Bharti Airtel Joins Amazon Web Services Direct Connect

It’s good to be “on network,” rather than “off network.”

Bharti Airtel has joined the AWS Partner Network (APN) and will deliver private network solutions for enterprise customers across the globe using Amazon Web Services (AWS).

This will help Airtel’s enterprise customers across the globe establish a dedicated network connection between customers’ premises and Amazon’s data centers.

That in turn, will help  reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and experience a more consistent network connectivity experience.

AWS Direct Connect will allow Airtel enterprise customers to establish a dedicated network connection between their network and one of the AWS Direct Connect locations.

Using industry standard 802.1q VLANs – any dedicated connection can be partitioned into multiple virtual interfaces, allowing customers to use the same connection to access public resources such as objects stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) using public IP address space, and private resources, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances running within an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) using private IP space.

Airtel customers will benefit from AWS Direct Connect in a number of ways.

By transferring data to and from AWS directly, customers can reduce their bandwidth commitments, and save money. All data transferred over the dedicated connection is charged at the reduced AWS Direct Connect data transfer rate rather than Internet data transfer rates.

Bandwidth on demand will be easier, as AWS Direct Connect provides 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps connections, while customers can easily provision multiple connections.

Management also is easier, as customers use the AWS Management Console, providing a single view to efficiently manage all connections and virtual interfaces.

"Data Center to Data Center" Traffic is Growing Faster Than "Intra-Center" or "Data Center to End User" Traffic

Once upon a time, global wide area network traffic was relatively limited, and mostly represented connections between tandem switch and central office switch locations.

These days, traffic tends to be dominated by server-to-server traffic, within data centers, between data centers and then from data centers to end users.

A recent Bell Labs study forecasts total metro traffic will increase 560 percent by 2017, largely driven by IP video and the increasing adoption of cloud and data center services and applications.

According to the study, metro video traffic (including subscription TV and Internet video) will increase 720 percent by about 2017.

Metro cloud and data center traffic will increase 440 percent by 2017, the study predicts.

As the demand for video content increases, video caching is now being implemented within metro networks, moving content caching deeper into the network.

As a direct consequence, traffic between data centers in metro areas will grow, keeping much traffic off the backbone networks. That’s a significant change.

On the other hand, a growing percentage of traffic also will be moving between data centers.

Traffic between data centers is growing faster than either traffic to end-users or traffic within the data center, and by 2018,  traffic between data centers will account for almost nine percent of total data center traffic, up from nearly seven percent at the end of 2013, according to Cisco.

Until recently, metro traffic had a “north-south” flow from a content source to the end user with content sources typically located at a national central location and delivered over the wide area backbone network.

But there is a change coming, Alcatel-Lucent says. The north-south flows increasingly will be replaced by “east-west traffic  flows for traffic flows from data center to data center, increasingly located within metro centers.

There are revenue implications for providers of high-capacity metro networks and long haul bandwidth providers alike.

How Much Enterprise Spending Could be Shifted to Cloud Alternatives?

If a traditional enterprise data center represents about 23 percent of the whole information technology budget, and data communications represents about nine percent of total budget, you can see where the potential for spending shifts lies: substituting cloud computing for owned data center operations.

Enterprises can shift data center costs in the direction of cloud facilities and bandwidth. Presumably some other existing costs, including IT management, application support, app development, IT service desk and end user computing costs likewise could be reduced.

source: AT Kearney

Device Barriers to Developing Market Internet Access Falling Fast

Though Apple will continue to sell at the high end of the smartphone market, volume will come in emerging markets, for devices costing less than US$100. That, in turn, will drive Internet access in emerging markets.

The rapid emergence of the sub-$100 smartphone category is one illustration of falling barriers to Internet usage in developing markets.

"The future of smartphones lies in emerging markets, sub-US$100 price points, and phablets," said Melissa Chau, International Data Corp. senior research manager. "In 2014, 73 percent of smartphones were shipped to emerging markets, 21 percent were priced below US$100, and 12 percent had screen sizes between 5.5 and seven inches.

By 2019, 80 percent of smartphones will be shipped to emerging markets, 35 percent will be priced below US$100, and 32 percent will have a 5.5-inch to 7-inch screen size.

As recently as 2010, PCs still made up the lion's share of the total “smart connected device” market, with the combined desktop and notebook categories accounting for almost 53 percent of shipments compared to nearly 45 percent for smartphones and three percent for tablets.

By 2014, smartphones had grown to represent almost 73 percent of total shipments, while PCs had slipped to nearly 17 percent and tablets had increased to about 13 percent.

By 2019, IDC expects the distribution to be nearly 78 percent smartphones, almost 12 percent PCs, and about 11 percent tablets.

Some 28.7 million mobile phones were shipped in Vietnam in 2014, representing 13 percent year over year growth.

Smartphones represented 41 percent of all mobile phones shipped to Vietnam in 2014, or 11.6 million units, and are expected to eclipse feature phones in 2015.

Smartphone sales grew 57 percent in 2014, International Data Corp. says. As is the case elsewhere in Asia, lower-priced smartphones are driving the trend.

"The low-cost segment has been the main driver, with six out of ten smartphones as budget models priced below US$150 are shipped to Vietnam," said " Võ Lê Tâm Thanh, IDC senior market analyst.

What Drives Global Bandwidth Demand? Everything

No single driver accounts for the strong growth of Internet bandwidth demand in every region of the world. Instead, almost every trend in communications, computing and entertainment now collectively boosts demand for capacity.

More users, more users on mobile, more people watching video, more content consumption, stored in more places and assembled from more sources, plus globalization all contribute to higher usage.

But usage alone is not the whole story. “Where” usage occurs also has changed, with the greatest volume growth in Asia. That, in turn, leads to more traffic across Asia to and from Europe, and to and from North America.

Use of more-global internet exchange points (IXPs) likewise has affected traffic flows.

Historically, most traffic transited through US-based network access points (NAPs) in which backbones interconnected their networks and exchanged traffic. As all ISPs had to connect to the US for international transit, they also used these links to exchange domestic and regional traffic, a process referred to as tromboning.

Today, regional IXPs are used to exchange more local traffic. Still, the largest number and percentages of IXPs are located in North America, Europe and Asia. That in turn drives traffic between the three regions.

By 2018, perhaps 78 percent of all workloads will be processed in cloud data centers, Cisco argues.

But traffic between data centers is growing faster than either traffic to end-users or traffic within the data center, and by 2018, traffic between data centers will account for almost nine percent of total data center traffic, up from nearly seven percent at the end of 2013. 

The high growth of this segment is due to the increasing prevalence of content distribution networks, the proliferation of cloud services and the need to shuttle data between clouds, and the growing volume of data that needs to be replicated across data centers.

Data center traffic on a global scale will grow at a 23-percent CAGR, but cloud data center traffic will grow at a faster rate (32 percent CAGR) or 3.9-fold growth from 2013 to 2018, Cisco predicts. .

Cloud workloads are expected to nearly triple (grow 2.9-fold) from 2013 to 2018, whereas traditional data center workloads are expected to see a global decline, for the first time, at a negative two-percent CAGR from 2013 to 2018.

From 2013 to 2018, the Middle East and Africa is expected to have the highest cloud traffic growth rate (54‑percent CAGR), followed by Central and Eastern Europe (39-percent CAGR) and Asia Pacific (37‑percent CAGR).

      Cloud Traffic Growth by Region, in Exabytes

Region	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	CAGR 2013–18
Asia Pacific	489	716	1,010	1,368	1,802	2,331	37%
Central and Eastern Europe	85	120	170	238	331	442	39%
Latin America	89	130	180	240	312	394	35%
Middle East and Africa	31	53	86	132	193	262	54%
North America	643	857	1,102	1,384	1,701	2,077	26%
Western Europe	311	401	502	631	791	988	26%

Source: Cisco Analysis, 2014

      Regional Distribution of Total Data Center Workloads, in Millions

Total Data Center Workloads in Millions
	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	CAGR 2013–2018
Asia Pacific	16.3	20.9	28.4	37.9	48.0	61.2	30%
Central and Eastern Europe	2.3	2.7	3.1	3.6	4.3	5.1	17%
Latin America	2.6	3.2	3.9	4.7	5.7	6.9	21%
Middle East and Africa	1.8	2.3	2.9	3.5	4.3	5.2	24%
North America	56.1	62.8	68.7	73.9	80.3	88.0	9%
Western Europe	29.2	33.3	36.5	39.7	42.2	45.1	9%

Source: Cisco Analysis, 2014

The portion of traffic residing within the data center will decline slightly over the forecast period, accounting for nearly 77 percent of data center traffic in 2013 and about 75 percent by 2018. 

Despite the decline, the majority of traffic remains within the data center because of factors such as the functional separation of application servers, storage, and databases, which generates replication, backup, and read and write traffic traversing the data center. 

Furthermore, parallel processing divides tasks and sends them to multiple servers, contributing to internal data center traffic.

Broadcasters Call for Temporary Halt to U.S. TV White Spaces

Any database-driven approach to spectrum sharing will hinge on the accuracy of the databases, it goes without saying. 

Citing errors in the databases, the U.S. National Association of Broadcasters has asked for an immediate halt to TV white spaces operations in the United States.

“The current database design allows--and may encourage--users of TV white space devices (also known as TV Band Devices or TVBDs) to falsify information they are required to enter into the database when they register certain fixed and mobile devices,” NAB argues. “This information includes, among other things, the location information upon which the Commission premised the entire concept for spectrum sharing in the TV band.”

“Given that many policymakers view spectrum sharing via database-centered interference safeguards as critical to future U.S. spectrum policy, it is essential that the Commission correct these fundamental flaws now,” NAB argues.

The skirmishing is not terribly unusual. Struggles over allocation of spectrum often pit broadcasters against communications interests or satellite interests against mobile interests.

Cloud Computing Has Gone Mainstream

Between 50 percent and 68 percent of organizations surveyed by Spiceworks have adopted cloud computing, moves that automatically boost communications spending.

Market research firm IDC predicted that the worldwide cloud market, which encompasses private, public and hybrid clouds, will jump from $95.8 billion this year to $118 billion in 2015 and $200 billion by 2018.

The private and hybrid clouds, which will call for IT involvement, should see the strongest growth, according to Technology Business Research. The private cloud is expected to grow 35% year-over-year in 2015 with the hybrid cloud predicted to grow 50 percent.