International Finalists:
JOHN DUNNE and TOM FARRELL, Intune Networks
FOLLOWING EUROPEAN project research at UCD, John Dunne and Tom Farrell founded Intune Networks in Dublin in 1999.
Both had been working with US, European and Japanese technology companies on a new type of laser, when they realised they could “beat them” at developing a practical way to calibrate and control such technology.
Entrepreneurial from the outset, the UCD pair formed Intune to create an innovative business around their ideas.
From 1999 until 2005, Intune had fewer than 20 employees and worked hard to survive the telecoms crash in 2001 by managing to shift its technology application into the sensor market for oil and gas. In 2006, its longevity in the optical space paid off as the emergence of YouTube, Facebook, Google and mobile networks offered it a new opportunity. The firm was ready to develop a killer solution for the industry.
Success in designing the world’s first optical packet switch and transport system has achieved global recognition and acclaim. It has won a number of awards, including The Irish Times Innovation Award 2011.
In 2010, the company reported turnover of €10 million. As a Silicon Valley-style company, backed by VC firms to the tune of €50 million to date, Intune has the potential to become “Ireland’s Nokia” due to the scale of the problem it solves throughout today’s global network and internet infrastructure.
The business has survived the largest-ever sector collapse in telecoms and the world’s economic crisis of 2008, while retaining 100 per cent of its core staff, 45 per cent of whom have PhDs. Today, it employs almost 200 – 155 are permanent employees – and has two RD facilities in Ireland, one in Dublin and one in Belfast.
Products
A range of technologies based on tuneable lasers, which has led to the development of the world’s first optical packet switch and transport system . This solves a 30-year-old architectural problem in world networks.
Customers
Intune’s first customer for its new product line is the Government. It was selected to deliver the technology behind the Exemplar Network facility in 2010 and unveiled the full, commercial version of the technology in May. It plans to announce its first customers shortly as trial deployments are rolled out globally.
What were your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
“Converting technology ‘speak’ into business value is the most challenging aspect of our business. Once you have business value you can attract customers and investors.”
...
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Monday, June 27, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Intune Networks - from tunable lasers to carrier-class packet switching and transport... - Optical Keyhole
Interview with John Dunne, founder and CTO
Introduction
Intune Networks, founded in 1999 by John Dunne and Tom Farrell and based in Dublin, Ireland, is focused on developing a carrier-class optical packet switch. The company now has approximately 155 full-time staff, with design centres in Dublin and Belfast and sales offices in the UK and the U.S.
Intune has developed technology, termed Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST), designed to address the challenges for service providers of handling the rapidly increasing and unpredictable traffic on their networks.
The company has raised two rounds of funding from venture capital firms, including a Euro 13.5 million Series A round and Euro 29 million in Series B. Intune is currently seeking further funding in a Series C placement of Euro 30 million.
Early background
Intune's founders started out in 1994 performing research on tunable lasers primarily through involvement in European research projects while at University College Dublin. After establishing Intune in 1999 the company was initially engaged in calibrating and developing technology for controlling other vendor's lasers at its lab in Dublin before embarking on building control systems for laser suppliers.
Mr. Dunne noted that at the time there were more than thirty companies building tunable lasers, representing a decent market for Intune's first products - now there are far fewer.
Intune subsequently won a contract to supply products to JDS Uniphase for its Eindhoven site in the Netherlands, formerly a Philips operation. However, this facility was shut down in 2001 and Intune was then forced to seek alternative markets for its technology.
Meanwhile, companies in the oil industry required a swept laser source for optical
sensing applications and Intune started developing and offering products for this market.
At the time Intune was also engaged in a project funded by the European Space Agency and another similar program with DARPA in the U.S. to develop an optical backplane utilising fast tuning lasers. Both projects were seeking to address the challenges presented by the problem of situating a large Cisco router in a satellite or high-altitude airship where weight and power consumption are key issues.
Birth of the optical packet switch
By 2005, Intune had developed its own optical switch design and spent the next two years on refinements. This necessitated raising funding to enable the company to bring the switch to market. In 2006, Tim Fritzley, a member of the technical advisory board, was appointed as CEO to help raise the first round of funding.
Prior to joining Intune, Tim Fritzley was running Microsoft's IPTV division and before that served with Tellabs. At Microsoft he realised that the existing network architecture was not suitable for handling traffic generated by sites such as Youtube and Facebook that had launched around 2003/4.
That network architecture, comprising a static optical layer with fixed lasers and Layer 2/3 switches and routers, remains fundamentally unchanged today.
Under this established network architecture, processes are centralised at the routers, which have had to grow ever larger as network traffic and the demands upon them increase, while the pipes that feed the routers have to carry greater loads and so are now being upgraded to 40 and 100 Gbit/s capacity.
Tim Fritzley saw that Intune's product could offer a solution to the problem facing carriers, which presently is inhibiting the development of new services such as cloud computing and interactive low-latency services. The carriers are also evaluating how to advance their metro infrastructure to enable efficient delivery of services such as virtual desktop and bandwidth on demand.
To address this market the Intune optical switch needed to be carrier-class. In 2007, Flextronics acquired Nortel's European design team for 10 Gbit/s systems in Belfast, but subsequently closed down the site, at which time Intune recruited approximately 45 of the staff to work on the optical switch.
Manufacturing services companies Flextronics and Celestica make the carrier-class package and also helped with its design.
Intune launched a commercial carrier-class product under the Verisma name on May 23, 2011 at the TM World Forum.
Verisma Platform
Describing the Verisma product, Mr. Dunne said the first commercial model is a carrier-class optical packet switch distributed around a fibre ring. In the future, different versions will be offered to address different end markets.
At the 2011 TM Forum Intune debuted and demonstrated the Verisma solution in collaboration with BT, Openet and Amartus, showing how a user can improve the quality of a video service on-demand by requesting extra bandwidth in real-time.
Intune has made the optical layer packet-responsive through the use of tunable lasers, thereby enabling increased utilisation of fibre capacity. Mr. Dunne explained that the product also enables operators to reduce the number of router ports required, so lowering costs, and employs web services software for control of the switch by an end-user:
"As Facebook has a programming interface whereby any programmer can join and develop an application - and the same goes for iPhone and Android - Intune offers an application interface for the network that is embedded in the switch. A user can thus set up an application for a web services portal that will call up bandwidth on demand from the network. For example, a user could provide a network for a social network on Facebook which would only be paid for when used".
The Intune solution means that operators can allow their customers to create new services on the network, effectively allowing business customers to create any service they need.
Financing market entry
The three main investors participating in Intune's Series A funding - Balderton Capital / Benchmark Capital Europe, Amadeus of London and Park Ventures in Boston - recognised from the start that this would be a long-term commitment since the length of time required to win business with large carries is a major issue for a small start-up company with limited funding.
In 2009 the company raised Series B funding from its existing and new investors, although the round took 13 months to complete due to the economic crisis. Mr. Dunne believes this was the largest private investment in the optical networking space to close during 2009.
Intune is currently seeking to raise Series C financing of Euro 30 million to support the company through the go-to-market phase of its development and into breakeven or profitability.
With respect to revenue, Intune generated sales of Euro 11 million in 2010 and expects to increase this to around Euro 20 million in 2011, including projects with the Irish government, before it finally begins to see revenue from carriers in 2012.
Mr. Dunne emphasised that Intune is already engaged with major carriers, having worked with BT since 2006 and with Telefonica in European projects since 2002.
The optical switch product was shipped in beta to carriers in 2009 and is now available in a carrier-class package that must be trialled with customers for a minimum of six months. Therefore it will be 2012 before Intune sees commercial deployments with existing carrier partners and trials with additional carriers.
Intune is currently involved with carriers in network modelling demonstrating that even with less than five percent of traffic deriving from cloud services a new approach is required to handle the traffic effectively.
Partnerships
Intune addresses the metro network space, specifically the optical transport and switching sector. Within this market each carrier has its own upgrade cycle, with some due to upgrade their networks towards the end of 2012 and Mr. Dunne said this is the window that Intune is targeting with its new carrier-class solution.
The company does not plan to sell direct to carriers and is engaged in developing partnerships with systems integrators used by the large carriers. While Intune recognises that as a small company it cannot address such customers directly, it is also aware that it needs to present the value proposition of its technology to carriers if it is to avoid being blocked by their existing equipment vendors.
Mr. Dunne feels that a current problem, particularly in the optical networking space, is that the established vendors are not innovating, and while the carriers wish to reduce the number of router ports they have to buy and to transition to a new network architecture there is nothing available from the major vendors at present:
"Ultimately it is down to the carriers to adopt new technology and help it to succeed in the market - the equipment vendors cannot create a market for their products. This means that at some level the carriers need to support small companies developing new technology or it will never reach market. For example, carriers are now becoming desperate for an alternative to the way they have been operating their networks for the past twenty years because they know they are not able to support emerging services such as cloud computing".
To date, Intune has focused on Europe due to limited resources, although it does now have an office in the U.S. and is engaging with Tier 1 carriers there. The company is also involved in projects in India and Africa via partners. The new funding round is intended to be used to help with expansion into additional geographic markets.
Mr. Dunne explained that if a carrier decides it requires a product from a supplier such as Intune it will instruct its integrator partner to work with the company to enable deployment of the equipment in its network.
The systems integrators for large carriers are the major global companies such as Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent, which deploy carrier solutions based on their own equipment and products from third party suppliers.
Intune anticipates being in a position to announce systems integrator partners, along with carrier customers, before the end of 2011.
Competition
Mr. Dunne cited Matisse Networks, a developer of optical packet transport solutions, as a former competitor that ceased operations at the end of 2009 after being unable to raise new funding. The company had been planning to upgrade its enterprise-class product to a carrier-class solution when it ran out of cash. Matisse is believed to have been the only other start-up company working in the optical burst switching space.
However, it was noted that Huawei announced an optical burst product at OFC in 2011 and other large equipment vendors are working on similar technology that may or may not be productised at some time in the future.
The interest from major vendors in the technology Intune has commercialised is seen as helping build credibility with large carriers, which are aware that something needs to be done at the optical layer and can see evidence that suppliers apart from Intune are working on this.
Path to growth
Mr. Dunne expects Intune to increase the number of employees to around 600 from the current nearly 200 full-time and contract staff over the next two years as the company expands its customer base and addressable market through partnerships.
The additional staff, he noted, would be needed to support integrator partners as well as to meet the demands of a wider geographic reach, aside from the as many as several hundred engineers that will be required to develop the company's technology and provide optical integration expertise:
"From that point Intune could opt to acquire another company or assets as a path to continued growth, or it could decide to launch an IPO, it will be up to the company's board to decide how best to develop the company once it has established its technology and a position in the carrier market".
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Introduction
Intune Networks, founded in 1999 by John Dunne and Tom Farrell and based in Dublin, Ireland, is focused on developing a carrier-class optical packet switch. The company now has approximately 155 full-time staff, with design centres in Dublin and Belfast and sales offices in the UK and the U.S.
Intune has developed technology, termed Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST), designed to address the challenges for service providers of handling the rapidly increasing and unpredictable traffic on their networks.
The company has raised two rounds of funding from venture capital firms, including a Euro 13.5 million Series A round and Euro 29 million in Series B. Intune is currently seeking further funding in a Series C placement of Euro 30 million.
Early background
Intune's founders started out in 1994 performing research on tunable lasers primarily through involvement in European research projects while at University College Dublin. After establishing Intune in 1999 the company was initially engaged in calibrating and developing technology for controlling other vendor's lasers at its lab in Dublin before embarking on building control systems for laser suppliers.
Mr. Dunne noted that at the time there were more than thirty companies building tunable lasers, representing a decent market for Intune's first products - now there are far fewer.
Intune subsequently won a contract to supply products to JDS Uniphase for its Eindhoven site in the Netherlands, formerly a Philips operation. However, this facility was shut down in 2001 and Intune was then forced to seek alternative markets for its technology.
Meanwhile, companies in the oil industry required a swept laser source for optical
sensing applications and Intune started developing and offering products for this market.
At the time Intune was also engaged in a project funded by the European Space Agency and another similar program with DARPA in the U.S. to develop an optical backplane utilising fast tuning lasers. Both projects were seeking to address the challenges presented by the problem of situating a large Cisco router in a satellite or high-altitude airship where weight and power consumption are key issues.
Birth of the optical packet switch
By 2005, Intune had developed its own optical switch design and spent the next two years on refinements. This necessitated raising funding to enable the company to bring the switch to market. In 2006, Tim Fritzley, a member of the technical advisory board, was appointed as CEO to help raise the first round of funding.
Prior to joining Intune, Tim Fritzley was running Microsoft's IPTV division and before that served with Tellabs. At Microsoft he realised that the existing network architecture was not suitable for handling traffic generated by sites such as Youtube and Facebook that had launched around 2003/4.
That network architecture, comprising a static optical layer with fixed lasers and Layer 2/3 switches and routers, remains fundamentally unchanged today.
Under this established network architecture, processes are centralised at the routers, which have had to grow ever larger as network traffic and the demands upon them increase, while the pipes that feed the routers have to carry greater loads and so are now being upgraded to 40 and 100 Gbit/s capacity.
Tim Fritzley saw that Intune's product could offer a solution to the problem facing carriers, which presently is inhibiting the development of new services such as cloud computing and interactive low-latency services. The carriers are also evaluating how to advance their metro infrastructure to enable efficient delivery of services such as virtual desktop and bandwidth on demand.
To address this market the Intune optical switch needed to be carrier-class. In 2007, Flextronics acquired Nortel's European design team for 10 Gbit/s systems in Belfast, but subsequently closed down the site, at which time Intune recruited approximately 45 of the staff to work on the optical switch.
Manufacturing services companies Flextronics and Celestica make the carrier-class package and also helped with its design.
Intune launched a commercial carrier-class product under the Verisma name on May 23, 2011 at the TM World Forum.
Verisma Platform
Describing the Verisma product, Mr. Dunne said the first commercial model is a carrier-class optical packet switch distributed around a fibre ring. In the future, different versions will be offered to address different end markets.
At the 2011 TM Forum Intune debuted and demonstrated the Verisma solution in collaboration with BT, Openet and Amartus, showing how a user can improve the quality of a video service on-demand by requesting extra bandwidth in real-time.
Intune has made the optical layer packet-responsive through the use of tunable lasers, thereby enabling increased utilisation of fibre capacity. Mr. Dunne explained that the product also enables operators to reduce the number of router ports required, so lowering costs, and employs web services software for control of the switch by an end-user:
"As Facebook has a programming interface whereby any programmer can join and develop an application - and the same goes for iPhone and Android - Intune offers an application interface for the network that is embedded in the switch. A user can thus set up an application for a web services portal that will call up bandwidth on demand from the network. For example, a user could provide a network for a social network on Facebook which would only be paid for when used".
The Intune solution means that operators can allow their customers to create new services on the network, effectively allowing business customers to create any service they need.
Financing market entry
The three main investors participating in Intune's Series A funding - Balderton Capital / Benchmark Capital Europe, Amadeus of London and Park Ventures in Boston - recognised from the start that this would be a long-term commitment since the length of time required to win business with large carries is a major issue for a small start-up company with limited funding.
In 2009 the company raised Series B funding from its existing and new investors, although the round took 13 months to complete due to the economic crisis. Mr. Dunne believes this was the largest private investment in the optical networking space to close during 2009.
Intune is currently seeking to raise Series C financing of Euro 30 million to support the company through the go-to-market phase of its development and into breakeven or profitability.
With respect to revenue, Intune generated sales of Euro 11 million in 2010 and expects to increase this to around Euro 20 million in 2011, including projects with the Irish government, before it finally begins to see revenue from carriers in 2012.
Mr. Dunne emphasised that Intune is already engaged with major carriers, having worked with BT since 2006 and with Telefonica in European projects since 2002.
The optical switch product was shipped in beta to carriers in 2009 and is now available in a carrier-class package that must be trialled with customers for a minimum of six months. Therefore it will be 2012 before Intune sees commercial deployments with existing carrier partners and trials with additional carriers.
Intune is currently involved with carriers in network modelling demonstrating that even with less than five percent of traffic deriving from cloud services a new approach is required to handle the traffic effectively.
Partnerships
Intune addresses the metro network space, specifically the optical transport and switching sector. Within this market each carrier has its own upgrade cycle, with some due to upgrade their networks towards the end of 2012 and Mr. Dunne said this is the window that Intune is targeting with its new carrier-class solution.
The company does not plan to sell direct to carriers and is engaged in developing partnerships with systems integrators used by the large carriers. While Intune recognises that as a small company it cannot address such customers directly, it is also aware that it needs to present the value proposition of its technology to carriers if it is to avoid being blocked by their existing equipment vendors.
Mr. Dunne feels that a current problem, particularly in the optical networking space, is that the established vendors are not innovating, and while the carriers wish to reduce the number of router ports they have to buy and to transition to a new network architecture there is nothing available from the major vendors at present:
"Ultimately it is down to the carriers to adopt new technology and help it to succeed in the market - the equipment vendors cannot create a market for their products. This means that at some level the carriers need to support small companies developing new technology or it will never reach market. For example, carriers are now becoming desperate for an alternative to the way they have been operating their networks for the past twenty years because they know they are not able to support emerging services such as cloud computing".
To date, Intune has focused on Europe due to limited resources, although it does now have an office in the U.S. and is engaging with Tier 1 carriers there. The company is also involved in projects in India and Africa via partners. The new funding round is intended to be used to help with expansion into additional geographic markets.
Mr. Dunne explained that if a carrier decides it requires a product from a supplier such as Intune it will instruct its integrator partner to work with the company to enable deployment of the equipment in its network.
The systems integrators for large carriers are the major global companies such as Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent, which deploy carrier solutions based on their own equipment and products from third party suppliers.
Intune anticipates being in a position to announce systems integrator partners, along with carrier customers, before the end of 2011.
Competition
Mr. Dunne cited Matisse Networks, a developer of optical packet transport solutions, as a former competitor that ceased operations at the end of 2009 after being unable to raise new funding. The company had been planning to upgrade its enterprise-class product to a carrier-class solution when it ran out of cash. Matisse is believed to have been the only other start-up company working in the optical burst switching space.
However, it was noted that Huawei announced an optical burst product at OFC in 2011 and other large equipment vendors are working on similar technology that may or may not be productised at some time in the future.
The interest from major vendors in the technology Intune has commercialised is seen as helping build credibility with large carriers, which are aware that something needs to be done at the optical layer and can see evidence that suppliers apart from Intune are working on this.
Path to growth
Mr. Dunne expects Intune to increase the number of employees to around 600 from the current nearly 200 full-time and contract staff over the next two years as the company expands its customer base and addressable market through partnerships.
The additional staff, he noted, would be needed to support integrator partners as well as to meet the demands of a wider geographic reach, aside from the as many as several hundred engineers that will be required to develop the company's technology and provide optical integration expertise:
"From that point Intune could opt to acquire another company or assets as a path to continued growth, or it could decide to launch an IPO, it will be up to the company's board to decide how best to develop the company once it has established its technology and a position in the carrier market".
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Friday, June 3, 2011
TM Forum Highlight: Optical Network bursts onto scene... - Telecom Engine
In one of the highlights of the TM Forum Management World event in Dublin last week, the Irish government showed off its Exemplar project, a “metro ring” carrier network in Dublin that is said to be the first to incorporate optical burst switching, a technology that could have broad implications in greatly improving the efficiency and capacity of carrier networks.
The Exemplar network is part of the MAINS project, led by Telefonica I+D's research branch, and with participation from a number of Dublin-based technology providers, including Intune Networks, which provided the unique switching technology, as well Amartus and Openet, which provided OSS and subscriber optimization software, respectively.
At the heart of the project is Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) technology from Intune Networks, which will have achieved commercial viability after years of development. The unveiling of the project coincides with the commercialization of Intune’s new Verisma product line, which the company touts as the first carrier-class converged switch and transport solution based on optical burst switching.
A key benefit of the Verisma line is the ability to deliver so-called “liquid bandwidth” – the concept of allowing network operators to deliver packets of higher bandwidth on-demand. The versatility provided is considered to be particularly important for network operators supporting Cloud services and other high-bandwidth users, as well as allowing operators to participate more easily in spot-trading and service passes to boost revenue.
Tim Fritzley, Intune Networks CEO said “Before today’s commercial launch we have focused on validating the technical capabilities of our technology and performing early trials with large operators. We are now moving into a new phase of commercialisation as we prepare for multiple global first office applications in the second half of this year. So far the feedback from the market has confirmed our assertions and we have deep and broad engagement with the major players in the industry.”
The MAINS program is an European research project composed by universities, companies and research centres which aims to define and develop new architectural solutions for next generation metropolitan networks able to absorb new traffic demands generated fixed and mobile broadband access technologies.
The Exemplar Test-bed Program is a communications services test-bed provided by the Irish government’s Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (DCENR) as a magnet to attract and expand leading edge research and development in Ireland for next generation Web and ICT services. According to Intune, the Verisma product family was selected as the foundation for the Exemplar lab Test-bed and allows the test bed to provide the flexible network architecture and simplified software operations and control interfaces required by the next generation of carrier services.
In the FP7 MAINS project, which is planning an OPST field trial in Cyprus in Q3-Q4 2011, the underlying objective is to develop a response to the fact that the current network architectures were never designed to cope with the new demands driven by emerging broadband Internet services like over-the-top video delivery, social networking and cloud computing.
MAINS project leader, Juan Pedro Fernandez-Palacios Gimenez from Telefόnica I+D Ultrabroadband Networks area, commented “The proposed MAINS (Metro Architectures Enabling Sub-wavelengths) architecture targets a new architectural solution that will be able to face the huge expected traffic increase in a more cost-effective way. This architecture will be needed in order to assure a low cost broadband Internet access in Europe.”
With its commercial launch, the Verisma product line will begin to be deployed in the field to support a number of applications, such as cloud computing, mobile backhaul and metro optical aggregation. With its ability to provide mesh networking, dynamic bandwidth allocation and software-defined networking, the solution has been attracting attention for data centre interconnect and network-as-a-service applications.
As noted by Stu Elby, VP Network and Technology at Verizon, “The ‘cloud’ promises to cost effectively provide infrastructure, applications, and services where-ever and whenever they are requested. The ability to dynamically move virtual machines and/or data sets among data centres will allow us to address hot spot issues while potentially enabling new services. Current network constraints do not permit this capability to be exploited cost-effectively, so to this end virtualized, dynamic networking will accelerate the adoption and profitability of the cloud. “
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The Exemplar network is part of the MAINS project, led by Telefonica I+D's research branch, and with participation from a number of Dublin-based technology providers, including Intune Networks, which provided the unique switching technology, as well Amartus and Openet, which provided OSS and subscriber optimization software, respectively.
At the heart of the project is Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) technology from Intune Networks, which will have achieved commercial viability after years of development. The unveiling of the project coincides with the commercialization of Intune’s new Verisma product line, which the company touts as the first carrier-class converged switch and transport solution based on optical burst switching.
A key benefit of the Verisma line is the ability to deliver so-called “liquid bandwidth” – the concept of allowing network operators to deliver packets of higher bandwidth on-demand. The versatility provided is considered to be particularly important for network operators supporting Cloud services and other high-bandwidth users, as well as allowing operators to participate more easily in spot-trading and service passes to boost revenue.
Tim Fritzley, Intune Networks CEO said “Before today’s commercial launch we have focused on validating the technical capabilities of our technology and performing early trials with large operators. We are now moving into a new phase of commercialisation as we prepare for multiple global first office applications in the second half of this year. So far the feedback from the market has confirmed our assertions and we have deep and broad engagement with the major players in the industry.”
The MAINS program is an European research project composed by universities, companies and research centres which aims to define and develop new architectural solutions for next generation metropolitan networks able to absorb new traffic demands generated fixed and mobile broadband access technologies.
The Exemplar Test-bed Program is a communications services test-bed provided by the Irish government’s Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (DCENR) as a magnet to attract and expand leading edge research and development in Ireland for next generation Web and ICT services. According to Intune, the Verisma product family was selected as the foundation for the Exemplar lab Test-bed and allows the test bed to provide the flexible network architecture and simplified software operations and control interfaces required by the next generation of carrier services.
In the FP7 MAINS project, which is planning an OPST field trial in Cyprus in Q3-Q4 2011, the underlying objective is to develop a response to the fact that the current network architectures were never designed to cope with the new demands driven by emerging broadband Internet services like over-the-top video delivery, social networking and cloud computing.
MAINS project leader, Juan Pedro Fernandez-Palacios Gimenez from Telefόnica I+D Ultrabroadband Networks area, commented “The proposed MAINS (Metro Architectures Enabling Sub-wavelengths) architecture targets a new architectural solution that will be able to face the huge expected traffic increase in a more cost-effective way. This architecture will be needed in order to assure a low cost broadband Internet access in Europe.”
With its commercial launch, the Verisma product line will begin to be deployed in the field to support a number of applications, such as cloud computing, mobile backhaul and metro optical aggregation. With its ability to provide mesh networking, dynamic bandwidth allocation and software-defined networking, the solution has been attracting attention for data centre interconnect and network-as-a-service applications.
As noted by Stu Elby, VP Network and Technology at Verizon, “The ‘cloud’ promises to cost effectively provide infrastructure, applications, and services where-ever and whenever they are requested. The ability to dynamically move virtual machines and/or data sets among data centres will allow us to address hot spot issues while potentially enabling new services. Current network constraints do not permit this capability to be exploited cost-effectively, so to this end virtualized, dynamic networking will accelerate the adoption and profitability of the cloud. “
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Thursday, June 2, 2011
Teaching Networks To Speak Web - CABLE360.NET
Current network infrastructures are controlled by complex legacy OSSs run by large operators. This structure stifles innovation and prevents application developers from taking advantage of the flexibility the network can offer.
Social networking continues to grow as the newest form of communications, but where is it taking us and what is the next big thing to happen? Well the “social” aspect of logging onto Facebook has pretty much taken off, but the real “network” on which the social network runs still is operating on 25-year-old operations software and infrastructure architecture, even as it is working at faster and faster speeds.
In fact, the last major change in software that manages the network equipment inside telecom networks was started in 1987 with a protocol called “Simple Gateway Monitoring Protocol.” At the time, the Internet was in its infancy, and the idea that anyone outside of a specialized networking community would want to control their own part of the network was unheard of.
Fast-forward to 2004 and the start of Facebook. The older network software and, in fact, the underlying network equipment itself is preventing the introduction of real-time and interactive network services driven by Facebook and other social networks. For example, a combination of computer machines, large file transfers and high-definition video streams cannot be delivered on demand by the social network user to support or accompany more immediate type experiences within the social networks that have been created.
In other words, the social network is technology limited to a “best-efforts” connection. It is amazing that one can use a social network to keep in touch with many friends without having to physically meet with them or call them on the phone, but that same user cannot get a parallel network service for bi-directional video guaranteed to work that would enhance this virtual experience even further. This destroys the next dimension of social networking: multi-person video. This high-value service requires guaranteed streams of packets with low packet loss and deterministic network behavior. Today’s networks cannot guarantee this requirement and, even if they could, the software that controls the network cannot be embedded into the Web-driven applications that run on an iPhone, a Facebook page or an Amazon account. The network is not openly connected to the Internet applications in a developer-friendly manner today.
Here To There
Current network infrastructures are controlled by complex legacy OSSs run by sophisticated organizations, including those maintained by such large operators as Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Cox. This has to change. This structure stifles innovation and prevents application developers from taking advantage of the flexibility the network can offer. This translates into opening up the network so that applications available to end users can work on those dedicated, on-demand network infrastructures that would be needed to support their social networking activities. This means providing the ability to run social events over the social network, where everyone is connected together with their own dedicated network experience. This is the missing dimension.
So how can this be achieved? Two major evolutions need to happen to accomplish this: The software running the network itself and the interface software that controls the network need to be modernized. The principles that the software architecture used by Web services companies to support millions of customers can be applied to the network, developed and integrated as a new operating system for its products and the networks that they support.
This operating system is based on the latest Web-services technologies and delivers an application programming interface (API) to the network. This enables hordes of app developers to build apps that can take advantage of the full flexibility of the network and to do things like request the on-demand bandwidth needed to accompany some of the emerging high-bandwidth services. For example, this API could be combined with the Facebook API to enable a new dimension to be added to social networks or it could run inside the Android devices and talk the Web language directly to the network equipment.
The first demonstration of this will take place in Dublin, Ireland, this year, run on the Irish Government’s Exemplar Network testbed ( see sidebar on page 27). This is the world’s first open-network testbed where developers are given access to a software-programming interface, allowing them to experiment with new types of applications and services that support the next generation of social networks. Of course, there are a multitude of unpredictable new services that this could enable, and who knows what apps will be built as a result? This testbed also will form the basis of an alternative carrier network, and it will be rolled out live to show how these services actually will perform in a real-world network.
Where do the network operators fit in and how do they feel about this?
Network Ops
Well, they are a cautious bunch of folks, and change will take time to occur because of the large amount of legacy technology. However, seeing is believing in the technology world, and operators will get their first chance to see a live demonstration during the TMF World Forum in Dublin later this year.
In fact, this is an opportunity for the carriers to place their networks firmly inside the supply chain of modern advertising and marketing business that rolls out its products through social networks and Internet service providers. These new added services can be monetized because they add a clear value to the typical Internet programs available today.
Speed over the Internet cannot solve the latency or delay problem, as this requires a pre-engineered network with specific delays built in. This guarantees the performance of the video or real-time add-on services to existing social networks.
In practice, this might work as follows: A subscriber has a lot of social networking activities in his or her life; however, for a subset of them, the sub wants to include some live, high-definition video links. In this scenario, the user would subscribe to a service and agree to pay for the on-demand bandwidth required to support the service. Of course, the subscriber doesn’t actually decide what bandwidth is needed; the pre-engineered network delivers this.
These new services would be enabled by the fact that this software is running on a new optical-layer technology in the network that is responsive to user demand and that allows multiple services to be run over the same infrastructure without impacting each other. This technology provides a way to use the stranded bandwidth not being purchased for the high-quality add-on services to deliver best-effort Internet traffic. Essentially, this “free” bandwidth continues to provide traditional Internet services in parallel.
Streamlining
Such a scheme reduces the cost of implementation of services like gaming, interactive video, etc. This sharing of costs puts these normally highly specialized networks into the price range of the ordinary consumer. As such, the supply chain really works again, i.e., the subscriber pays for augmented services on his or her Facebook account, perhaps for some real network performance. A proportion of the payment is given to the network operator that makes the augmentation succeed with guarantees. Eventually, this revenue stream will be the only revenue the operators require, and the subscriber no longer has to purchase separate network connections. He or she only purchases a preferred augmented service — like gaming.
In sum, optical hardware combined with a breakthrough software approach can solve some significant problems in the supply chain of real-time, interactive network services capable of delivering the next generation of social networking with a real network element behind it. Virtualization of the network can give every consumer his or her own social network and a real network to support particular preferred activities. This will be the first major network architecture and software change in the last 25 years, and it will help ensure the continued evolution of the social network.
Read More
Social networking continues to grow as the newest form of communications, but where is it taking us and what is the next big thing to happen? Well the “social” aspect of logging onto Facebook has pretty much taken off, but the real “network” on which the social network runs still is operating on 25-year-old operations software and infrastructure architecture, even as it is working at faster and faster speeds.
In fact, the last major change in software that manages the network equipment inside telecom networks was started in 1987 with a protocol called “Simple Gateway Monitoring Protocol.” At the time, the Internet was in its infancy, and the idea that anyone outside of a specialized networking community would want to control their own part of the network was unheard of.
Fast-forward to 2004 and the start of Facebook. The older network software and, in fact, the underlying network equipment itself is preventing the introduction of real-time and interactive network services driven by Facebook and other social networks. For example, a combination of computer machines, large file transfers and high-definition video streams cannot be delivered on demand by the social network user to support or accompany more immediate type experiences within the social networks that have been created.
In other words, the social network is technology limited to a “best-efforts” connection. It is amazing that one can use a social network to keep in touch with many friends without having to physically meet with them or call them on the phone, but that same user cannot get a parallel network service for bi-directional video guaranteed to work that would enhance this virtual experience even further. This destroys the next dimension of social networking: multi-person video. This high-value service requires guaranteed streams of packets with low packet loss and deterministic network behavior. Today’s networks cannot guarantee this requirement and, even if they could, the software that controls the network cannot be embedded into the Web-driven applications that run on an iPhone, a Facebook page or an Amazon account. The network is not openly connected to the Internet applications in a developer-friendly manner today.
Here To There
Current network infrastructures are controlled by complex legacy OSSs run by sophisticated organizations, including those maintained by such large operators as Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Cox. This has to change. This structure stifles innovation and prevents application developers from taking advantage of the flexibility the network can offer. This translates into opening up the network so that applications available to end users can work on those dedicated, on-demand network infrastructures that would be needed to support their social networking activities. This means providing the ability to run social events over the social network, where everyone is connected together with their own dedicated network experience. This is the missing dimension.
So how can this be achieved? Two major evolutions need to happen to accomplish this: The software running the network itself and the interface software that controls the network need to be modernized. The principles that the software architecture used by Web services companies to support millions of customers can be applied to the network, developed and integrated as a new operating system for its products and the networks that they support.
This operating system is based on the latest Web-services technologies and delivers an application programming interface (API) to the network. This enables hordes of app developers to build apps that can take advantage of the full flexibility of the network and to do things like request the on-demand bandwidth needed to accompany some of the emerging high-bandwidth services. For example, this API could be combined with the Facebook API to enable a new dimension to be added to social networks or it could run inside the Android devices and talk the Web language directly to the network equipment.
The first demonstration of this will take place in Dublin, Ireland, this year, run on the Irish Government’s Exemplar Network testbed ( see sidebar on page 27). This is the world’s first open-network testbed where developers are given access to a software-programming interface, allowing them to experiment with new types of applications and services that support the next generation of social networks. Of course, there are a multitude of unpredictable new services that this could enable, and who knows what apps will be built as a result? This testbed also will form the basis of an alternative carrier network, and it will be rolled out live to show how these services actually will perform in a real-world network.
Where do the network operators fit in and how do they feel about this?
Network Ops
Well, they are a cautious bunch of folks, and change will take time to occur because of the large amount of legacy technology. However, seeing is believing in the technology world, and operators will get their first chance to see a live demonstration during the TMF World Forum in Dublin later this year.
In fact, this is an opportunity for the carriers to place their networks firmly inside the supply chain of modern advertising and marketing business that rolls out its products through social networks and Internet service providers. These new added services can be monetized because they add a clear value to the typical Internet programs available today.
Speed over the Internet cannot solve the latency or delay problem, as this requires a pre-engineered network with specific delays built in. This guarantees the performance of the video or real-time add-on services to existing social networks.
In practice, this might work as follows: A subscriber has a lot of social networking activities in his or her life; however, for a subset of them, the sub wants to include some live, high-definition video links. In this scenario, the user would subscribe to a service and agree to pay for the on-demand bandwidth required to support the service. Of course, the subscriber doesn’t actually decide what bandwidth is needed; the pre-engineered network delivers this.
These new services would be enabled by the fact that this software is running on a new optical-layer technology in the network that is responsive to user demand and that allows multiple services to be run over the same infrastructure without impacting each other. This technology provides a way to use the stranded bandwidth not being purchased for the high-quality add-on services to deliver best-effort Internet traffic. Essentially, this “free” bandwidth continues to provide traditional Internet services in parallel.
Streamlining
Such a scheme reduces the cost of implementation of services like gaming, interactive video, etc. This sharing of costs puts these normally highly specialized networks into the price range of the ordinary consumer. As such, the supply chain really works again, i.e., the subscriber pays for augmented services on his or her Facebook account, perhaps for some real network performance. A proportion of the payment is given to the network operator that makes the augmentation succeed with guarantees. Eventually, this revenue stream will be the only revenue the operators require, and the subscriber no longer has to purchase separate network connections. He or she only purchases a preferred augmented service — like gaming.
In sum, optical hardware combined with a breakthrough software approach can solve some significant problems in the supply chain of real-time, interactive network services capable of delivering the next generation of social networking with a real network element behind it. Virtualization of the network can give every consumer his or her own social network and a real network to support particular preferred activities. This will be the first major network architecture and software change in the last 25 years, and it will help ensure the continued evolution of the social network.
Read More
Monday, May 30, 2011
Can an Irish upstart save the internet? - Irish Independent
The world's broadband system is bursting at the seams. Intune Network's invention may just rescue it, writes Roisin Burke
IT'S not every fledgling tech company that gets name-checked by Bono. Twice. In a recent Hotpress interview he praises "the wealth of technological geniuses that we have here. People like the Intune Networks -- there's two young PhD students who could change the world, literally". He bigged them up again on Today FM.
The two "geniuses" are John Dunne and Tom Farrell, who started Intune as a campus company in 1999 as young UCD research boffins. They've come a long way.
At a launch party for Intune's game-changing new product line, Verisma, which went commercial last week, high-flying investors and supporters mill around. Bono's brother, Norman Hewson, pops in, Google and Bebo investor, Balderton's Barry Maloney, is there, and goldmining legend Sam Jonah, also an investor, is there.
There's no sign of Dermot Desmond, or anyone from Twitter investor Spark Capital or Acorn Computer pioneer Hermann Hauser's Amadeus Capital, but they're all Intune backers.
To give a context to Verisma's potential: just as early computers filled entire rooms and were shrink-rayed down to tablet size, Verisma compacts down miles of fibreoptic cable and thousands of silicon chips, into something the size of a small fridge. This unprepossessing-looking grey box of switches and cables stands in the launch party room at the Gibson Hotel, as trays of wine and canapés fly by all around.
Take say, the Olympics 2012. There'll be a storm of internet TV watching, YouTubing, tweeting, mobile video and digital image sending: a gigantic data-gobbling power surge over 15 days. Verisma can wing these massive amounts of data to where it needs to go, way faster -- about 80 per cent faster -- than existing broadband. It's all done with different coloured lasers, or Optical Burst technology.
The target customers are the telco giants: O2, Vodafone, BT et al, "The guys," says CEO Tim Fritzley, "who run the biggest networks in the world, that operate in the biggest cities and areas where fibre networks are just bursting at the seams."
After the science comes the selling. This is where seasoned Silicon Valley pro Fritzley comes into his own.
Lured here five years ago by Dunne and Farrell, he's become progressively paler but retains his white-toothed Californian smile and boundless enthusiasm.
Fritzley was sales VP at Microsoft TV. "With Microsoft I travelled the world, and I could see that the networks were going to collapse under all of this video that was coming along in 2003-2005 when social networking and YouTube hit. They are going to have to completely transition -- new architecture, new technology, new software.
"I just felt that John and Tom's was the right technology. What really attracted me to them was that they'd done a phenomenal job on patenting all their intellectual property."
The likes of multi-billion-dollar revenued Cisco are now playing catch-up and Fritzley says Intune is five years ahead of the posse.
He has built up a sales team with "fantastic" contacts. "If you're a start-up, you can't depend on another equipment vendor like an Ericsson or an Alcatel or a Cisco to represent you at early stage -- their goal is to burn you out of cash so that they can buy the technology cheap.
"With your own sales force, you go after their customers, then you get traction and the big guys think 'we better partner with them before somebody else does'. It's a balance of fear and greed." A global distribution agreement has just been inked with one large equipment vendor and another is close to signing.
Would Alcatel-Lucent or Cisco not just save themselves the trouble and buy Intune out? "They will always look at that," says Fritzley, "but we don't want to sell early, we want to create this very valuable company. We would love nothing more than to go all the way through to IPO, so we're in no rush to sell.
Meanwhile, Intune is gearing for profitability. "We're not cashflow positive yet, but we are in revenue. We did about €10m last year, we hope to do €26m this year, in 2012 we're looking to do about €100m and we'll go up to €200m-€300m after that. We are targeting that for 2012 we're cashflow positive."
As well as selling Verisma, Fritzley is drumming up more money. "We're just doing our series C round right now, targeting €30m-plus for this round. I would hope to raise more than that." Intune is currently funded at €49m.
Fritzley didn't expect to be here this long. "In a few more months I qualify for permanent residency!" But he's certain the Californian sunshine deprivation will be worth it.
Read More
IT'S not every fledgling tech company that gets name-checked by Bono. Twice. In a recent Hotpress interview he praises "the wealth of technological geniuses that we have here. People like the Intune Networks -- there's two young PhD students who could change the world, literally". He bigged them up again on Today FM.
The two "geniuses" are John Dunne and Tom Farrell, who started Intune as a campus company in 1999 as young UCD research boffins. They've come a long way.
At a launch party for Intune's game-changing new product line, Verisma, which went commercial last week, high-flying investors and supporters mill around. Bono's brother, Norman Hewson, pops in, Google and Bebo investor, Balderton's Barry Maloney, is there, and goldmining legend Sam Jonah, also an investor, is there.
There's no sign of Dermot Desmond, or anyone from Twitter investor Spark Capital or Acorn Computer pioneer Hermann Hauser's Amadeus Capital, but they're all Intune backers.
To give a context to Verisma's potential: just as early computers filled entire rooms and were shrink-rayed down to tablet size, Verisma compacts down miles of fibreoptic cable and thousands of silicon chips, into something the size of a small fridge. This unprepossessing-looking grey box of switches and cables stands in the launch party room at the Gibson Hotel, as trays of wine and canapés fly by all around.
Take say, the Olympics 2012. There'll be a storm of internet TV watching, YouTubing, tweeting, mobile video and digital image sending: a gigantic data-gobbling power surge over 15 days. Verisma can wing these massive amounts of data to where it needs to go, way faster -- about 80 per cent faster -- than existing broadband. It's all done with different coloured lasers, or Optical Burst technology.
The target customers are the telco giants: O2, Vodafone, BT et al, "The guys," says CEO Tim Fritzley, "who run the biggest networks in the world, that operate in the biggest cities and areas where fibre networks are just bursting at the seams."
After the science comes the selling. This is where seasoned Silicon Valley pro Fritzley comes into his own.
Lured here five years ago by Dunne and Farrell, he's become progressively paler but retains his white-toothed Californian smile and boundless enthusiasm.
Fritzley was sales VP at Microsoft TV. "With Microsoft I travelled the world, and I could see that the networks were going to collapse under all of this video that was coming along in 2003-2005 when social networking and YouTube hit. They are going to have to completely transition -- new architecture, new technology, new software.
"I just felt that John and Tom's was the right technology. What really attracted me to them was that they'd done a phenomenal job on patenting all their intellectual property."
The likes of multi-billion-dollar revenued Cisco are now playing catch-up and Fritzley says Intune is five years ahead of the posse.
He has built up a sales team with "fantastic" contacts. "If you're a start-up, you can't depend on another equipment vendor like an Ericsson or an Alcatel or a Cisco to represent you at early stage -- their goal is to burn you out of cash so that they can buy the technology cheap.
"With your own sales force, you go after their customers, then you get traction and the big guys think 'we better partner with them before somebody else does'. It's a balance of fear and greed." A global distribution agreement has just been inked with one large equipment vendor and another is close to signing.
Would Alcatel-Lucent or Cisco not just save themselves the trouble and buy Intune out? "They will always look at that," says Fritzley, "but we don't want to sell early, we want to create this very valuable company. We would love nothing more than to go all the way through to IPO, so we're in no rush to sell.
Meanwhile, Intune is gearing for profitability. "We're not cashflow positive yet, but we are in revenue. We did about €10m last year, we hope to do €26m this year, in 2012 we're looking to do about €100m and we'll go up to €200m-€300m after that. We are targeting that for 2012 we're cashflow positive."
As well as selling Verisma, Fritzley is drumming up more money. "We're just doing our series C round right now, targeting €30m-plus for this round. I would hope to raise more than that." Intune is currently funded at €49m.
Fritzley didn't expect to be here this long. "In a few more months I qualify for permanent residency!" But he's certain the Californian sunshine deprivation will be worth it.
Read More
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Intune Networks' Verisma optical burst switch/transport platform now available... (LIGHTWAVE)
Irish upstart Intune Networks says its Verisma platform, which combines optical packet switching with packet-optical transport, is now commercially available. The company also revealed its use in a second European networking project – and may have hinted at one Tier 1 carrier who may be evaluating the product for use as well.
As reported previously, Intune Networks’ Verisma platforms feature a highly distributed optical packet switching fabric – so distributed, in fact, that the fabric can perform both switching and transport functions simultaneously (see “Intune Networks readies carrier-class optical packet switching and transport”). The switching fabric comprises an optical ring network connecting multiple input/output nodes. The nodes can be 65 km apart. The nodes use lasers with extremely fast tuning capabilities to transmit packets among each other on various wavelengths. Meanwhile, a Web-based operating system offers simplified management.
The technology has been validated through use in the Irish Government’s Exemplar Network project. Intune now says the Verisma platforms will be part of a second European research project. The FP7 Metro Architectures Enabling Sub-wavelengths (MAINS) project, led by Telefonica I+D, will seek to define and develop new architectures for next-generation metropolitan networks. Intune’s technology will be part of a field trial in Cyprus in Q3-Q4 2011 within the project.
Meanwhile, Intune Networks CTO John Dunne told Lightwave earlier this year that the platforms also were in line for first office applications with a pair of Tier 1 carriers this summer. While the company has not provided further details on these applications, it may have dropped a hint by including a quote from Stu Elby, vice president, network and technology at Verizon, in the press release that trumpeted Verisma’s commercial availability.
“The ‘cloud’ promises to cost-effectively provide infrastructure, applications, and services wherever and whenever they are requested,” Elby says in the press release. “The ability to dynamically move virtual machines and/or data sets among data centers will allow us to address hot spot issues while potentially enabling new services. Current network constraints do not permit this capability to be exploited cost-effectively, so to this end virtualized, dynamic networking will accelerate the adoption and profitability of the cloud.“
Visit Intune Networks
As reported previously, Intune Networks’ Verisma platforms feature a highly distributed optical packet switching fabric – so distributed, in fact, that the fabric can perform both switching and transport functions simultaneously (see “Intune Networks readies carrier-class optical packet switching and transport”). The switching fabric comprises an optical ring network connecting multiple input/output nodes. The nodes can be 65 km apart. The nodes use lasers with extremely fast tuning capabilities to transmit packets among each other on various wavelengths. Meanwhile, a Web-based operating system offers simplified management.
The technology has been validated through use in the Irish Government’s Exemplar Network project. Intune now says the Verisma platforms will be part of a second European research project. The FP7 Metro Architectures Enabling Sub-wavelengths (MAINS) project, led by Telefonica I+D, will seek to define and develop new architectures for next-generation metropolitan networks. Intune’s technology will be part of a field trial in Cyprus in Q3-Q4 2011 within the project.
Meanwhile, Intune Networks CTO John Dunne told Lightwave earlier this year that the platforms also were in line for first office applications with a pair of Tier 1 carriers this summer. While the company has not provided further details on these applications, it may have dropped a hint by including a quote from Stu Elby, vice president, network and technology at Verizon, in the press release that trumpeted Verisma’s commercial availability.
“The ‘cloud’ promises to cost-effectively provide infrastructure, applications, and services wherever and whenever they are requested,” Elby says in the press release. “The ability to dynamically move virtual machines and/or data sets among data centers will allow us to address hot spot issues while potentially enabling new services. Current network constraints do not permit this capability to be exploited cost-effectively, so to this end virtualized, dynamic networking will accelerate the adoption and profitability of the cloud.“
Visit Intune Networks
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Intune Networks annouces the commercial release of the Verisma product line...
Delivering the world's first whole network convergence with IT, Cloud & Web Services Dublin, Ireland, 23rd May 2011Intune Networks announces the commercial availability of its Verisma product line, the world’s first carrier class converged switch and transport solution based on optical burst switching. Built on Intune Networks’ Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) technology, the product line takes on the global challenge presented by the massive increases in on-demand data traffic and delivers new levels of network efficiency, operational simplicity and service delivery agility.
Verisma is the world’s first web-enabled network platform, unlocking the full potential of network operators’ assets and virtualising the network to provide liquid bandwidth. Recognizing that the software architecture used by Web services companies to support millions of customers can be applied to the network, Intune Networks has incorporated a new operating system into the Verisma products based on the latest web services technologies. This operating system delivers an application programming interface that will allow operators to take full advantage of the flexibility of their networks to deliver an array of on-demand network-based services and prepare their networks for the applications and services of the future.
Tim Fritzley, Intune Networks CEO said “Before today’s commercial launch we have focused on validating the technical capabilities of our technology and performing early trials with large operators. We are now moving into a new phase of commercialisation as we prepare for multiple global first office applications in the second half of this year. So far the feedback from the market has confirmed our assertions and we have deep and broad engagement with the major players in the industry.”
The commercial release of the product is the culmination of a journey started over a decade ago by John Dunne and Tom Farrell, who founded Intune Networks in Dublin in 1999. Intune Networks’ technology has already under-gone extensive operator validation, including deployment in the Irish Government’s Exemplar Network and as part of the MAINS project, led by Telefonica I+D, the research & development branch of Telefonica. The MAINS program is an European research project composed by universities, companies and research centres which aims to define and develop new architectural solutions for next generation metropolitan networks able to absorb new traffic demands generated fixed and mobile broadband access technologies.
The Exemplar Test-bed Program is a communications services test-bed provided by the Irish government’s Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (DCENR) as a magnet to attract and expand leading edge research and development in Ireland for next generation Web and ICT services. Intune Networks’ Verisma product family was selected as the foundation for the Exemplar lab Test-bed and allows the test bed to provide the flexible network architecture and simplified software operations and control interfaces required by the next generation of carrier services.
In the FP7 MAINS project, which is planning an OPST field trial in Cyprus in Q3-Q4 2011, the underlying driver is to develop a response to the fact that the current network architectures were never designed to cope with the new demands driven by emerging broadband Internet services like over-the-top video delivery, social networking and cloud computing. MAINS project leader, Juan Pedro Fernandez-Palacios Gimenez from Telefόnica I+D Ultrabroadband Networks area, commented “The proposed MAINS (Metro Architectures Enabling Sub-wavelengths) architecture targets a new architectural solution that will be able to face the huge expected traffic increase in a more cost-effective way. This architecture will be needed in order to assure a low cost broadband Internet access in Europe”.
With its commercial launch, the Verisma product line will begin to be deployed in the field to support a number of applications, such as cloud computing, mobile backhaul and metro optical aggregation. With its ability to provide mesh networking, dynamic bandwidth allocation and software-defined networking, the solution has been attracting attention for data centre interconnect and network-as-a-service applications.
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Exemplar Network to go live in four weeks...
The Irish Government-backed Exemplar Network – a smart communications network that will serve as a magnet for foreign direct investment and help to incubate indigenous job creation – will go live for test and trial in four weeks, Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte, TD, explained. Rabbitte was speaking at the TM Forum Management World conference, an influential global telecoms industry conference that is being held in Dublin this week.
“The Exemplar Network will give Ireland a true competitive advantage in the key area of information and communications technology. It will raise the reputation of Ireland as a leader in technological innovation, act as a magnet for foreign direct investment and serve as an incubator for indigenous job creation.
“We will now bring together ICT companies who wish to be involved in and are willing to invest in the development of a Test and Trial Network.”
The minister has asked the ESB, through its telecoms subsidiary, to assist in the establishment of the forum and to support the implementation of the Trial Network.
The purpose of the Test and Trial Network
The purpose of the Test and Trial Network will be to install the Exemplar technology on fibre in a live environment, so companies can test new products and services with real customers and users.
The Exemplar Network, in which the State invested €10m with Intune Networks, has already created 140 jobs and by the third phase thousands of jobs, from digital media to high-end computing, green tech and life sciences, could be created as organisations will be attracted by the speed and capability of the network.
The Test and Trial Network is phase II of the Government’s Exemplar project. It follows the establishment of a test-bed site, in phase I of this project, where companies could test products in a laboratory type environment.
The first phase of the Exemplar programme, the Exemplar Test-bed, which is 100pc owned by the State, was opened in July 2010 and provides a laboratory environment, open to companies and researchers, to develop, test and demonstrate products and services of the future. Current industry partners using the Exemplar Test-bed include BT, Ericsson, Openet, Amartus, HEAnet, Cybercom, Imagine, ESB Telecom, Sensecom and Digiweb.
The Exemplar Smart Communications programme is based on an advanced optical communications technology. It exploits the innovative and disruptive optical packet switching and transport (OPST) technology developed by Irish company Intune Networks. This technology has the capacity to revolutionise the transmission of data across fibre networks by allowing data to be transferred more efficiently across these networks. The technology, if successful, will put Ireland firmly on the technology map worldwide, in terms of next-generation communications networks.
The ESB is a commercial semi-state energy company which operates under the aegis of the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. Through its subsidiary company, ESB Telecoms Ltd, ESB has optimised the use of electricity assets to establish itself as a vital participant in the wholesale telecoms market in Ireland.
Companies interested in investing in the Exemplar Test and Trial Network should contact the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources at exemplarnetwork@dcenr.ie.
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Friday, May 20, 2011
BT to test ‘liquid bandwidth’ cloud developed by Irish firms
Telecoms giant BT will be the first telecoms firm to test the Exemplar Dynamic Desktop, a cloud solution to enable firms to deliver bandwidth on demand, developed by Intune Networks, Openet and Amartus.
The project will be showcased during TM Forum Management World, a global telecoms exhibition, taking place in Dublin next week (23-26 May 2011). The TM forum serves a specialised niche in the telecoms world, the systems end of telecoms, or as one industry person says: “where the network meets the dollars.”
The Liquid Bandwidth solution created as part of the Catalyst Project by Intune Networks, Openet and Amartus (a company created by ex-Ericsson and Marconi workers in Ireland) allows operators to increase a customer’s bandwidth remotely from a desktop.
The Catalyst project is based on Intune Networks' Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) technology, Amartus Service Commander and Openet’s Policy Charging and Control (PCC). The project is a pre-cursor to developing the toolset needed to create a distributed data centre based upon cloud services.
The battle for bandwidth
Bandwidth demands on carriers’ networks are growing exponentially while revenues and profits are decoupled from the cost of delivering the network. Carriers are able to respond to this challenge through service innovation and new revenue generating products.
The demonstration next week will show how carriers can offer innovation and network monetisation via a programmable network API linked to the TM Forum MTOSI Services standards.
“Liquid bandwidth services will empower customers to purchase bandwidth when needed in a cost-effective and timely manner that closely tracks their real hour-by-hour and day-by-day bandwidth requirements with the comfort that the network can 'flex' to meet any unanticipated demands,” said Peter Willis, chief data network strategist from BT Innovate & Design.
“It allows network operators to monetise these services and optimises revenues from its network investments. This Exemplar Catalyst illustrates technology that can achieve these aims, allowing more creative commercial relationships with customers that better meets the vicissitudes of emerging traffic patterns and customer expectations.”
Intune Networks co-founder John Dunne said that BT, which is one of Europe’s largest telecoms carriers, will be looking at the technology in terms of how it will help operators generate more revenue and how the technology can scale within networks.
“If a user isn’t happy with their quality of service for video, for example, operators can use the interface to increase the quality of that video. They can also take a calendar-based approach to deploying bandwidth quality based on certain times of the day."
The coming together of three Irish technology companies to create a product that will be showcased in front of some of the world’s most senior telecoms executives has been praised by Enterprise Ireland’s head of research and innovation, Fearghal Ó Móráin.
“Openet, InTune and Amartus are three of Ireland’s most dynamic and innovative companies. It is an exciting development to see such leading technology firms collaborating on this ground-breaking technology.
“Showcasing this cutting-edge technology at the international TM forum is important for the companies themselves but it will also highlight Ireland’s significant technological capabilities on a global stage.”
Read More
Monday, May 16, 2011
Intune shortlisted amoung Entrepreneur of the Year finalists... Irish Times
TWENTY FOUR leading business people in Ireland have been shortlisted for this year’s Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.
The nominees have been chosen across three categories – Emerging, industry and international.
Nominees include Ray Coyle of Largo Food Exports, which makes Tayto crisps in the Republic; Galway developer Miceal Sammon of Sammon Contracting Group; Conor McCarthy, founder of two-year-old aircraft maintenance group Dublin Aerospace; and Domini and Peaches Kemp of Itsabagel.
They were chosen from a record 140 nominations by an 11-strong panel of judges chaired by Pádraig Ó Ceidigh, chairman of Aer Arann and winner of the award in 2002.
The 24 businesses have a combined turnover of about €600 million and employ 11,000 people.
The entrepreneurs will be offered the opportunity to participate in the awards’ annual CEO Retreat, which this year involves a week-long trip to India in June.
The Entrepreneur of the Year award was won in 2010 by Brian Conlon, chief executive of First Derivatives. He will represent Ireland at the World Entrepreneur of the Year awards in Monte Carlo in early June.
Profiles of the finalists will appear in The Irish Times over the next six weeks.
The winner will be announced at a televised awards ceremony in October.
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year: The Finalists
Emerging:
Annadale Technologies – Denis McCarthy
Blue Insurances Ltd/ Multitrip.com – Ciaran Mulligan Rowan Devereux
Bubblebum UK Ltd – Grainne Kelly
Joule – Ronan Ginnell Ian Barrett
Crospon – John ODea
Crowley Carbon Ltd – Norman Crowley
The Now Factory – Tom Morrisroe
Dublin Aerospace – Conor McCarthy
Industry:
Homecare Independent Living – Mairead Mackle
PFH Technology Group Limited – Paul Hourican
Itsabagel Ltd – Domini Peaches Kemp
Largo Food Exports – Raymond Coyle
Noonan – John ODonoghue
Argento – Peter Boyle
Centre For English Studies – Justin Quinn
Version 1 – Justin Keatinge
International:
Openet – Joe Hogan Niall Norton
Telestack Limited – Adrian McCutcheon
Texthelp Systems Limited – Mark McCusker
MJM Group – Brian McConville
Munster Simms Eng Ltd (Whale Water Systems) – Patrick Hurst
XSP – Brendan Farrell
Intune Networks Ltd – John Dunne
Sammon Contracting Group Ltd – Miceal Sammon
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The nominees have been chosen across three categories – Emerging, industry and international.
Nominees include Ray Coyle of Largo Food Exports, which makes Tayto crisps in the Republic; Galway developer Miceal Sammon of Sammon Contracting Group; Conor McCarthy, founder of two-year-old aircraft maintenance group Dublin Aerospace; and Domini and Peaches Kemp of Itsabagel.
They were chosen from a record 140 nominations by an 11-strong panel of judges chaired by Pádraig Ó Ceidigh, chairman of Aer Arann and winner of the award in 2002.
The 24 businesses have a combined turnover of about €600 million and employ 11,000 people.
The entrepreneurs will be offered the opportunity to participate in the awards’ annual CEO Retreat, which this year involves a week-long trip to India in June.
The Entrepreneur of the Year award was won in 2010 by Brian Conlon, chief executive of First Derivatives. He will represent Ireland at the World Entrepreneur of the Year awards in Monte Carlo in early June.
Profiles of the finalists will appear in The Irish Times over the next six weeks.
The winner will be announced at a televised awards ceremony in October.
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year: The Finalists
Emerging:
Annadale Technologies – Denis McCarthy
Blue Insurances Ltd/ Multitrip.com – Ciaran Mulligan Rowan Devereux
Bubblebum UK Ltd – Grainne Kelly
Joule – Ronan Ginnell Ian Barrett
Crospon – John ODea
Crowley Carbon Ltd – Norman Crowley
The Now Factory – Tom Morrisroe
Dublin Aerospace – Conor McCarthy
Industry:
Homecare Independent Living – Mairead Mackle
PFH Technology Group Limited – Paul Hourican
Itsabagel Ltd – Domini Peaches Kemp
Largo Food Exports – Raymond Coyle
Noonan – John ODonoghue
Argento – Peter Boyle
Centre For English Studies – Justin Quinn
Version 1 – Justin Keatinge
International:
Openet – Joe Hogan Niall Norton
Telestack Limited – Adrian McCutcheon
Texthelp Systems Limited – Mark McCusker
MJM Group – Brian McConville
Munster Simms Eng Ltd (Whale Water Systems) – Patrick Hurst
XSP – Brendan Farrell
Intune Networks Ltd – John Dunne
Sammon Contracting Group Ltd – Miceal Sammon
Read More
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Intune Networks receives European funding in £1.7M - Radio-Electronics.com
Belfast based optical transport technology provider, Intune Networks has secured funding in a £1.7million multinational initiative aiming to deliver ultra-high-speed internet access to meet the growing needs of homes and businesses across Europe.
Intune Networks’ Active Distributed and Dynamic Optical Network Access Systems (ADDONAS) will aim to develop photonic technology and systems that would enable widespread broadband access of at least 1 Gbit/s by 2015-20. Intune Networks will receive £520,000 funding as part of the wider programme.
The PIANO+ initiative, spearheaded by the European Commission (EC) and co-funded by the UK government-backed Technology Strategy Board, called for collaborative research and development proposals under the EC’s ERA-NET Plus scheme[i]. PIANO+ aims to promote investment in the development of next-generation optical access technologies that will significantly reduce the operational and capital costs of super-fast broadband by removing local exchanges.
Using the funding from PIANO+, Intune Networks has developed a low-cost, lower energy technology that will enable ultra-fast broadband speeds in the future while still meeting the short-term needs of the system operators and users. ADDONAS architecture was selected because it aims to bring faster broadband connections while reducing the total energy bill for operators and users by over 50%.
A similar programme was initiated by Google in 2010. Google has started building and testing ultra-fast broadband access networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States including Kansas City, aiming to offer communities up to 100 times faster broadband than most Americans currently have[ii].
“It is apparent with the roll out of Google’s Kansas City initiative that ultra-fast broadband is becoming increasingly important as demands for bandwidth multiply”. “The ADDONAS architecture will change today’s concept of access networks relying on passive transport elements into distributed networks using elements in the delivery services,” commented John Dunne, CTO, Intune Networks. “ADDONAS will achieve this by using a three stage distributed ‘Layer 2’ switch to compress the metro and access networks.” The ADDONAS architecture aims to make the network programmable and allow it to be engineered to deliver quality of service, QoS, guarantees for end to end users. As well as be scalable up to 64TBit/s of total capacity to enable economical end to end support for symmetrical 1Gbit/s access to end users, it aims to provide full transmission for both point to point and switched services.
“A wave of applications is driving the need for the internet to deliver guaranteed quality of service which it is unable to do at the moment,” said Greg May, Technology Strategy Board. “This joint transnational approach towards supporting developments in fibre access technology is harnessing the collaborative expertise of Europe’s most innovative companies to facilitate a common technology platform. We want to see photonic technology and systems for a scalable, future-proofed and energy-efficient access network.”
Read More
Intune Networks’ Active Distributed and Dynamic Optical Network Access Systems (ADDONAS) will aim to develop photonic technology and systems that would enable widespread broadband access of at least 1 Gbit/s by 2015-20. Intune Networks will receive £520,000 funding as part of the wider programme.
The PIANO+ initiative, spearheaded by the European Commission (EC) and co-funded by the UK government-backed Technology Strategy Board, called for collaborative research and development proposals under the EC’s ERA-NET Plus scheme[i]. PIANO+ aims to promote investment in the development of next-generation optical access technologies that will significantly reduce the operational and capital costs of super-fast broadband by removing local exchanges.
Using the funding from PIANO+, Intune Networks has developed a low-cost, lower energy technology that will enable ultra-fast broadband speeds in the future while still meeting the short-term needs of the system operators and users. ADDONAS architecture was selected because it aims to bring faster broadband connections while reducing the total energy bill for operators and users by over 50%.
A similar programme was initiated by Google in 2010. Google has started building and testing ultra-fast broadband access networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States including Kansas City, aiming to offer communities up to 100 times faster broadband than most Americans currently have[ii].
“It is apparent with the roll out of Google’s Kansas City initiative that ultra-fast broadband is becoming increasingly important as demands for bandwidth multiply”. “The ADDONAS architecture will change today’s concept of access networks relying on passive transport elements into distributed networks using elements in the delivery services,” commented John Dunne, CTO, Intune Networks. “ADDONAS will achieve this by using a three stage distributed ‘Layer 2’ switch to compress the metro and access networks.” The ADDONAS architecture aims to make the network programmable and allow it to be engineered to deliver quality of service, QoS, guarantees for end to end users. As well as be scalable up to 64TBit/s of total capacity to enable economical end to end support for symmetrical 1Gbit/s access to end users, it aims to provide full transmission for both point to point and switched services.
“A wave of applications is driving the need for the internet to deliver guaranteed quality of service which it is unable to do at the moment,” said Greg May, Technology Strategy Board. “This joint transnational approach towards supporting developments in fibre access technology is harnessing the collaborative expertise of Europe’s most innovative companies to facilitate a common technology platform. We want to see photonic technology and systems for a scalable, future-proofed and energy-efficient access network.”
Read More
Monday, May 9, 2011
Intune raises €2.5m in additional funding - Sunday Business Post
Telecoms equipment developer Intune Networks has raised another €2.5 million in equity funding. New filings for the firm indicate that it received a €2 million cash injection last month from Dartbridge, a British Virgin Islands registered company. It also received €500,000 from Enterprise Ireland, writes Dick O’Brien.
Intune last year raised €2 million from Erine, another Virgin Islands registered firm.
The company declined to comment on who was behind these companies or whether the two had a common ownership. Intune has raised a significant amount of capital from investors in recent years. In 2009, it raised €22 million from financier Dermot Desmond, Kernel Capital in Cork and its existing investors.
This followed a 2007 funding round which saw it receive €13 million from Amadeus Capital Partners, Balderton Capital and Spark Capital.
Early stage backers of the firm included ICC Venture Capital, latterly Bank of Scotland (Ireland), Enterprise Ireland and technology investors Leonard Donnelly and Bernie Dillon.
Intune develops technologies to improve the performance of fibre-optic networks and is currently bringing a family of telecom switch products to market.
The firm now employs over 120 people and has offices in Dublin and Belfast, with sales offices in Britain and the United States.
The company was founded in Dublin in 1999 by John Dunne and Tom Farrell and it is currently led by Tim Fritzley, who was formerly head of Microsoft TV in the US.
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Intune last year raised €2 million from Erine, another Virgin Islands registered firm.
The company declined to comment on who was behind these companies or whether the two had a common ownership. Intune has raised a significant amount of capital from investors in recent years. In 2009, it raised €22 million from financier Dermot Desmond, Kernel Capital in Cork and its existing investors.
This followed a 2007 funding round which saw it receive €13 million from Amadeus Capital Partners, Balderton Capital and Spark Capital.
Early stage backers of the firm included ICC Venture Capital, latterly Bank of Scotland (Ireland), Enterprise Ireland and technology investors Leonard Donnelly and Bernie Dillon.
Intune develops technologies to improve the performance of fibre-optic networks and is currently bringing a family of telecom switch products to market.
The firm now employs over 120 people and has offices in Dublin and Belfast, with sales offices in Britain and the United States.
The company was founded in Dublin in 1999 by John Dunne and Tom Farrell and it is currently led by Tim Fritzley, who was formerly head of Microsoft TV in the US.
Read More
Friday, April 1, 2011
Intune Networks readies carrier-class optical packet switching and transport... - LIGHTWAVE
Ireland’s Intune Networks is readying a carrier-class version of its Verisma optical packet switched transport platform for first office applications with a pair of Tier 1 customers this summer. As its name implies the platform – which will be marketed as the iVX8000 CR2.x – combines all-optical packet switching and transport by replacing the silicon-based switch fabric of typical switches with an optical ring that could extend as far as 300 km in circumference. Intune Networks has aimed the Verisma line initially at router bypass and router interconnection applications, which would put it squarely in competition with such platforms as Juniper Networks’ recently announced PTX Series Packet Transport Switch.
How it works
As described to Lightwave by John Dunne, Intune Networks’ CTO, the Verisma technology starts with the same elements as a typical data switch. As illustrated below, that includes input/output (I/O) networking elements, switch control elements, and a switch fabric that distributes packets from one I/O to another.
Intune Networks essentially makes each I/O element optical and gives each of these elements their own switch control features. This makes elements independent and potentially distributed entities. The elements are linked together by a fiber ring that acts as the optical switch fabric, as illustrated here:
Each I/O element can be 65 km apart, Dunne says. So as the fabric is switching packets from one element to another, it’s also transporting the packets from one location to another.
The switch function combines rapidly tunable laser transmitters with DWDM technology. Each I/O element receives packets on a known wavelength (or, if you’re operating at greater than 10 Gbps, wavelengths). If packets need to go from I/O #1 to I/O #4, I/O #1 transmits its packets on wavelength(s) assigned to I/O #4. It then can switch at nanosecond speeds to the wavelength(s) assigned to other elements as traffic warrants. Meanwhile, each element’s switch control feature monitors traffic on the ring to avoid packet collisions:
The result is completely protocol-agnostic optical packet switching, according to Dunne. Each ring could support 80 ports and 10 to 16 chassis, depending upon configuration, Dunne says. Capacity could be expanded by linking multiple rings, he adds. A second ring connecting each I/O element provides resiliency.
In addition to the novel packet switching concept, Intune Networks has adopted a provisioning approach based on the representational state transfer scheme commonly found in Web applications. This simplifies access to switching capacity and enables carriers to easily design new service applications and provide wholesale customers with the ability to provision their own capacity, Dunne says.
Next steps
Intune Networks supplied its first Verisma systems to the Irish Government, which has received 24 of the platforms for its Exemplar Smart Communications Network. Dunne says that Intune Networks has added support for Provider Bridge E-Line services for the iVX8000 CR2.x that its first carrier customers will receive. Future versions of the iVX8000 CR2.x will support Provider Edge E-LAN and E-Tree as well as MPLS-TP, he says.
Dunne declined to identify his company’s first carrier customers, other than to say that one is in the United States and the other is in Europe.
Read More
How it works
As described to Lightwave by John Dunne, Intune Networks’ CTO, the Verisma technology starts with the same elements as a typical data switch. As illustrated below, that includes input/output (I/O) networking elements, switch control elements, and a switch fabric that distributes packets from one I/O to another.
Intune Networks essentially makes each I/O element optical and gives each of these elements their own switch control features. This makes elements independent and potentially distributed entities. The elements are linked together by a fiber ring that acts as the optical switch fabric, as illustrated here:
Each I/O element can be 65 km apart, Dunne says. So as the fabric is switching packets from one element to another, it’s also transporting the packets from one location to another.
The switch function combines rapidly tunable laser transmitters with DWDM technology. Each I/O element receives packets on a known wavelength (or, if you’re operating at greater than 10 Gbps, wavelengths). If packets need to go from I/O #1 to I/O #4, I/O #1 transmits its packets on wavelength(s) assigned to I/O #4. It then can switch at nanosecond speeds to the wavelength(s) assigned to other elements as traffic warrants. Meanwhile, each element’s switch control feature monitors traffic on the ring to avoid packet collisions:
The result is completely protocol-agnostic optical packet switching, according to Dunne. Each ring could support 80 ports and 10 to 16 chassis, depending upon configuration, Dunne says. Capacity could be expanded by linking multiple rings, he adds. A second ring connecting each I/O element provides resiliency.
In addition to the novel packet switching concept, Intune Networks has adopted a provisioning approach based on the representational state transfer scheme commonly found in Web applications. This simplifies access to switching capacity and enables carriers to easily design new service applications and provide wholesale customers with the ability to provision their own capacity, Dunne says.
Next steps
Intune Networks supplied its first Verisma systems to the Irish Government, which has received 24 of the platforms for its Exemplar Smart Communications Network. Dunne says that Intune Networks has added support for Provider Bridge E-Line services for the iVX8000 CR2.x that its first carrier customers will receive. Future versions of the iVX8000 CR2.x will support Provider Edge E-LAN and E-Tree as well as MPLS-TP, he says.
Dunne declined to identify his company’s first carrier customers, other than to say that one is in the United States and the other is in Europe.
Read More
Friday, March 25, 2011
The revolution will be televised - The Irish Times
The Intune Networks team, Tom Farrell, John Dunne, Tommy Mullane and Jim Shields, celebrate their win.INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR : From transmitting a Snow Patrol gig live to creating the next-generation communications infrastructure Exemplar, Intune is pushing the boundaries of bandwidth
THE AMOUNT OF data on the internet is huge and is doubling every 11 months. This is causing severe bottlenecks, particularly in areas where major events such as the Olympics or the World Cup are being held. Irish company Intune Networks has come up with an answer to this issue: it has developed advanced optical networking products that give carriers and internet service providers the capacity to meet growing demands for bandwidth.
Founders John Dunne and Tom Farrell say their offering is commercial and scalable. It allows network operators to dynamically deliver bandwidth to where it is needed, whenever it is needed. So, if there is a sudden surge in demand in east London during the Olympics, the network capacity can be ramped up instantly to deal with it.
Current network infrastructure is largely based on the traditional voice telephony carrier network and is not designed to cope with a massive increase in unpredictable traffic demand. Its architecture is static, circuit-based, hub-and-spoke and deployed on a “best guess” basis. Scalability is limited and capacity is pre-configured and stranded, so the network struggles to cope with sudden and transient traffic demands.
Operators can build in overcapacity to cater for such eventualities – but this compromises profitability and is unsustainable in the longer term.
Most solutions perpetuate the existing architectures, which cannot meet the requirements of dynamic networks. They address the symptoms rather than the causes of the problem.
Intune Networks’ solution is the world’s first “whole network virtualisation” platform. This programmable network can be reshaped at any time under the direction of the network operator, or its customers. The result is a self-service provisioning model that supports multiple business and service models.
Intune’s solution allows network operators to deploy new services in real time with carrier-class reliability and guaranteed quality of experience.
The technology also has environmental benefits. Telecomms companies consume a significant amount of energy, but Intune’s technology can reduce the figure by 50 to 70 per cent.
The Government has recognised Intune’s capability in this area and has chosen the company to build Ireland’s Exemplar Network, a fibre-optic communications network using patented technology that allows for the high-speed and high-quality transfer of electronic data. More than 30 companies and institutions have signed up to use the Exemplar testbed, including BT, Imagine, EMC, UCC Tyndall, NUI Galway, UCD and DCU. The Government has invested €10 million in funding the building of the Exemplar Network using Intune’s technology.
The company has 130 employees at its headquarters in Dublin and its research and development centre in Belfast, which is developing key subsystems for this new product line. The technology has been validated by top communications carriers and is undergoing field trials for cloud computing as part of a European project led by Telefonica. Intune gave the first demonstration of its technology at the Other Voices Festival in 2009 when it built a fibre optic ring around Dingle to transmit a Snow Patrol performance live. Last year, it expanded the transmission to a number of venues for the event.
It is also attracting significant levels of investment and it raised €29 million in venture capital last year.
In the next five years, Intune aims to establish its business in Europe, North America, India and Africa, and to have created thousands of jobs in the process.
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Sunday, March 13, 2011
John Dunne, CTO of Intune Networks, interviewed at MWC 2011...
At Mobile World Congress 2011, Martyn Warwick speaks with John Dunne, CTO of Intune Networks about how the architecture of networks has had to change in order to cope with the current "data tsunami."
Source
Source
Friday, March 4, 2011
Intune Networks Innovational Win...
The Irish Times and InterTradeIreland presented Intune Networks with the ‘Innovation of the Year' award in Dublin yesterday evening. Intune Networks has triumphed over 120 companies such as Celtic Catalysts, Dublin; Kingspawn Renewable Ltd., Armagh and Vennetics of Dublin, to secure themselves as the overall winner of the six category competition. They will receive a communications and advertising package from the Irish Times worth €200,000.Intune Networks aims to revolutionise the telecoms industry by changing the opportunities for service providers. They are setting out to alter network architectures to cope with traffic demand for internet service providers. Intune Networks has developed a technology named Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) that is hoped to alleviate bottlenecks across systems. The company has ambitious expansion plans and has received over €49 million in funding from investors to date.
Commenting on the awards, Liam Nellis, Chief Executive of InterTradeIreland and Chair of the Innovation awards final judging panel said: "These awards are designed to recognise the best innovations in businesses across the island of Ireland. Intune Networks is an excellent example of company that is at the pinnacle of innovation. For 30 years, laboratories have attempted to achieve what has been achieved by Intune Networks over the last 4 years. Intune Networks is an indigenous company that has developed a product with the potential to revolutionise the telecoms industry on a global scale."
Receiving the award, Intune CTO John Dunne commented: "We are delighted and amazed to be selected as the overall winner, as this is such a high-profile awards programme. It is a fantastic honour for all at Intune and a great recognition for our team of engineers in particular who have worked for over 4 years on a networking innovation that we believe will open up the network for application developers."
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Thursday, March 3, 2011
IT company wins Innovation of the Year award - Belfast Telegraph
A HIGH-tech Belfast company has won an award for innovation at an all-Ireland ceremony.
Intune Networks, which employs 45 people at its office in Belfast, is the overall 'Innovation of the Year' winner at the second annual Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation awards.
The company will receive a communications and advertising package from the Irish Times worth €200,000 (£170,000).
Headquartered in Dublin with offices in Weaver's Court in Belfast, the firm was established in 1999 by Tom Farrell and John Dunne, both graduates of UCD, and employs 120 people, including 45 in Belfast. It also has offices in the US and mainland UK.
The company has ambitious expansion plans and has received over €49m (£38m) from investors to date.
Intune Networks is developing networks to cope with unpredictable traffic demand for internet service providers, while controlling costs.
The advent of online video content and cloud computing has put a strain on networks that has resulted in greater demand and Intune Networks' breakthrough technology Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) will help alleviate bottlenecks across systems.
Liam Nellis, chief executive of InterTradeIreland and chair of the Innovation Awards final judging panel hailed the firm, saying: "For 30 years, laboratories have attempted to achieve what has been achieved by Intune Networks over the last four years."
Intune Networks chief technical officer John Dunne said he was delighted to see the company lift the award.
"It is a fantastic honour for all at Intune and a great recognition for our team of engineers in particular, who have worked for over four years on a networking innovation that we believe will open up the network for application developers," he said.
Portadown-based Kingspan Renewables was named as the winner of the GreenTech category at the awards.
Read More
Intune Networks, which employs 45 people at its office in Belfast, is the overall 'Innovation of the Year' winner at the second annual Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation awards.
The company will receive a communications and advertising package from the Irish Times worth €200,000 (£170,000).
Headquartered in Dublin with offices in Weaver's Court in Belfast, the firm was established in 1999 by Tom Farrell and John Dunne, both graduates of UCD, and employs 120 people, including 45 in Belfast. It also has offices in the US and mainland UK.
The company has ambitious expansion plans and has received over €49m (£38m) from investors to date.
Intune Networks is developing networks to cope with unpredictable traffic demand for internet service providers, while controlling costs.
The advent of online video content and cloud computing has put a strain on networks that has resulted in greater demand and Intune Networks' breakthrough technology Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) will help alleviate bottlenecks across systems.
Liam Nellis, chief executive of InterTradeIreland and chair of the Innovation Awards final judging panel hailed the firm, saying: "For 30 years, laboratories have attempted to achieve what has been achieved by Intune Networks over the last four years."
Intune Networks chief technical officer John Dunne said he was delighted to see the company lift the award.
"It is a fantastic honour for all at Intune and a great recognition for our team of engineers in particular, who have worked for over four years on a networking innovation that we believe will open up the network for application developers," he said.
Portadown-based Kingspan Renewables was named as the winner of the GreenTech category at the awards.
Read More
Intune Networks wins innovation award for optical packet switch design - The Times
Intune Networks wins innovation award for optical packet switch design Winners of the overall Innovation of the Year Award, Intune Networks at the InterTradeIreland Irish Times Innovation Awards last night. Prof Tom Begley, UCD, presenter of award; John Dunne, Tom Farrell, Jim Shields and Tommy Mullane.Winners of the overall Innovation of the Year Award, Intune Networks at the InterTradeIreland Irish Times Innovation Awards last night. Prof Tom Begley, UCD, presenter of award; John Dunne, Tom Farrell, Jim Shields and Tommy Mullane.Photograph: Brenda FitzsimonsTECHNOLOGY FIRM Intune Networks scooped the top award at The Irish Times/InterTradeIreland Innovation Awards last night.
Intune, which has its headquarters in Dublin, won the overall Innovation of the Year award at a ceremony in the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham, Dublin.
The firm, which was established in 1999 by Tom Farrell and John Dunne and now employs 120 people, will receive a communications and advertising package worth €200,000 from The Irish Times .
“We sometimes get caught up in the finer points of policies and strategies at a national level without appreciating the people who are putting all the fine words into practice,” Liam Kavanagh, Irish Times managing director said. “That’s what this event tonight – and indeed our monthly Innovation magazine – is all about.”
Liam Nellis, InterTradeIreland chief executive and chairman of the final judging panel, described Intune Networks as an excellent example of a company that was at the pinnacle of innovation.
Intune chief technology officer John Dunne said it was a “fantastic honour” and a “a great recognition for our team of engineers in particular”.
Intune has developed breakthrough technology known as optical packet switch and transport which is designed to alleviate bottlenecks across networks. To date, the company has received more than €49 million in funding from investors.
Kingspan Renewables won the Green-Tech category award, while Celtic Catalysts came out on top in the Application of RD section.
Other category winners included Vennetics, Fitzgerald Nurseries, AMNCH (Tallaght Hospital) and Ammado.
More than 120 companies entered the competition. Twenty of these were shortlisted, before the final winners were selected.
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Saturday, February 26, 2011
The ones to back in the race to the future...
Leading economies globally are anxiously staking out territory in the next-generation internet. However, with many research centres already operating in this area, Ireland has a head start
THE INFORMATION super highway is getting congested. It is also growing more powerful, with new applications and functionality becoming available almost every day. These developments have led to moves to define the next-generation internet, increasingly referred to as the “future internet”.
The scope and functionality of this future internet will be much broader than that of the internet we know today. Its core infrastructure will incorporate sensor networks, as well as wireless and fixed communications networks. Access and management of data, plus issues of privacy and accountability, are central to its development. However, its most important feature will be its focus on service, which will mean an emphasis on applications supporting all aspects of society, from health to education to commerce.
These developments will undoubtedly create opportunities in science, engineering and related fields. Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) recently hosted a high-level workshop to explore how Ireland can take advantage of such opportunities and establish itself as a leading force in the field.
The workshop brought together experts from industry and large research centres engaged in next-generation web technologies and applications. It offered an opportunity to map out a strategic plan for engagement at national and international level in a sector that affects virtually every aspect of life in today’s world.
Other countries have been quick to stake out territory.
“A move is now on by advanced economies to define and deliver next-generation internet, recognising its influential role as a driver of economic growth,” says Professor Fionn Murtagh, director of SFI’s Information, Communications and Emergent Technologies Directorate. “The US, South Korea, Japan, Australia, South Africa and Europe have already established major future internet initiatives.”
In Europe, 27 countries have established national initiatives to roll out future internet testbeds and trial services with a view to becoming early adopters in this field. “To take just one example, Spain invested over €300 million in future internet initiatives in the past year,” says Prof Murtagh.
“Ireland is now focused on formulating a comprehensive research and innovation road map that identifies our capacity to excel in this space, and the means by which we will attain such excellence.”
“The internet is becoming stressed with all the traffic and data it’s carrying,” adds Dr Sandra Collins, scientific programme manager with SFI. “There is already more data out there than you could read in a lifetime and it is doubling every 11 months.
“The future of the internet is partly about trying to understand what’s on it, as well as making the information more accessible. It’s also about making sure the infrastructure can carry all the data and services, as well as about the development of new applications and functions which take advantage of the increased power of that infrastructure.”
According to Dr Collins, Ireland has a disproportionate number of research centres operating in this area. This gives us a head start which can be exploited.
“SFI has invested more than €200 million to date in research that will build the future internet. SFI is funding five different Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSets) in this area. We also have a large number of companies – such as IBM, Bell Labs and Ericsson – which collaborate in research and take the products of that research. Alongside that, we have many Irish SMEs – like Intune Networks, which develops network architecture to cope with the massive increase in unpredictable traffic demand.”
Read More
THE INFORMATION super highway is getting congested. It is also growing more powerful, with new applications and functionality becoming available almost every day. These developments have led to moves to define the next-generation internet, increasingly referred to as the “future internet”.
The scope and functionality of this future internet will be much broader than that of the internet we know today. Its core infrastructure will incorporate sensor networks, as well as wireless and fixed communications networks. Access and management of data, plus issues of privacy and accountability, are central to its development. However, its most important feature will be its focus on service, which will mean an emphasis on applications supporting all aspects of society, from health to education to commerce.
These developments will undoubtedly create opportunities in science, engineering and related fields. Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) recently hosted a high-level workshop to explore how Ireland can take advantage of such opportunities and establish itself as a leading force in the field.
The workshop brought together experts from industry and large research centres engaged in next-generation web technologies and applications. It offered an opportunity to map out a strategic plan for engagement at national and international level in a sector that affects virtually every aspect of life in today’s world.
Other countries have been quick to stake out territory.
“A move is now on by advanced economies to define and deliver next-generation internet, recognising its influential role as a driver of economic growth,” says Professor Fionn Murtagh, director of SFI’s Information, Communications and Emergent Technologies Directorate. “The US, South Korea, Japan, Australia, South Africa and Europe have already established major future internet initiatives.”
In Europe, 27 countries have established national initiatives to roll out future internet testbeds and trial services with a view to becoming early adopters in this field. “To take just one example, Spain invested over €300 million in future internet initiatives in the past year,” says Prof Murtagh.
“Ireland is now focused on formulating a comprehensive research and innovation road map that identifies our capacity to excel in this space, and the means by which we will attain such excellence.”
“The internet is becoming stressed with all the traffic and data it’s carrying,” adds Dr Sandra Collins, scientific programme manager with SFI. “There is already more data out there than you could read in a lifetime and it is doubling every 11 months.
“The future of the internet is partly about trying to understand what’s on it, as well as making the information more accessible. It’s also about making sure the infrastructure can carry all the data and services, as well as about the development of new applications and functions which take advantage of the increased power of that infrastructure.”
According to Dr Collins, Ireland has a disproportionate number of research centres operating in this area. This gives us a head start which can be exploited.
“SFI has invested more than €200 million to date in research that will build the future internet. SFI is funding five different Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSets) in this area. We also have a large number of companies – such as IBM, Bell Labs and Ericsson – which collaborate in research and take the products of that research. Alongside that, we have many Irish SMEs – like Intune Networks, which develops network architecture to cope with the massive increase in unpredictable traffic demand.”
Read More
Friday, February 25, 2011
Innovation Awards the Countdown - Irish Times
Shortlists for The Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation
Awards have been drawn up – and it was no easy task, writes MICHAEL McALEER
IT WAS A LONG and challenging day for the judges of this year’s Innovation Awards, with 21 company presentations to sit through and discuss, but the resounding response was that it rekindled a belief that Irish businesses can overcome the challenges they face.
The breadth of the shortlisted candidates and their inventiveness demonstrated the determination and innovation that’s often cloaked from view by the overwhelming national concern about the economy.
A look at the final shortlisted companies, ranging from public sector reformers to high-end IT or pharma innovators, offers a window into the depth of talent in Ireland.
...
Of the 21 selected companies, Intune Networks have been shorlisted in the Product Innovation category:
PRODUCT INNOVATION:
Intune Networks was founded in 1999 by two UCD graduates, John Dunne and Tom Farrell. It has developed advanced optical networking products that give carriers and internet service providers the capacity to meet growing demands for bandwidth.
An explosion in video content and emerging models for cloud-based services have put a strain on networks that is likely to get worse. Bottlenecks will be alleviated by what Dunne refers to as the “Holy Grail of networking”.
For 30 years, laboratories and universities had identified optical packet switching technology as the way forward but it took Dunne and Farrell to come up with a clever piece of IP that made it commercial and scalable.
Early investors were found in Britain and the US, as their Irish counterparts opted for property over technology.
More than 30 companies and institutions have signed up to use the testbed, including BT, Imagine, EMC, UCC Tyndall, NUI Galway, UCD and DCU. The Government has also invested €10 million towards the build of the Exemplar Network using Intune technology (pictured left).
...
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Awards have been drawn up – and it was no easy task, writes MICHAEL McALEER
IT WAS A LONG and challenging day for the judges of this year’s Innovation Awards, with 21 company presentations to sit through and discuss, but the resounding response was that it rekindled a belief that Irish businesses can overcome the challenges they face.
The breadth of the shortlisted candidates and their inventiveness demonstrated the determination and innovation that’s often cloaked from view by the overwhelming national concern about the economy.
A look at the final shortlisted companies, ranging from public sector reformers to high-end IT or pharma innovators, offers a window into the depth of talent in Ireland.
...
Of the 21 selected companies, Intune Networks have been shorlisted in the Product Innovation category:
PRODUCT INNOVATION:
Intune Networks was founded in 1999 by two UCD graduates, John Dunne and Tom Farrell. It has developed advanced optical networking products that give carriers and internet service providers the capacity to meet growing demands for bandwidth.
An explosion in video content and emerging models for cloud-based services have put a strain on networks that is likely to get worse. Bottlenecks will be alleviated by what Dunne refers to as the “Holy Grail of networking”.
For 30 years, laboratories and universities had identified optical packet switching technology as the way forward but it took Dunne and Farrell to come up with a clever piece of IP that made it commercial and scalable.
Early investors were found in Britain and the US, as their Irish counterparts opted for property over technology.
More than 30 companies and institutions have signed up to use the testbed, including BT, Imagine, EMC, UCC Tyndall, NUI Galway, UCD and DCU. The Government has also invested €10 million towards the build of the Exemplar Network using Intune technology (pictured left).
...
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Friday, January 21, 2011
Network Conundrum for a Web Service World - Intune Networks
"The era of static and predictable service traffic has been consigned to history"
The era of dynamic and unpredictable services traffic is now. Carrier networks, still designed with the operational requirement for accurate prediction of service traffic, have only seen incremental improvements rather than step change. Network operators must consider radical options to support future bandwidth demands for next generation services.
During the last decade internet and web services have become the de facto medium for communications, entertainment, information, and work. Service growth has followed exponentially, fusing spectacularly to the extent that it is difficult, or indeed impossible, to differentiate the service delivered and/or to distinguish the role that the consumer is performing. Yet despite these advancements in services, there has been no significant development or change to the primary network optical transport network since their introduction.
Networking mantra appears to have been to build the biggest optical pipes possible, at the lowest capital cost and fill them as full as possible. No serious consideration however has been given to the underlying services, resulting in ‘hub and spoke’ architectures being unnecessarily too big and costly with the spokes not connecting where the services need to be. The impact is significant increases in OPEX and TCO with low levels of asset utilisation. Network operators now need to fundamentally re-think their approach to meet future business demands.
Meanwhile, new market dynamics have created an environment where the pressures and demands on a carriers’ network and operations are growing exponentially whilst revenues and profits are simultaneously shrinking dramatically. Whilst innovation and investment has been made in IP routing and consumer devices, very little has changed in the underlying packet switching and optical fibre network that interconnect the IP based servers and routers to the IP enabled consumer devices.
Web services by their nature are dynamic and unpredictable and with increasingly set of video rich features - demanding ever increasing bandwidth per service and guaranteed quality of experience. However, the dilemma is that current carrier networks are managed and provisioned based upon predicted future patterns of usage from historical data that has taken days, weeks, and months to collate and is then analysed as a basis to predict and formulate future network changes. It is well acknowledged that accurate forward CAPEX investment planning for the network based on historical data is an increasingly impossible task to achieve, whilst being an exceptionally slow and costly process.
In addition, carriers have been unable to align their business and operational models and keep pace with the market and consumer demands – and therefore revenue opportunities. This discontinuity has created an overly complex, static, and unresponsive network infrastructure that continues to be disconnected from the services value chain.
The largest fixed cost within the carrier business is typically the network infrastructure which has remained largely the same – hierarchical and asymmetrical from the core through the metro to the access, whilst new services are symmetrical in profile, and hosted from a variety of distributed rather than centralised sources. Whilst service providers have strived to reduce operational costs through functional consolidation, process improvement and workforce reduction - fixed costs such as power and real estate remain very high and are directly correlated to the size and complexity of the network.
In the face of rapidly declining margins on traditional products and services, the service provider has been prevented in responding to the competitive market pressure to compete through service innovation and monetisation of new product revenues. This is not unsurprising as the current legacy network is hugely inflexible; it is unable to support introduction of new services and pricing models due to the lack of correlation of services carried to network resources consumed. This fact alone directly prevents the innovation and monetisation of new revenue models.
The legacy of tactical investment coupled with a lack of step change innovation by the traditional vendors has resulted in a network architecture that is a barrier to business. The network architecture is connection oriented – yet being tasked to deliver connectionless traffic. As a result, the current network technologies can never match the business economics to deliver the required level of service and associated lowest level of TCO – for any given service – resulting in a fundamental destabilisation of the business model.
Hub and spoke networks (by definition designed for connection-orientated traffic) are struggling because web services (connectionless protocols) have became the primary delivery vehicle for all services – including the rapid growth area of online video. Meanwhile, network operators also face the challenge that new demands for HD video need to be met with guaranteed bandwidth and low latency only afforded by connection-oriented networks.
Carriers now need to consider adopting transformational innovation versus continuing the deployment of repackaged hybrid products of today. The capability of this innovation must deliver automatic and dynamic response to any mix of incoming service flow traffic requirements - allocating network resources appropriately that are based upon the quality of service tiers required. To achieve this requires a fundamental change and reduction in the complexity of the network.
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During the last decade internet and web services have become the de facto medium for communications, entertainment, information, and work. Service growth has followed exponentially, fusing spectacularly to the extent that it is difficult, or indeed impossible, to differentiate the service delivered and/or to distinguish the role that the consumer is performing. Yet despite these advancements in services, there has been no significant development or change to the primary network optical transport network since their introduction.
Networking mantra appears to have been to build the biggest optical pipes possible, at the lowest capital cost and fill them as full as possible. No serious consideration however has been given to the underlying services, resulting in ‘hub and spoke’ architectures being unnecessarily too big and costly with the spokes not connecting where the services need to be. The impact is significant increases in OPEX and TCO with low levels of asset utilisation. Network operators now need to fundamentally re-think their approach to meet future business demands.
Meanwhile, new market dynamics have created an environment where the pressures and demands on a carriers’ network and operations are growing exponentially whilst revenues and profits are simultaneously shrinking dramatically. Whilst innovation and investment has been made in IP routing and consumer devices, very little has changed in the underlying packet switching and optical fibre network that interconnect the IP based servers and routers to the IP enabled consumer devices.
Web services by their nature are dynamic and unpredictable and with increasingly set of video rich features - demanding ever increasing bandwidth per service and guaranteed quality of experience. However, the dilemma is that current carrier networks are managed and provisioned based upon predicted future patterns of usage from historical data that has taken days, weeks, and months to collate and is then analysed as a basis to predict and formulate future network changes. It is well acknowledged that accurate forward CAPEX investment planning for the network based on historical data is an increasingly impossible task to achieve, whilst being an exceptionally slow and costly process.
In addition, carriers have been unable to align their business and operational models and keep pace with the market and consumer demands – and therefore revenue opportunities. This discontinuity has created an overly complex, static, and unresponsive network infrastructure that continues to be disconnected from the services value chain.
The largest fixed cost within the carrier business is typically the network infrastructure which has remained largely the same – hierarchical and asymmetrical from the core through the metro to the access, whilst new services are symmetrical in profile, and hosted from a variety of distributed rather than centralised sources. Whilst service providers have strived to reduce operational costs through functional consolidation, process improvement and workforce reduction - fixed costs such as power and real estate remain very high and are directly correlated to the size and complexity of the network.
In the face of rapidly declining margins on traditional products and services, the service provider has been prevented in responding to the competitive market pressure to compete through service innovation and monetisation of new product revenues. This is not unsurprising as the current legacy network is hugely inflexible; it is unable to support introduction of new services and pricing models due to the lack of correlation of services carried to network resources consumed. This fact alone directly prevents the innovation and monetisation of new revenue models.
The legacy of tactical investment coupled with a lack of step change innovation by the traditional vendors has resulted in a network architecture that is a barrier to business. The network architecture is connection oriented – yet being tasked to deliver connectionless traffic. As a result, the current network technologies can never match the business economics to deliver the required level of service and associated lowest level of TCO – for any given service – resulting in a fundamental destabilisation of the business model.
Hub and spoke networks (by definition designed for connection-orientated traffic) are struggling because web services (connectionless protocols) have became the primary delivery vehicle for all services – including the rapid growth area of online video. Meanwhile, network operators also face the challenge that new demands for HD video need to be met with guaranteed bandwidth and low latency only afforded by connection-oriented networks.
Carriers now need to consider adopting transformational innovation versus continuing the deployment of repackaged hybrid products of today. The capability of this innovation must deliver automatic and dynamic response to any mix of incoming service flow traffic requirements - allocating network resources appropriately that are based upon the quality of service tiers required. To achieve this requires a fundamental change and reduction in the complexity of the network.
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Friday, January 14, 2011
Transforming Mobile Backhaul Networks...
Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) face increasing challenges if they are to maintain pace with surging data demand from owners of Smart Phones and Net Book devices. Traditional 2G/2.5G/3G networks were never designed to support the enormous wave of data generated by video and social network Web services. The transition to LTE, alongside increasingly powerful smart mobile devices, will exacerbate MNOs’ challenges and increase the risk of network brownouts, negatively impacting quality of service and customer satisfaction and increasing churn.
This voice-centric medium, based on complex telephony signalling and control planes, must be replaced with a packet and Web services-centric medium that is cheap to deploy, operate and maintain. Not only must this network cope with demand from new
mobile devices but also new services such as mobile access to cloud computing, software as a service, and location-based applications.
Intune Networks has developed a next-generation networking platform that delivers no less than ‘game changing transformation’. Optimised for mobile backhaul, the platform supports 3G and legacy services while enabling rapid transition to LTE. As both generations share a common backhaul network, Intune’s solution significantly lowers total cost of ownership (TCO), while allowing for the rapid deployment of revenue generating Web services that require high quality, on-demand network access.
The platform is built on Intune’s innovative and world-leading Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) technology. OPST combines distributed layer-2 packet switching with optical burst-mode transport in a single function, on a single platform. The result is lower capex, as less equipment is needed; and lower opex, as operations and control are greatly simplified. Crucially for today’s carriers, the OPST tunable network adapts in real time to bursty and unpredictable traffic. The result is a high level of performance that allows the MNO to guarantee QoS and SLAs with confidence. In addition, the platform is service- and protocol-agnostic, so able to carry multiple service types simultaneously.
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Freeing the Cloud - Intune Networks
The problem with this vision is that carrier network infrastructure is poorly suited to virtualisation. Telecom networks have developed over decades to meet a wide variety of needs. The constant evolution of technology and customer demands has encouraged growth of relatively rigid architectures requiring careful management and long-term planning. Specific equipment is often configured to deliver specific services, and so the separation of hardware and service required for virtualisation is difficult - if not impossible - to achieve.
This highly structured approach was appropriate in the past, but is now at odds with the Internet philosophy of instant response and limitless flexibility. This leaves carriers unable to take full advantage of the Cloud phenomenon and end users unable to enjoy the promised cost savings.
Intune Networks’ solution is the world’s first ‘whole network virtualisation’ platform. The iVX8000 is a fully programmable, services-oriented architecture capable of responding in real time to unpredictable and rapidly changing demand.
This White Paper explains how virtualisation, now commonplace in data centres, delivers the same benefits of resource and cost efficiency in the carrier network. Intune’s vastly simplified architecture is low cost to operate and easily configured to realise the potential of new revenue streams - such as Cloud services. Carriers that can both virtualise and programme their networks are empowered to deploy new services at unprecedented speed with lowest cost.
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Intune Networks Core Innovation - OPST
Optical Packet Switch & Transport (OPST) is a distributed optical switch fabric technology that uses ultra fast tuning lasers to provide fully meshed, any-to-any resilient port connectivity, and is service and data format agnostic.
Every port attached to the OPST fabric has a Fast Tuneable Laser (FTL) and Burst Mode Receiver (BMR) under that port’s local control. The system assigns a unique wavelength to each BMR, so as ingress packets are queued by class of service per wavelength. The laser is tuned in real-time (nanoseconds) and multi-service frames are launched to the chosen destination via the assigned wavelength. Each port, can therefore, send and receive frames to and from all other ports providing a fully distributed switching capability with no intervening OEO between source and destination.
The OPST architecture provides unequalled and elegant linear scalability as well as operational efficiency. As new ports are individually added to the optical mesh fabric the optical paths are discovered and the logical data paths are assigned non-blocking connectivity to the new ports on the OPST meshed fabric.
iVX8000 has the unique ability to respond dynamically to changes in network service traffic demands while maintaining guaranteed class of service commitments. Access to this dynamic infrastructure is fully programmable and available via the Restful Web Services interface.
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Every port attached to the OPST fabric has a Fast Tuneable Laser (FTL) and Burst Mode Receiver (BMR) under that port’s local control. The system assigns a unique wavelength to each BMR, so as ingress packets are queued by class of service per wavelength. The laser is tuned in real-time (nanoseconds) and multi-service frames are launched to the chosen destination via the assigned wavelength. Each port, can therefore, send and receive frames to and from all other ports providing a fully distributed switching capability with no intervening OEO between source and destination.
The OPST architecture provides unequalled and elegant linear scalability as well as operational efficiency. As new ports are individually added to the optical mesh fabric the optical paths are discovered and the logical data paths are assigned non-blocking connectivity to the new ports on the OPST meshed fabric.
iVX8000 has the unique ability to respond dynamically to changes in network service traffic demands while maintaining guaranteed class of service commitments. Access to this dynamic infrastructure is fully programmable and available via the Restful Web Services interface.
Read More
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