based.  These nets provide excellent economy, but with that economy comes a lack of guarantees.  But, in general, you can get as much of a guarantee as you're willing to pay for.  So there is still an expected level of service.

Moving other services into "the cloud" now provides yet another excellent opportunity for a great performance per price increase.  However, you are now faced with a combination of two "unknowns."  There's the the access network and its performance coupled with the cloud-based service and its performance in a virtualized environment.

So while the opportunities are great, they are met with an equally high level of uncertainty.

Please join my fellow analyst and Co-founder of the Webtorials Analyst Division, Jim Metzler, as we discuss these issue with Thierry Grenot, Chief Technology Officer of Ipanema Networks.