The network is dead - long live the network
It’s been a good week for “reinventing networking” conversations.
And not before time – I mean, look at all the changes we’ve seen in IT in the past decade, from data types and scale thereof, through DevOps to cloud, all manner of security related changes, not just in terms of threats but compliance and the data sovereignty issues that court the cloud era… And then there’s, er, networking. Boxes, with or without wires, random expansions of real estate, security solutions thrown in here, there, and pretty well everywhere… It’s a mess.
So, it was a timely first encounter with Nile and its Network as a Service offering, during which we – unscripted (at least on my part 😊) – made the case for a networking revolution and, in truly interactive fashion, described Nile’s NaaS and what needs to be done to educate the CLI unwashed, still calculating their VLAN tagging deployments, that there is a better way forward. This extended to those bodies actually delivering the “new network”, in this case MSPs. I suggested that we needed a new breed of resellers and service providers, at which point Andrew Froehlich from Nile flipped onto the next slide in his deck: “MSPs Who Want To Be Disrupters” – as I said, all unscripted and unrehearsed. They say that great minds think alike (though so do stupid ones) – let’s leave it at that.
What Nile is offering is a VLAN-free (yippee!) world, where wireless and wired are as one, everything is pre-defined and tested (the deployment is mirrored and modelled in the cloud) and security is integrated, not bolted on. When it comes to actual deployment, the system – wait for this – actually uses AI properly (I know, unbelievable) to auto-remediate human errors in the deployment, if they deviate from the site plan. I suggested that maybe there’s a case for adding a voice-enabled “insult” remediation – “I told you not to place that AP there, you dumb ****” – and with a selection of comedy voices. Well, they did it with SatNav!
There’s obviously a lot more to Nile’s NaaS than the aforementioned, but I think that should whet anyone’s appetite for exploring what a NextGen network deployment can look like. I, for one, would love to explore it in greater detail with my product testing mitts on. No VLAN nightmares mid-testing…
Similar conversations rebounded around with UK client Enigmanet, where we looked to define exactly where networking – and IT in general – went wrong and what is now the starting point in a contemporary IT deployment. Starting with the “as a Service” model – whether targeting service providers, VARs or end user companies, it has become the accepted norm to go with an OpEx model, as it a) alleviates a big up-front financial commitment and b) is more predictable in terms of ongoing budget allocation.
Looking at the past, I think, in terms of business elements, IT was the exception, where companies committed huge budgets to creating their own, internal IT infrastructures, rather than opting for a “pay as you go/need” strategy to bring that element to their business. As long ago as the 90s, companies started to think “why have we invested ALL this money in technology and people when a) the technology gets out-dated and we have to start all over again and b) the staff who we have trained expensively then leave the company and, again, we have to start all over”. Or, they started to generate revenue from their own internal IT by offering its spare capacity to 3rd party companies – AKA cloud computing (and on that topic we can go back to mainframe time-sharing in the 70s and 80s, since IBM mainframes were operating VM-based OSs – yes, the same “virtual machines” that VMware “invented” 20 years later!). So companies that manufactured biscuits, say, became service providers – I mean, that can’t be right?
One thing we have learned about IT is that it is cyclical in nature. So, we already have the “return to OnPrem” data residency thing happening; sooner or later, companies WILL want to own their own hardware again – the person who predicts that timeframe, and is ready for it, becomes a trillionaire… Meantime, we have the likes of Nile to take us through the next 20+ years 😊