Why achieving long-term webscale performance requires a culture of innovation

The webscale market has always been led by innovation, but now more than ever, the pace of innovation is accelerating. Driven by increasing demands for accessibility to high-quality video content, webscale has become a crucial element of achieving highly secure, fast, and scalable operations in every industry, without increasing maintenance demands.

As cloud computing expands its reach to the edge of the network, we are now seeing technologies like next-generation video, cloud gaming, automated drone delivery, IoT, digital twinning, blockchain, and virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), transform the range of applications available to industries as diverse as manufacturing and healthcare. The convergence of these technologies is at the very heart of webscale, and finding the best, effective combinations for each industry is what will drive them forwards.

These new services have been unleashed by recent advances in mobile technology, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), smart network interface cards (NICs) and storage, with the network playing a critical role in supporting new use cases. New network architectures that are much more hierarchical and distributed are needed to meet growing demands, and as this develops, webscale companies will need to innovate beyond compute and storage into data center interconnect (DCI) as well.

Optical networking for scalability, power and cost efficiency

One of the key areas where innovation will be needed is in optical networking. Data centres underpin the ever-accelerating digitalisation of economies and societies, and as new technologies arrive and use cases for them expand, optical DCI solutions are increasing the carrying potential of networks to meet demand.

New super-coherent technologies operating at very high baud rates promise to change the architectures of today’s optical networks by reducing the number of optical components needed, which in turn lowers the power and cost per bit per kilometer. Latest innovations are playing a critical role in the future-proofing of networks by delivering the technology to maximise the capacity and performance of optical DCI links that can extend the next generation of 800GE services over practically any distance.

These networks are paving the way in scalable, high-performance and power-efficient optical networking - key requirements to support the distributed cloud and far edge cloud services that enterprises will need.

Towards open source in IP

In IP routing, we are seeing an evolution away from the established network operating software of legacy vendors towards open-source approaches that leverage shared components and introduce DevOps-style processes into network operations. This is critical as networks become increasingly software driven.

Next-gen IP routing that delivers latency-sensitive applications at the edge, close to customers, while delivering latency-tolerant applications from the core are emerging as the back-bone for powering the industry’s largest, highest-density and most advanced IP routers.

IP interconnection and IP peering connect your customers to networks, data centers, cloud services and applications across your cloud infrastructure regardless of their location. They enable the regional and global networks that connect and interconnect cloud data centers to exchange traffic in a scalable, secure and reliable way.

Automation for managing shifting workloads

Emerging AI-based services, next generation video, augmented and virtual reality, and other highly compute-intensive applications are pushing webscale data center fabrics to their limits in terms of capacity, performance and operational efficiency.

Cloud service providers need to manage ever-increasing network and operational complexity. As webscale companies try to automate their networks, they must often deploy multiple management solutions. This adds complexity, increases CAPEX and OPEX, and requires additional training and staff.

Automation across both optical and IP layers has become necessary for improving network agilility and responsiveness to rapidly shifting workloads between the core and the edge. Finding a comprehensive management and automation platform that supports common tools and practices, and automates repetitive tasks and complex workflows, can significantly ease the pressure on skilled network operations staff.

Securing the network

Security is one of the most important areas for fostering innovation, as the threats are unpredictable and evolve more rapidly than in other areas. We are seeing DDoS attacks become the fastest growing category of IP network traffic, with new devices being hijacked and used in conjunction with reflection, amplification and carpet-bombing techniques to launch increasingly sophisticated attacks.

As cloud services become more and more mission-critical, the gold standard for webcalers should be to secure the network across each network layer to prevent breaches before they cause outages. To prevent serious breaches, securing the midway points between cloud service providers’ internet interconnection and interexchange points for regional and local traffic is essential.

New silicon products are already achieving this by combining detection capabilities with advanced packet processing, which embeds security functions into the silicon. Match this with big data analytics tools with real-time network insights, and you start to see a dramatic improvement in network defences against these increasingly sophisticated and frequent attacks.

Selecting the right partners

As the cloud becomes generalised and distributed, as well as mission-critical, every dimension of the network has to be renovated, re-architected and reimagined. Webscalers need innovative partners to ensure that DCI services can meet the evolving needs of their customers.

Finding the right support for building and supporting large mission-critical networks, on a global scale, is essential if webscalers are to pursue truly responsible, sustainable technologies that can benefit society en masse. Not only this, but finding the right local support for sales, maintenance, professional services, and technical support is going to be necessary to ensure 360 degree success across the networks.

So, webscalers need to pursue a culture of innovation that not only forces them to think laterally about their own operations, but about which third parties share this ethos and can collaborate effectively to tackle existing and future challenges.