Bulletin 18 May 2018. It’s all virtual. All of it. (Or why I can’t write about NFV)
Anyone who has read some of my written work will know I’m a bit of a one-trick pony. I start with some cultural reference or anecdote, then segue into a more technical or managerial point. Over the years I have found myself using the same stories more than once: in particular, the moment when Dave Lister finds that he is the only human left alive. Here’s its most recent outing, in relation to GDPR (of all things).
I’m saying this apologetically, because I find myself urged to use it again. For months now, since I was involved behind the scenes on a pretty big project on the topic, I have been wanting to write about Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) and its impact on telecommunications. However, for some reason I have found I have nothing to say on the subject. Which (for a pundit) is more than a little worrisome.
It’s not as if there’s nothing to talk about. For the record, NFV has emerged in the telco space as a new way of creating communications services: rather than having custom-built hardware and software for each specific need, why not follow the lead of data centres, bring in a virtualised infrastructure stack and be able to support any new software function with minimal hardware change? What’s not to like?
The answer, as many telcos are discovering, is that it isn’t as simple as that. Challenges of ripping out and replacing an entire global telecoms infrastructure couple with the fact that earlier iterations of NFV stacks have not been, shall we say, fully market ready? Money has been spent, disappointment felt and a mood of reticence has settled across large parts of the industry.
There we have it, in a nutshell. A good idea meets a complex world, working brilliantly for some and causing problems for others. Fall back, regroup and try again, a bit more slowly. Like my anecdotes, we’ve heard them all before. Which goes a long way towards understanding why I’ve struggled to write anything coherent about it.
But, like any other unsoluble problem, it has refused to leave my head, stuck like an unfinished conversation. The issue is not that we’ve seen it all before, but that we are lulled, somehow, into believing that anything we do in tech is in any way real. Of course we can see some mind-bending physics and remarkable engineering, but its ultimate purpose is to create and manipulate representations of things.
It’s all virtual, all of it. Every A-to-D converter, every API, bootloader and on-screen widget is a façade, designed to disguise the few trillion transistors, gates and fibres that lie behind its slick interface. This isn’t some glib philosophical point, as it lies behind a great deal of procrastination and distraction.
Any conversation that starts with the idea “technology idea X doesn’t work” is flawed: we can say it is poorly configured, or that it doesn’t fit existing practices, or that existing practices are a poor fit to what it does. What we should not say, however, is that it is a bad idea in itself: to do so implies that it exists in some tangible way. By treating an idea as a thing, we stop focusing on how well it is designed.
Specifically on the topic at hand, NFV is a work in progress. It will improve, for two reasons: first its inherent structure will be improved, as it is used and understood. And second, as new functions are developed we will start to see proper innovation, rather than just building the old services (e.g. messaging, email, voice) in new ways.
And more broadly, it was always about virtualisation. While this might have been slowed by both corporate inertia and hardware vendor lock-in, we are moving inexorably towards putting the control in the software, rather than tying it into the hardware. While we may all experience Lister-levels of incredulity from time to time, this doesn’t make reality — or indeed virtuality — any less true.
With this in mind, here’s a couple of articles I have actually been able to write.
5 questions for… ADLINK. Edge-Fog-Cloud?
ADLINK is a little-known company outside of its own space, but is right in the thick of the increasingly distributed world we are seeing come out of IoT. Here I speak to Steve Jennis about where this space is going. In conclusion, as we move from a centralisation to a distribution wave, the cloud providers are going to have their work cut out.
Is Enterprise DevOps an Oxymoron?
Oh, I long for the days when I was working things out for the first time, those wonderful moments of epiphany… these days I linger somewhere between discovery of the wisdom of others, and the knowledge that (to pick another over-used cultural reference) there is nothing new under the sun. In this article I introduce a report I am currently researching, on how DevOps can make a difference at scale, in the enterprise environment. All thoughts, stories and guidance very welcome.
Extra-curricular: Super-awesome, the Musical (Redux)
The first draft is now complete. No spoilers but the final song is called “Perfectly Illogical.” Now all I have to do is write it through another few times, but that will be less taxing than getting it to here. Famous last words…
Thank you as ever for reading. This bulletin now has over 350 opted-in recipients, and a small number of people (20-ish) I am still to contact. If it’s not your thing, please feel free to unsubscribe at any time.
All the best, Jon