Data Centre & Network News – March 2019

INSIDE

ISSUE 6 | MARCH 2019

THE WORLD WIDE WEB TURNS 30

VPN

HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT VPN SOLUTION?

MEET ME ROOM AI GONE AWRY AN AI BOT SO GOOD IT’S DANGEROUS

HOW IS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION CHANGING THE BUSINESS LANDSCAPE?

CONTENTS

IN THIS ISSU REGULARS 4 EDITORIAL

Where would we be without the World Wide Web?

6 INDUSTRY NEWS

From fewer than one in five consumers understanding the benefits of 5G to Huawei suing the US over an ‘unlawful’ ban on its products

12 CENTRE OF ATTENTION

Data centres have developed a notorious reputation as a wasteful industry. Lex Coors of Interxion explains how, using cutting edge technology and forming crucial partnerships, this is no longer the case

20 AI GONE AWRY

An AI bot intended to predict the next word in a sentence can convincingly ‘write’ entire passages on a given subject. In fact, it is so good, the creators will not release it

50 PROJECTS & AGREEMENTS

Could EDF’s smart boat initiative help recover global fisheries?

52 COMPANY SHOWCASE

Schneider Electric extends its award-winning galaxy UPS series

16 MEET ME ROOM

From how digital transformation is changing the business landscape to the influence of 80s synth-pop band Depeche Mode, DCNN talks to Matt George of Equinix

44 2 | October 2018

SPECIAL FEA 44 VERIFICATION BEFORE TRUST

Scott Gordon of Pulse Secure explains why secure access technologies are gaining a welcomed boost as organisations demand ubiquitous cloud accessibility in a ‘zero trust’ world

MARCH 2019

UE… FEATURES 24 OPINION

Failure to embrace intelligent automation could leave a business falling by the wayside. Scott Dodds of Ultima explains why and how companies should approach their automation journey

28 THE HISTORY OF THE WORD WIDE WEB

Jordan O’Brien takes you back in time, showcasing all the important moments in the history of the World Wide Web

ATURE: VPN 46 THE VPN WHO LOVED ME Technology Journalist, Jordan O’Brien highlights how important it is to choose the right VPN solution for your business

CONTENTS

20 24 16

february 2019 | 3

EDITOR’S NOTE

EDITOR Jessica Foreman JESSICA@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM

SALES DIRECTOR Ian Kitchener – 01634 673163 IAN@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM

STUDIO MANAGER Ben Bristow – 01634 673163 BEN@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM

EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Jordan O’Brien – 01634 673163 JORDAN@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM

DESIGNER Jon Appleton JON@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM

BUSINESS SUPPORT ADMINISTRATOR Carol Gylby – 01634 673163 CAROL@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM

MANAGING DIRECTOR David Kitchener – 01634 673163 DAVID@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM

ACCOUNTS 01634 673163 SUSAN@ALLTHINGSMEDIALTD.COM

Suite 14, 6-8 Revenge Road, Lordswood, Kent ME5 8UD T: +44 (0)1634 673163 F: +44 (0)1634 673173 The editor and publishers do not necessarily agree with the views expressed by contributors, nor do they accept responsibility for any errors in the transmission of the subject matter in this publication. In all matters the editor’s decision is final. Editorial contributions to Data Centre & Network News are welcomed, and the editor reserves the right to alter or abridge text prior to publication.

4 | October 2018

October 2018 | 4

© Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.

WHERE W WE BE W THE WIDE

T

he World Wide Web turned 30 last week, and over the past three decades its existence has changed our view of both ourselves and the world – in fact, it has changed the face of humanity. Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s brainchild is now such a fundamental resource in our lives that it is impossible to imagine life without it.

From education and culture to the economy, the World Wide Web has changed the landscape in which we now access information; it has given people a voice, a platform and ultimately made our daily lives a whole lot easier. Unfortunately, however, the web is not all sunshine and rainbows…

Despite it creating ample amounts of opportunity to all who have access to it, it has also paved the way for scammers, given voice to those who spread hatred, and made all kinds of crime easier to commit.

On March 12, 2019, marking 30 years of the World Wide Web, the inventor delivered a compelling speech at CERN in Meyrin calling for ‘big changes’ to make it better. Berners-Lee told reporters that, “Against the backdrop of news stories about how the web is misused, it’s understandable that many people feel afraid and unsure if the web is really a force for good.”

In order to combat the distrust some now feel for the web, Berners-Lee created a group called the World Wide Web Foundation. His actual plan, called ‘the Contract for the Web’, seeks help from governments, companies and citizens to become more involved in shaping the web to do better for humanity.

WOULD WITHOUT WORLD E WEB?

EDITOR’S NOTE

The path to make the web better, however, is the responsibility of everyone who uses it, therefore making any big changes will not be easy. “If we give up on building a better web now, then the web will not have failed us. We would have failed the web,” Berners-Lee noted.

This month, to celebrate the web turning 30, DCNN magazine will take you back in time with a comprehensive overview of its history, how it started, and its development into the World Wide Web we know today.

If you would like to write on key topics, or provide a thoughtprovoking opinion piece for the April issue please email: jessica@allthingsmedialtd.com

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE WWW AND THE INTERNET Although the web enables us to access a myriad of information – all within just a few clicks – the World Wide Web and the internet still get confused, so what is the difference?

Simply, the internet is a massive network of networks; a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of computers together globally. Forming a network in which any

computer can communicate with another as long as they are both connected to the internet. Information itself travels over the internet.

On the other hand, the World Wide Web, or the web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the internet.

march 2019 | 5

INDUSTRY NEWS

FEWER THAN ONE IN FIVE CONSUMERS UNDERSTAND THE FULL BENEFITS OF 5G The launch of 5G is dominating tech news especially after Mobile World Conference (25—28 February), yet according to new research fewer than one in five (19%) consumers are fully aware of what the benefits will be. The research conducted by Trusted Reviews, the UK’s technology consumer review website, also unearthed the biggest questions and concerns consumers have over the latest 5G developments.

The company’s research revealed the most commonly asked 5G questions and concerns; explaining what you should know about the new service to help consumers make more informed purchases.

THE TOP 5G QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS The company’s new 5G survey, compiled from a poll of 2,052 consumers, highlighted the key areas that are lacking in information to debunk the myths associated with 5G, and help consumers make smarter purchasing decisions.

What is it? 35% of consumers want to know what 5G is.

5G is the fifth generation of mobile connectivity. It follows 4G and promises faster headline speeds, broader and more reliable coverage.

6 | March 2019

How fast is it? 39% of consumers asked how much faster 5G is compared to 4G. Tests by the likes of Qualcomm and EE have achieved download speeds of between 2.8Gbps and 7Gbps. But these are in ideal conditions. In real life, speeds are more likely to be closer to the UK’s average broadband download speed of 50.16Mbps (Speedtest), but that is still almost twice the average mobile download speed of 26.36Mbps.

What are the benefits? 44% of consumers want to know how 5G will benefit them.

Moving speed aside, other notable benefits of 5G include greater reliability as technology can handle far greater numbers of users simultaneously. We’ve also been promised lower latency, so you should see an immediate response when you try and play a song, hit a website link and so on. Qualcomm has suggested that we’ll see latency cut by up to 10 times in total, to around 1ms theoretically.

Will it cost more? 50% want to know the cost of 5G and 15% are worried their phone bills will increase.

UK networks have yet to announce price plans for 5G contracts, but

as the first phones to come to market will be expensive, you can reasonably expect to pay more if you want to be among the first to get a taste of 5G life.

When will it be available? 35% want to know when it will be rolled out.

For most of the UK, 5G won’t be a reality until 2020. If you live in one of the UK’s four capital cities: London, Belfast, Cardiff or Edinburgh, you’re more likely be among the first to try it out as both EE and O2 have announced they will be rolling out 5G in those cities first. Meanwhile EE has also announced it intends to introduce 5G to 12 other cities before the end of the year.

Will I have to get a new phone?

7% are worried they might need to get a new phone before the end of their contract.

5G will not work with any phone you may already have. So if you wish

INDUSTRY NEWS

QUALCOMM ANNOUNCES SECOND-GEN 5G MODEM

to take advantage of the roll out of 5G you will need to invest in a new handset. And you can expect 5G handsets to also cost more than the standard version of the same handset.

Nick Merritt, Editor in Chief of TrustedReviews.com commented, “Despite the hype, our research highlights the current lack of public understanding of what 5G is, its benefits, and its risks. While the industry is talking a good game around 5G, until more details – and crucially pricing – are disclosed, it remains to be seen how quickly people will adopt it. There is no doubt that 5G is an exciting technology that will mean much faster phone connection speeds when it’s ready, but in our view it’s a bit early for the general consumer to be considering 5G just yet.”

Though the 5G network isn’t currently supported by any devices yet, it soon will be, with the likelihood that many will use Qulacomm’s new Snapdragon X55 5G modem.

The Snapdragon X55 5G modem is a 7-nanometer single-chip that supports theoretical top download speeds up to 7Gbps and upload speeds as high as 3Gbps. While the Snapdragon X50 is a 5G-only modem, the Snapdragon X55 also supports 4G LTE Cat 22 (with download speeds up to 2. 5Gbps), as well as 3G and 2G networks.

“Qualcomm Technologies is spearheading the first wave of 5G launches with our first generation 5G mobile platform. With significant evolution in capabilities and performance, our second generation commercial 5G modem is a true testament to the maturity and leadership of our 5G technology. We expect our 5G platform to accelerate 5G commercial momentum and power virtually all 5G launches in 2019 while significantly expanding the global 5G rollout footprint,” said Cristiano Amon, President, Qualcomm Incorporated.

Currently the areas of the world covered by 5G networks are few and far between, so 4G support is therefore essential. Devices with X50 modems will likely have a Snapdragon 855 processor, which has a Qualcomm 4G modem incorporated. The new X55 chip, however, can be used in devices that may not already have an integrated cellular modem.

Other features that help set the X55 apart from the X50 include support for adaptive antenna tuning for better power efficiency and faster 5G data transfer speeds.

The first products using Snapdragon X55 modems should ship by the end of 2019.

QUALCOMM, QUALCOMM.COM

TRUSTED REVIEWS, TRUSTEDREVIEWS.COM

March 2019 | 7

INDUSTRY NEWS

HUAWEI SUES US OVER ‘UNLAWFUL’ BAN ON ITS PRODUCTS Chinese tech giant Huawei has filed a lawsuit against the US government over a ban that restricts federal agencies from using its products.

The US restrictions over national security concerns were dubbed ‘unlawful’ by Guo Ping, Huawei’s Chairman, saying, “This ban not only is unlawful, but also restricts Huawei from engaging in fair competition, ultimately harming US consumers.”

In its most aggressive move yet, Huawei is asking a US federal court to overturn part of the National Defence Authorisation Act, which was signed by President Donald Trump in August.

The company alleges that a portion of the law – which forbids government agencies from using technology from Huawei and smaller rival, ZTE – violates the US constitution in which an individual group is declared guilty of a crime without fair trial.

Huawei has said that the US has failed to provide evidence to support the ban and has also rejected claims that it had links to the Chinese government.

“Huawei is not owned, controlled, or influenced by the Chinese government.

Moreover, Huawei has an excellent security record and program. No contrary evidence has been offered,” says Song Liuping, Huawei’s chief legal officer; describing the US ban as based on “numerous false, unproven and untested propositions.”

The company, at its press conference last week, was later criticised for cutting the live feed before journalists could begin to ask questions.

The lawsuit filed by Huawei adds to what is likely to be months, if not years of legal battles, as well as continued diplomatic tensions. But what will that mean for US consumers amidst the launch of 5G? HUAWEI, HUAWEI.COM

8 | March 2019

SHOULD OPERATORS FEAR ENERGY COSTS FOR 5G AN Vertiv, together with technology analyst firm 451 Research, has released the findings of an in-depth survey which reveals a good sense of optimism about the services 5G will enable and the interplay with edge computing.

The majority of telecoms operators surveyed believe the 5G era will start in earnest in 2021 in all geographies, with 88% of respondents planning to deploy 5G in 2021-2022.

However, more than 90% of respondents believe 5G will result in higher energy costs and are interested in technologies and services that improve efficiency. This is consistent with internal analysis by Vertiv, which finds the move to 5G is likely to increase total network energy consumption by 150-170% by 2026, with the largest increases in macro, node and network data centre areas.

The survey questioned more than 100 global

telecoms operators about the opportunities and potential obstacles of deploying 5G services and the impact on edge computing adoption.

“The challenge for operators considering 5G will be choosing the most mature use cases, verticals and eco-systems where they can play a meaningful and sustainable role. The research Vertiv has undertaken into edge computing use cases and archetypes, together with this latest survey with 451, will help our operator customers and telecoms partners to build more robust business cases for 5G investments and associated edge compute deployments,” said Giordano Albertazzi, President for Vertivin Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Regarding edge and 5G specifically, the survey revealed that a large majority of operators have deployed (37%) or plan to deploy (47%) edge compute that is aligned

INDUSTRY NEWS

GOOGLE GDPR PROTECTION DEBACLE HIGHLIGHTS MAJOR LIABILITY RISK

R INCREASING ND EDGE? with mobile infrastructure – also called multi-access edge computing (MEC).

Conducted to help shed some light on telecom operators’ hopes and fears around 5G and edge deployments, Brian Partridge, Research Vice President for 451 Research detailed, “The two toughest connectivity challenges for supporting 5G topologies were revealed to be upgrading access and aggregation layer networks and adding new backhaul links. Survey respondents indicated that the availability of high-quality connectivity to distributed POPs and ease of site acquisition were viewed as the most critical enablers to 5G success. We were frankly surprised by some of these results and believe it brings clarity to the level of transformation the industry now faces.”

Google’s recent €50 million General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance fine sent a shockwave through the American tech community.

Though the search giant is contesting the penalty – which is the largest to be issued so far under GDPR – where does that leave other US firms with fewer resources and less sophistication? * For company managers and investors, GDPR compliance is becoming a major issue. Unlike the cash-rich and tech savvy Google, many US firms, both private and publicly traded, can’t survive a maximum sentence for GDPR non-compliance.

And with the accelerating consideration of similar privacy rules in the US, are investors right to be worried about data protection protocols?

The potential liability risk isn’t just limited to companies that process data, however. If an organisation’s software tools include Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, etc – the same tools and companies which Google has contracts with – it stands to reason that more than just the firms that process data are vulnerable to GDPR headaches. New US rules patterned along the European model would present similar concerns.

IAITAM President and CEO Dr. Barbara Rembiesa said, “In the everevolving landscape of data privacy issues and regulations, now more than ever, is it fundamentally important for US firms to invest in sound IT Asset Management (ITAM). Savvy investors are keen to spot potential liabilities and with the recent Google fiasco, eyebrows are being raised. The firms that have already invested in ITAM programs are ahead of the game and shareholders should know it. If you’re an investor and you don’t know if your company has a mature IT Asset Management program, that should be a red flag.”

The IAITAM head also highlighted that eight months have passed since the European Union adopted GDPR. Before that, companies had two years to prepare. If Google was caught red-handed, that should sound the alarm for all US based firms and their investors. *Under GDPR, companies found in violation could receive a maximum penalty of up to 4% of their annual revenue.

IAITAM, IAITAM.ORG

VERTIV, VERTIV.COM

March 2019 | 9

INDUSTRY NEWS

NOKIA LAUNCHES OFF-THE-SHELF IOT PACKAGES TO HELP OPERATORS ADDRESS NEW VERTICAL MARKETS Nokia has announced the launch of off-the-shelf IoT packages designed to help operators expand in vertical IoT markets.

The four new packages, which have been built on the Nokia Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) infrastructure, have been created to help simplify the set-up and operation of enterprise IoT services whilst reducing time to market.

The four new solutions include Smart Agriculture asa-Service, which uses sensors to capture environmental, soil and crop data and analyses the output to provide insights that help farmers manage crops more effectively.

Livestock Management as-a-Service similarly uses tracking devices with biosensors monitor animal health and welfare; providing ranchers with early alerts if abnormalities are detected, protecting valuable livestock and improving yields.

Logistics as-a-Service uses IoT sensors to enable tracking of the global movement and condition of goods, helping enterprises instantly identify incidents and even predict future events to optimize delivery and logistics process efficiency.

10 | March 2019

Finally, Asset Management as-a-Service is designed to help enterprises monitor the status and performance of their assets around the globe.

Nokia is also trialling Agriculture as-a-Service with an African operator and working with a leading services and consulting firm on Asset Management as-a-Service to help them offer more advanced services.

Brian Partridge, Vice President, 451 Research, said, “Nokia addresses a wide spectrum of challenges through its WING IoT infrastructure-as-a-service so its early traction with customers isn’t a surprise. Most telecom operators desire a more prominent role in the IoT value chain that builds upon secure and reliable domestic or global connectivity. Nokia’s announced plans to offer end-to-end vertical applications on top of the WING global infrastructure is a logical next step.

We believe that this approach benefits Nokia’s WING telecom customers and the enterprises they serve in addition to vertical application partners who can benefit from WING’s market scale and go-to market channels.”

NOKIA, NOKIA.COM

Energy and power monitoring solutions for data centres

ET272 Self-addressing energy transducer

WM50 + TCD12 Modular main and sub metering for PDUs

DEA71 / DEB71 Earth leakage monitoring relays

Carlo Gavazzi UK Ltd. - 4.4 Frimley Business Park, Frimley, Camberley, Surrey GU16 7SG Tel: 01276 854 110 - www.carlogavazzi.co.uk

CENTRE OF ATTENTION: GREEN TECHONLOGY

HOW DATA CENTRES ARE PIONEERING GREE TECHNOLOGY DATA CENTRES HAVE DEVELOPED A NOTORIOUS REPUTATION AS A WASTEFUL INDUSTRY. LEX COORS, INTERXION’S CHIEF DATA CENTRE TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING OFFICER, EXPLAINS HOW THE COMPANY, THROUGH CUTTINGEDGE TECHNOLOGY AND CRUCIAL PARTNERSHIPS, HAS MADE SURE THIS IS NO LONGER THE CASE; URGING OTHERS TO ADOPT A SIMILAR STRATEGY. 12 | March 2019

EEN

CENTRE OF ATTENTION: GREEN TECHONLOGY

W

hen you think of March, you think of St Patrick’s Day. And what colour immediately comes to mind? Green. But today, the colour green has taken on a brand-new significance as the symbol of the booming

green energy movement. That has become a vital component of Europe’s economy — including the nation where St Patrick’s Day originated. As the preeminent data centre provider in Europe, Interxion is leading the charge in both efficient energy practices and the use of renewable energy, showing that being green is a crucial way to win customers in Europe.

March 2019 | 13

CENTRE OF ATTENTION: GREEN TECHONLOGY

GO GREEN AND GROW DESIRABILITY

INTERXION’S COMPANYWIDE GREEN POLICY

Demonstrating green practices can be a notable business differentiator for service providers looking to sell services to the European market. Europeans care strongly about sustainability, with slightly more than eight in 10 EU citizens claiming that environmental impact is an important element when deciding which products to buy. One example of this practice is Taxi Stockholm – who has an initiative to be completely carbon free by 2025, an initiative that extends to their data centre and IT service provider Devinix as well. So, for US companies that are trying to take advantage of the European market, colocating in data centres committed to both using green technology and innovating new efficiency measures is a way to distinguish themselves from their competitors.

At Interxion, energy efficiency is a company-wide policy, with energy-saving measures built right into its data centres.

For more than 20 years Interxion has pioneered energy-saving designs and harnessed everything from arctic winds to underground aquifers to the Baltic Sea to reduce its energy use and thus reduce its carbon footprint.

For data centre providers, much of the daily operations involve ensuring the equipment is kept cool to ensure customers’ mission critical applications are kept running 24/7 365 days a year. Interxion is innovating and implementing advanced energyefficient cooling technologies, for example: free-cooling reduces the use of electricity, which is still predominantly produced from conventional fuels.

“IN 2018, GERMANY’S TWO BIGGEST TV NETWORKS DATA CENTRES HAVE DEVELOPED A NOTORIOUS REPUTATION AS A WASTEFUL INDUSTRY, UNTIL NOW

14 | March 2019

TRAVELLED TO INTERXION’S STOCKHOLM FACILITY TO FILM DOCUMENTARIES ABOUT THE CITY’S POWER-SAVING TECHNOLOGY WITH HOPES THAT OTHER COUNTRIES OR CITIES WILL SOON ADOPT SIMILAR PRACTICES.”

CENTRE OF ATTENTION: GREEN TECHONLOGY

In addition to energy efficiency, Interxion pioneered the use of 100% sustainable energy sources, including water, solar and wind to power its data centres across Europe. And between 2017 and 2019, Interxion chose to redeem all of its data centres’ electricity usage in the form of renewable energy produced in Europe, either via the supplier’s green tariffs or Guarantees of Origin.

IMPORTANCE OF CRUCIAL PARTNERSHIPS Interxion has played a critical role in the sustainability efforts of its host cities. A notable example is Stockholm. In the 1970s, Stockholm took energy efficiency to a new level by building infrastructure that reused excess heat to warm households in the city.

Interxion is a key partner in this groundbreaking initiative, and together with Stockholm Exergi, Interxion is transferring the excess heat energy into residential heating. In 2018, Germany’s two biggest TV networks travelled to Interxion’s Stockholm facility to film documentaries about the city’s power-saving technology with hopes that other countries or cities will soon adopt similar practices.

In Denmark, Interxion has developed groundwater cooling as an energysaving measure. Previously, cooling in the summer months had been based on traditional refrigeration machines that used a lot of power. But Interxion worked with the city of Ballerup to develop a groundwater-based cooling system that can replace the traditional refrigerants with geo-energy. The result is a system that, summer and winter, can always provide sufficient cooling while significantly reducing energy consumption.

Denmark and the whole Nordic region have evolved into Europe’s leaders in energy efficiency. Not only are Interxion’s Nordic facilities designed specifically with

byproducts like excess heat in mind, they are among the only data centre providers covering the whole of Europe with 100% sustainable energy. Hyperscalers like Apple and Google have applauded the Nordics for their energy efficient data centres.

The great supply of power from sustainable sources like hydroelectric and wind power, combined with the cold climate, makes the Nordics an ideal place for building sustainable data centres. Due to this and a fast-growing market in Northern Europe, Interxion is seeing an increased number of hyperscale data centre projects emerging in both Denmark and Sweden.

Green-laden Ireland is another region in Europe where energy efficiency is thriving. The Emerald Isle’s temperate climate makes it perfectly suited for freeair cooling, which uses approximately 40% less electricity than typical cooling methods. In addition to energy efficiency, Ireland is a leader in sustainable energy – 26% of the energy that Ireland produced in 2016 came from sustainable sources.

It also possesses the third-highest wind penetration in the world. In fact, Ireland has set a target of having 40% of all its energy generated from renewable sources by 2020. It’s quite ambitious, but completely reachable.

Interxion’s efficient and sustainable facilities have changed the conversation around data centres. Once feared as a source of pollution, data centres are now embraced for their energy contributions to surrounding communities. Enterprises that wish to boost their business in energyconscious Europe have also embraced data centres equipped with green technology. With such enormous benefits to the data centre industry, environment, and local communities, adopting a green energy initiative such as Interxion’s is the way forward for data centres. » INTERXION, INTERXION.COM

March 2019 | 15

MEET ME ROOM: MATT GEORGE

DIGITAL OR DIE FROM HOW DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS CHANGING THE BUSINESS LANDSCAPE TO THE INFLUENCE OF 80S SYNTH-POP BAND DEPECHE MODE, DCNN TALKS TO MATT GEORGE, CONTENT AND DIGITAL MEDIA SPECIALIST AT EQUINIX.

18 | March 2019

MEET ME ROOM: MATT GEORGE

What were you doing before you joined Equinix and how did you first get involved in the industry?

My journey to Equinix came via a career spent largely in the media and broadcast sector in a variety of senior marketing and business development roles at Sky, BT and Flextech (now Virgin Media). I also spent four years as a consultant – which was how I landed my initial role at Equinix. I specialise in the content and digital media sector, but as digital transformation affects every industry, my role has now broadened to cover all enterprise markets.

What is the main motivation in the work that you do?

Equinix sits in the middle of the key elements supporting digital transformation – cloud enablement, interconnection, edge data – so to be working in this changing landscape is both exciting and challenging.

In addition, every customer or prospect I engage with is at a different stage of this journey, so no two conversations are ever the same.

In addition to earning a living, how else has your career created value in your life?

My career has brought me travel and education. In my experience, if you can observe how both cultures and businesses operate around the world, you gain a much broader perspective. I have also seen at close hand how an industry sector (media and broadcast) has had to innovate and adapt, just in the span of my career – rapid change is upon us and it’s fascinating.

Which major issues do you see dominating the data/comms industry over the next 12 months?

Sourcing new talent and retraining to support the requirements of digital transformation has got to be a focus for industry players. Every industry is affected by transformation but some of the more risk-averse industries with significant legacy attachments are going to struggle in this area. If technology changes then people need to change their ways as well.

SOURCING NEW TALENT AND RETRAINING TO SUPPORT THE REQUIREMENTS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION HAS GOT TO BE A FOCUS FOR INDUSTRY PLAYERS

March 2019 | 19

MEET ME ROOM: MATT GEORGE

What gives you the greatest sense of achievement?

I have been fortunate enough to be directly involved in some of the most exciting developments in the media and broadcast landscape – cable TV in the UK, launch of PVR with TiVo, Sky HD, IPTV at BT Vision, and now interconnection via Equinix. Seeing all that first-hand has been very satisfying.

What are your company’s aims for the next 12 months?

Equinix is a company always looking to grow and the opportunity that lies ahead is enormous. Most recently we announced a partnership with Omantel that will allow us to enter Muscat, Oman, kicking off from Q2 2019. Not only is this a new market for Equinix, its strategic location will give us access to a wealth of opportunities in the Middle East.

In addition to this, we will continue to develop and promote the different offerings of our global interconnection platform. 2019 will be the year that all three of the regions we are present in will be connected via Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric), meaning that through a single port, customers can connect to anyone at Equinix, regardless of their location, taking advantage of scalability and agility, securely connecting to partners all over the world.

Other than family, what is your most treasured possession?

I have a team poster of Tottenham Hotspur from 1974, A3 size. It’s signed by legends like Martin Chivers, Martin Peters, Pat Jennings and several players sadly no longer with us – Alan Gilzean and Cyril Knowles to name but two.

Favourite: Book? Film?

TV show? Singer/band?

I’m probably showing my age here, but I am a big Depeche Mode fan. I first saw them at a small club in Basildon in the early 80s and most recently in Bilbao on their last world tour. They have survived a long way from those synth-pop days with ‘sun-in’ dyed hair. Music truly provides a soundtrack to your life, and they play mine.

What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given?

‘Listen.’ My father said that if someone meets you, and even if you may not have said much, they will remember that you have had a great conversation – just because you let them speak. » EQUINIX, EQUINIX.CO.UK

“EVERY INDUSTRY IS AFFECTED BY TRANSFORMATION BUT SOME OF THE MORE RISK-AVERSE INDUSTRIES WITH SIGNIFICANT LEGACY ATTACHMENTS ARE GOING TO STRUGGLE.”

20 | March 2019

AI GONE AWRY: GP-2

AI SO GO IT’S DANG C

AN AI BOT INTENDED TO PREDICT THE NEXT WORD IN A SENTENCE CAN CONVINCINGLY ‘WRITE’ ENT

ould you tell the difference between a real news article written by a human and a fabricated one written using artificial intelligence (AI)?

You’d think so, wouldn’t you – and therein lies the danger.

22 | March 2019

With the future being shaped by progressive technologies – the longanticipated arrival of 5G, the IoT and, of course, AI – moving towards a hyperconnected world was never going to be without its difficulties. In this month’s AI Gone Awry column we take a look at the ethical conundrum that OpenAI, a technology non-profit organisation co-founded

by Elon Musk, found itself in.

AI GONE AWRY: GP-2

OOD, GEROUS

TIRE PASSAGES ON A GIVEN SUBJECT. IN FACT, IT IS SO GOOD, CREATORS WILL NOT RELEASE IT.

ELON MUSK, WHO BACK IN 2014 WARNED “WE ARE SUMMONING THE DEMON WITH AI,” TURNED TO TWITTER TO CLARIFY HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH OPENAI.

AN EERILY HUMAN TEXT GENERATOR

OpenAI, the open research company which aims to build AI tools for good, recently experimented with an AI text generator it built called GPT-2 (a successor of its GPT). The latest was trained to predict the next word in a sentence, and it far exceeded the company’s expectations

March 2019 | 23

AI GONE AWRY: GP-2

TRAINING THE SOFTWARE The OpenAI researchers trained the GPT-2 software using 40GB of data pulled from eight million web pages – 10 times the amount of data used for the first iteration of GPT. The dataset was pulled together by trolling through Reddit and selecting links to articles that had more than three upvotes. Though the software had trouble with ‘highly technical or esoteric types of content’, when it came to more controversial subjects it generated ‘reasonable samples’ 50% of the time.

CONVINCING NEWS STORY TEXT GENERATED BY GPT-2

when it started producing plausible passages matching both the style and subject of text it was given.

In fact, it was so eerily good at mimicking the human language that the company has pumped the brakes on the research altogether; expressing fears that, if made publicly available, the tool could be used to mass-produce fake news.

SOFTWARE OUT FOR A SPIN The accuracy of the content produced by the ‘unsupervised’ AI text generator was quick to be verified by The Guardian’s Alex Hern, who aptly fed it the opening line of George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four – “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”.

The system, recognising the vaguely futuristic tone and novelistic style, continued with, “I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the keys in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science.”

Challenging its newspaper prose next, Hern fed the AI-based text generator an article about Brexit, GPT-2s continuation of the article came back replete with quotes from Jeremy Corbyn, mentions of the Irish border and answers from the prime minister’s spokesman.

In testing, Hern corroborated that OpenAI’s GPT-2 rarely showed any of the ‘quirks’ that other AI-based text generators have, such as forgetting what it is writing about half-way through.

GPT-2, described by its maker as chameleon like, also constructed believable fake news stories on singer/songwriter Miley Cyrus and produced answers to homework questions on the US Civil war.

Though OpenAI is now going against its remit of pushing AI forward and concealing GPT-2 for the foreseeable future, it does create rather a lot of uncertainty for what an AI-based future will look like. If GPT2 was created using 40GB of data from eight million pages on Reddit, what could a prospective AI-based text generator – with no limits on data or compromise on quality of output – be capable of? And, how do we prepare for what’s to come? » OPENAI, OPENAI.COM

24 | March 2019

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OPINION: INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION

MAKING INTELLIGENT TRANSFORMAT A REALITY FAILURE TO EMBRACE INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION COULD LEAVE A BUSINESS FALLING BY THE WAYSIDE. SCOTT DODDS, CEO, ULTIMA, EXPLAINS WHY AND HOW COMPANIES SHOULD

W

APPROACH THEIR AUTOMATION JOURNEY.

e’re entering a period of exponential change in business. If enterprises don’t move from legacy technology systems to modernise, automate and innovate they will be swept away by digital rivers. While it remains unclear where artificial intelligence (AI) will lead us, what we do know is

30 | March 2019

companies must embrace new digital technologies, or risk being outperformed by competitors.

The cloud means all businesses can scale as and when they like. Combine this with the likes of IoT, which brings hyperconnectivity, and the speed of change accelerates dramatically. Automation will drive productivity and competitive advantage.

But how should companies approach their digital transformation, and what technologies should they be embracing?

OPINION: INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION

ATION

March 2019 | 31

OPINION: INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION

ONE STEP AT A TIME A sound approach is to build your intelligent automation capability in incremental steps, propagating the culture of intelligent automation over time. As RPA (robotic process automation) continues to gain pace in UK businesses, recent industry successes make this a good place to start your journey to fully embrace AI. RPA is the process of using software robots to automate mundane, repetitive tasks. Once these are automated, companies can look at moving to more complex AI-based automation.

For example, using visual and cognitive intelligence to deliver more advanced automation that draws information from multiple sources and interprets it to deliver improved business intelligence.

But how do we get from here to there?

Enterprises need to look practically at their infrastructure, workforce and security, and consider what they need to change to enable their business to be set on a positive path to digital transformation.

Take infrastructure to start with. In an ideal world your employees would have secure access and data sharing wherever they are located, as this offers enormous benefits to performance and productivity.

There are a whole host of technologies available from leading companies like Microsoft, VMWare and Citrix that allow secure and easy access to your business applications and data irrespective of location and device. Working with a managed services partner to ensure you have the right combination of technology to allow you to create a successful modern workspace will allow you to operate on a ‘pay-as-yougo’ model. Here you pay, per user, per month and can scale up as appropriate and take advantage of software upgrades without spending vast amounts of capital.

Part of your digital transformation is likely to involve moving your data from on-

32 | March 2019

premise servers to the cloud. By engaging with a cloud services provider you remove the burden on IT and improve business agility by allowing you to provision apps and desktops faster. And, you will benefit from the latest security features and management functionality of a modern operating system like Windows 10 that won’t go out of support.

Once your infrastructure and security is sorted, the real fun can begin. Right now, enterprises can automate many of their key business processes using RPA. Combined with artificial intelligence-based technologies, the use cases for process automation are even wider, and provide even greater returns.

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OPINION: INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION

INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION USE CASES One training provider that takes up to 400,000 first line calls annually is using speechbots to answer calls and leverage RPA to verify the caller. This has resulted in reduced operational expenditure in the call centre by 50% and increased efficiency.

A large car dealership is automating new and used car ordering from the manufacturer PoV in seven dealerships to improve operational productivity and customer experience, saving £210,000 per year for that one process alone.

Organising legal documents around correspondence, evidence, witness statements, case precedent and indexing using RPA has resulted in a monthly saving of £16,500 for one law firm. Their payback on the initial investment was achieved in just over six months.

RISES DON’T MOVE FROM

ECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS

RNISE, AUTOMATE AND

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DIGITAL RIVERS.”

LOOKING AHEAD The next level of digital transformation will be to move from intelligent automation to artificial intelligence. Paul Daugherty, CTO Accenture and co-author of Human+Machine, articulated that you need to: “Initially focus on developing the full potential of your employees by applying automation to routine work; then you can proceed to concentrate on human-machine collaboration.”

In terms of outcomes for business, intelligent automation is going to lead to increased productivity through better business intelligence and collaboration, and improved workforce engagement – staff will work on more valuable and interesting projects. Efficiency will improve through process automation, reduced building estate, more intelligent workplaces and automated services. Compliance will improve with automated controls and digital rights management. All this will be driven by RPA, analytics, chatbots, cognitive services and IoT. The end result will be improved quality of service for customers and repeat business leading to better profitability.

It’s a certainty that automation and AI in business will become all pervasive.

Companies will be able to sift through huge data pools and analyse them to provide a level of insight and knowledge about their businesses that humans alone couldn’t do. Automated machines will collate vast amounts of data and AI systems will understand it. By coupling two different systems – one capable of automatically collecting incredible amounts of data, the other that can intelligently make sense of that information – individuals and businesses will become more powerful.

Right now, we are just at the beginning of the intelligent transformation journey, so why not join? » ULTIMA, ULTIMA.COM

March 2019 | 33

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB LAST WEEK THE WORLD WIDE WEB OFFICIALLY TURNED 30 YEARS OLD, AND IN THOSE LAST 30 YEARS NOTHING HAS HAD MORE OF AN IMPACT ON HUMAN CIVILISATION. IT HAS GIVEN US ACCESS TO MORE INFORMATION THAN WE KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH AND HAS CONNECTED ALL CORNERS OF THE GLOBE, BUT HOW DID IT GET HERE AND WHAT ARE THE MAJOR MILESTONES IN ITS CREATION? HERE, JORDAN O’BRIEN WILL TAKE YOU BACK IN TIME AND SHOWCASE THE IMPORTANT MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB.

28 | March 2019

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

NOVEMBER 1990

MARCH 12, 1989 The World Wide Web was born on March 12, 1989 at CERN in Geneva.

Its inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, submitted a paper to his bosses titled ‘Information Management: A Proposal’ and described it as ‘a large hypertext database with typed links.’ At the time few realised the impact it could have on the world, with feedback from bosses at CERN simply stating, ‘vague, but exciting…’.

Having received approval from CERN bosses, Tim BernersLee debuted the world’s first web server using a newly-acquired NeXT workstation. The first website hosted on the server can still be found today at info.cern.ch. It was at this time BernersLee came up with the name ‘World Wide Web’, having considered other options such as ‘Information Mesh’, ‘The Information Mine’ or ‘Mine of Information’.

DECEMBER 12, 1991 The World Wide Web finally goes global, as North America’s first website goes online. Paul Kunz from Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, or SLAC, had been mesmerised by the web since he saw a demonstration

by Berners-Lee in September 1991; rushing back to Stanford to help it grow outside of Europe.

DECEMBER 25, 1990 Tim Berners-Lee released the first successful build of a web browser called WorldWideWeb. This was not only the world’s first web browser, but it was also the first WYSIWYG HTML editor. At this time the web browser was only available to those working at CERN, and the only web server in the world also existed within the organisation’s Geneva HQ.

March 2019 | 29

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

APRIL 30, 1993 Arguably the biggest milestone in the proliferation of the World Wide Web came on April 30, 1993 when CERN made the source code of the WorldWideWeb available on a royalty-free basis and also decided that anyone could use the web protocol. This represented the first time that anyone with a computer could access the web.

1993

APRIL 1994

SE

With 500 web servers globally to browse by October 1993, this year saw an explosion in interest in the World Wide Web. Major websites saw their first launch in 1993, including Bloomberg.com, the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), MTV, and Wired.com. All these would become easily accessible thanks to the launch of the Mosaic web browser, which was available on Windows, Macintosh and on the X Window System. By the end of the year, the World Wide Web accounted for 1% of all internet traffic despite having only been invented four years prior.

Stanford Federal Credit Union became the first financial institution in the world to offer online banking on a fully-fledged website. It would take a further two years for the next bank to follow suit, with Finland’s OP Financial Group coming online in 1996, being the first bank in Europe to do so. 20 years after Stanford FCU’s first foray into online banking, mobile-only challenger banks would launch in the UK from Starling Bank and Monzo in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

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MAY 12, 1996 Noticing the significance of the World Wide Web, the Internet Archive was formed in San Francisco, California. Its Wayback Machine promised to archive billions of pages of the web to ensure that they are preserved for future generations. The Wayback Machine currently contains hundreds of billions of web captures in its archives, and continues to grow each day.

30 | March 2019

APRIL 14, 1996

JANUARY 1,

College student Jennifer Kaye Ringley turns on her webcam and begins broadcasting to the world through her website ‘JenniCam’.

This website showcased Ringley’s entire life, including her sleeping, working, masturbating and even having sex.

The success of the website spawned an entire industry of adult webcam sites, such as Chat Roulette, Cam4 and LiveJasmin.

Thanks to the inv of JavaScript, the was more interac than ever. That interactivity would a whole new leve January 1, 1996, w Macromedia unve the Flash Player f browsers. This en users to view rich multimedia conte as streaming aud video; it also sign the beginning of online gaming bo its height, Flash P was installed on m than a billion com

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

EPTEMBER 1994

th the web beginning proliferate, it was me for standards to introduced. With pport from the Defense vanced Research ojects Agency (DARPA) d the European mmission, Tim Bernerse founded the World de Web Consortium 3C) while at the assachusetts Institute Technology. It was cided at the time that e standards would be sed on royalty-free chnology so that it could adopted by anyone.

1994 In addition to a standardsbased web, 1994 represented the rise of some of the biggest names in search. In January, Jerry Yang and David Filo announced, ‘Jerry and David’s guide to the World Wide Web’. This was an online directory of other pages organised by category. This was later renamed ‘Yahoo!’ in March. Lycos was also officially founded in 1994, having begun life as a university project. The search engine launched with $2m worth of venture capital funding and had a catalogue of 54,000 documents when it first launched, although a month later it had crawled more than 390,000 documents. This was also the year that the first online purchase was made for a pepperoni pizza with mushrooms and extra cheese from Pizza Hut.

, 1996

1995

vention e web ctive

The World Wide Web was a massive success, and 1995 represents the beginning of the dot-com boom. Investors were spending a considerable amount of money investing in web-based companies, hoping to capitalise on its success.

It resulted in insane records on the stock market, such as when theGlobe.com issued its IPO in 1998. The initial target stock price was $9, but the first trade was for $87 with the price subsequently climbing to $97. The dot-com boom also led to the founding of the world’s first online dating site, Match.com.

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DECEMBER 4, 1995

JULY 16, 1995 & SEPTEMBER 3, 1995

One of the key components to the modern web is JavaScript, and it was introduced to the public as part of Netscape Navigator 2.0 beta 3 in December 1995. The name confused many at first, with some wondering whether or not it was an off-shoot of the Java programming language – which it wasn’t.

Online shopping would never be the same after these two dates in 1995. Amazon launched its online bookstore to the world on July 16 with the intention of making a profit in five years. It took just two months for the company to generate $20,000 a week in revenue, and it eventually went public just a year later. eBay was also founded in 1995, having swung open the doors to its online auction site on September 3. The site began as AuctionWeb before being rebranded as eBay two years later.

March 2019 | 31

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

JUNE 14, 1996 While it’s common in 2019 to Google your symptoms and find out whether you should seek medical attention, this idea was born on June 14, 1996.

WebMD officially launched its service on this date offering numerous services from the latest news surrounding the health profession to a symptom checklist.

JANUARY 1, 2000 Google would gain some international competition as China’s Baidu launches its first search engine using the RankDex site-scoring algorithm for ranking its results.

The firm would go on to be one of the most trafficked websites in the world, and by far the largest search engine in Mainland China.

32 | March 2019

AUGUST 13, 1996

OCTOBER 22, 1996

Internet Explorer 3.0 launches for Windows 95 and is a free application available on every system running the software. The huge success of Internet Explorer 3.0 would signal the beginning of the Browser war, which threatened the dominance of the Netscape Navigator browser – which at this point held 90% marketshare.

Microsoft’s deal with Apple made Internet Explorer the default web browser for Mac OS in 1997, effectively killing off Netscape’s ability to compete and leading to the company’s decline.

While it wasn’t the first company to offer the ability to book holidays online, Expedia quickly became the most notable thanks to its ownership by Microsoft.

Expedia set the standard for online travel agency websites, and eventually would be replicated many times over. In the same year, European-based Booking. com would also launch; with Expedia passing up on the opportunity to buy Booking. com in 2002. Booking. com now represents one of Expedia’s biggest competitors.

DECE 1996

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JULY 12, 1999 The Walt Disney Company became the latest organisation to get in on the dot-com boom. It acquired Infoseek, one of the world’s largest search engines and the default search engine for Netscape Navigator on July 12, 1999. The acquisition was made so that Disney could launch its own search engine and portal to compete with the likes of Yahoo. That search engine would launch as Go.com in January 1999, although it would last just two years before its internal search features would be axed in favour of results from GoTo.com.

The Go network would eventually become a platform in which Disney hosted its own-brand websites.

1998

Where would we be now without the inven time before 1998, when the search engine the company had its beginnings in 1996, wh crawling the web, but it wasn’t until 1998 tha serious threat to the old search engines. By index of more than 60 million webpages an which ranked pages based on the number praised for having the most accurate search Google’s earliest investors include Jeff Bez

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

EMBER 17,

AUGUST 29, 1997

a year after oduction of ript, CSS would de an official rd by the World Web Consortium. nabled the tion of tation and t, which allowed evelopers to e inventive eir layout It also reduced exity and on when it o developing ages.

Traditional media may not have known it at the time, but on August 29, 1997, a company was born that would completely change the media landscape. Netflix began life as a mail order company, offering its customers easy access to the latest and greatest DVDs; a format that had only launched in the US earlier that year. Netflix didn’t begin trading to the public until April the following year, but would eventually become one of the biggest names in streaming media, killing off the likes of Blockbuster Video.

1996 1996 represented one of the first times users could access webmail from a company outside of their ISP, with the launch of Hotmail. Hotmail would later be acquired by Microsoft in 1997. The autumn of 1996 also saw the release of the world’s first viral video, a dancing baby that can still be viewed until this day.

ntion of Google? Well, we’d be in a was officially founded. Technically hen Larry Page’s web crawler began at the company would represent a y the end of the year, Google had an nd thanks to its PageRank algorithm, of backlinks. The search engine was h results on the market. Some of zos, the founder of Amazon.

DECEMBER 1998 Confinity Inc. was founded in Silicon Valley on December 1998, eventually merging with online banking firm X.com two years later. The two companies came together to form a new online payments system called PayPal, with Elon Musk at the helm of the combined entity. He was eventually ousted in October 2000, with Peter Thiel taking over. Just two years after Musk’s ousting, PayPal sold its payments platform to eBay for $1.5 billion. Of the 50 employees who worked on PayPal from the beginning, just 12 remained after four years under eBay’s ownership, with many moving on to establish new companies. Those companies would include YouTube, Tesla Motors, SpaceX, Palantir and Yelp.

JANUARY 17, 1998 Blogging becomes a global phenomenon after The Drudge Report releases an explosive exposé into then-President Bill Clinton’s affair with a 23-yearold intern, Monica Lewinsky. The report exposes the President’s sexual relationship with the staffer, as well as the fact that Newsweek magazine had killed the story.

March 2019 | 33

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

FEBRUARY, 2000

JANUARY 10, 2000 AOL announced its intention to purchase Time Warner for $165 billion, making it the second largest acquisition in human history. At the time AOL said that it would signal the start of the internet companies being the ones to purchase old media, rather than the other way around. It would turn out to be one of the biggest failures in corporate history, with the combined entity announcing a colossal loss of $123.16 billion just two years later.

Online travel agents had been established many years prior to February 2000, but this year would represent the birth of a brand that had the power to make or break a business in the travel industry. TripAdvisor began as a place to disseminate official information from guidebooks, but also offered the ability for people to leave their own reviews, and it turns out that visitors flocked to the website to leave their reviews. Now, everyone in the travel industry fears a bad review on TripAdvisor, and some hotels have gone so far as to bribe their guests to ensure they get a good review.

FEBRUARY 4, 2004 Social networking would be changed forever on February 4, 2004, thanks to the efforts of one man in his Harvard dorm room. That man was Mark Zuckerberg, and on this day, he released the first version of TheFacebook. com, an online website for students to connect with fellow alumni. The site would later expand outside of universities and become the largest social network in the world with more than 2.2 billion active users; nearly a third of the globe’s total population.

34 | March 2019

SEPTEMB 2002

2003 This year can easily be defined as the year that music became more accessible than ever before, thanks to Apple’s launch of the iTunes music store, as well as the debut of the first dominant social network – MySpace. This year also represented the birth of LinkedIn and WordPress.

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HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

MARCH 10, 2000

OCTOBER 23, 2000

NOVEMBER, 2000

The dot-com boom reaches its peak, with the NASDAQ index peaking at 5,048. At the market’s peak companies such as Dell and Cisco placed huge sell orders on their stocks, sparking panic selling among investors. It took just weeks for the stock market to lose 10% of its value and for the investment capital to dry up. It took just one year for web companies worth hundreds of millions of companies to declare bankruptcy or to sell; in fact, by the end of 2001, trillions of dollars of investment had simply disappeared.

In the same year that Google found new competition on the other side of the planet, the company had also found a product that could generate it some serious cash. On October 23, 2000, Google AdWords was born and it offered advertisers the ability to beat the PageRank system simply by stumping up some cash for prominence against relevant keywords. The Google AdWords platform would become so successful that it would generate $100 billion in annual revenue for Google in 2018.

At a conference in China, dubbed Security China 2000, the Chinese government unveiled the biggest threat to the World Wide Web – the Great Firewall. It was revealed as the Golden Shield Project and was designed to ensure that those in China could only surf the parts of the web that the Chinese government wanted them to surf. It initially blocked certain domain names and IP addresses, but grew in subsequent years to begin blocking entire keywords – eradicating any criticism of China or promotion of western values.

BER 23,

ape Navigator largely by 2002, but e firm had a having made its public in 1998 creation of the ct. On September e Mozilla project the efforts of programmers veloped a new ake on Internet s browser would refox, and it was wser successful for nternet Explorer’s n the market.

2001 Responsive web design officially made its debut in late 2001 with the relaunched Audi.com website.

The site was the first to feature a layout that adapted to the browser viewport width, although limited support for dynamic resizing meant users had to refresh the page to take advantage of the new layout in Netscape Navigator; no such issue existed for Internet Explorer.

JANUARY 15, 2001 The world’s information became easier to access than ever before thanks to the introduction of Wikipedia. This wasn’t the first time that an online encyclopaedia of knowledge was proposed, but it was by far the most successful.

That’s thanks to the support of the general public, who are still able to edit the site to this day to ensure that it is always the most up-to-date source of knowledge.

2000 Message boards would be changed forever in 2000 thanks to the release of vBulletin. This made it easier than ever to build a fullyfledged forum and led to an explosion of message boards covering just about any subject you could think of. Whether it was Habbo Hotel or audiovisual technology, there was a forum for everything.

March 2019 | 35

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

FEBRUARY 10, 2004 Facebook may have launched with the intention of connecting friends, but just six days later one of the bestknown websites for sharing photographs officially came online.

Flickr began life as a chat room with real-time photo exchange capabilities but would eventually become a site simply dedicated to sharing photos. These days it’s most popular amongst the photographer community.

APRIL 1, 2004

FEBRUARY 8, 2005

Having revolutionised the search engine market and reaping the rewards through a successful ad platform, Google would then turn its attention to email. The company debuted Gmail on April 1, 2004, offering a huge 1GB of storage space. The service would launch as a beta and not exit that beta stage until July 7, 2009, although by that time it had become the number one webmail service in the world.

You can trace the death of traditional maps back to February 8, 2005. While there were other web-based mapping services available at the time, the release of Google Maps signalled the death knell for paper maps.

Google Maps initially launched in the US, but debuted in the UK just two months later. Nearly every corner of each country was available on the service, and the company was even quick to update its satellite maps – updating the satellite imagery of New Orleans soon after Hurricane Katrina to allow users to view the aftermath of the disaster for themselves.

MARCH 19, 2007

MAY 25, 2007 Google Maps had changed the face of mapping in 2005, but it wouldn’t be until 2007 when it got its killer feature – Google Street View. This allowed users to see exactly what their destination looked like, ensuring that they were in the right place. On the same day, one of the world’s biggest pornographic websites debuted to the public. PornHub promised to revolutionise adult videos in the same way that YouTube had revolutionised the non-adult video market. It allowed the general public to upload videos, as well as professional porn studios to share their content with the site’s growing viewership.

36 | March 2019

Following the success of YouTube in 2005 and JenniCam in 1996, Justin. tv was launched on March 19, 2007.

While it offered the ability to view adult content, it wasn’t the site’s main focus. In fact, despite launching the careers of many successful lifecasters, the true success of Justin.tv was in its ability to live stream gaming content.

This allowed viewers from all over the world to watch other people playing games, and to get tips and tricks on how they themselves could complete a level or improve their score in a particular game. The gaming concept was so successful that Justin.tv would later spin it off into its own service, dubbed Twitch.tv. That would then be acquired by Amazon in August 2014.

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HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

PRIL 23, 2005 MAY 30, 2005

cessing the World Wide Web came easier and faster than ever May 30, 2005. For the first time er, broadband overtook dial-up as most popular way of connecting to internet and finally meant that most ers accessing the World Wide Web re boasting speeds in the Mbps, her than Kbps. That technological ft meant it was finally possible to tch streaming video online without rrying about non-stop buffering, and nkfully, a streaming video site had nched just one month earlier. On ril 23, 2005, YouTube officially gained first video dubbed ‘Me at the zoo’. ogle would acquire the company e year later for more than $1 billion.

JUNE 23, 2005

JUNE 28, 2005

In the same year that broadband connections became the most common form of connecting to the internet and streaming video became easily accessible to millions of web users, the self-described ‘front page of the Internet’ debuted to the public.

Reddit became a place where users could discuss current events, share articles, videos, and just about anything they wanted to in one public forum.

Accessing information was easier than ever thanks to the likes of vBulletin forums, Reddit and Wikipedia. That didn’t stop the launch of Yahoo! Answers in June 2005, which was a community-driven question and answer website. It allowed users to ask whatever question was on their mind and then receive an answer from someone else in the world. The site was plagued by trolls and led to the creation of Quora in June 2009, with Quora promising a better Q&A experience.

APRIL 23, 2006

MARCH 21, 2006

Back in 1999, the music industry had to contend with the launch of Napster; a service that allowed millions of people to illegally download songs. The industry reacted by allowing its tracks to be more accessible on services such as the iTunes music store, but that didn’t exactly do enough to stop the pirating of content. In 2006, Swedish native Daniel Ek formed a company called ‘Spotify.’ While it wouldn’t launch to the public until two years later, the premise was to offer web users the ability to stream songs legally for one monthly fee, of which the record labels would receive a cut.

Just as Facebook had reinvented the social network, microblogging would become a major player in the world of social media in 2006. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and current CEO, sends the world’s first tweet, which read ‘just setting up my twttr’. The initial premise was to allow users to share information in just 140 characters, or the length of an SMS, and the format was a huge success. It reached critical success at the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference, where it streamed messages from the service on two 60in plasma screens, allowing conference goers to contribute to the conversation surrounding the event.

NOVEMBER 14, 2005 The World Wide Web had mainly been about contributing or consuming content up until 2005, but then on November 14, 2005, the best-known platform for measuring web users officially launched to the public. Known as Google Analytics it gave website owners detailed information about who was visiting their site, where they were from, and what they were viewing. It also deeply integrated with Google AdWords.

March 2019 | 37

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

JUNE 1, 2007

JUNE 29, 2007

Throughout the internet’s history, sharing files was typically done by FTP or email. On June 1, 2007, that completely changed. Dropbox promised to offer a cloud storage service where users could upload just about any file they wanted to and then download that on a different device, or share it with someone else. It quickly spawned copycat services, such as Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.

Accessing the World Wide Web was technically possible on a myriad of devices, but personal computers remained the most popular device for surfing the web. That was all set to change on June 29, 2007, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, a touchscreen device with multi-touch gestures and a fully-fledged Safari web browser. Unlike many other browsers of the time, however, the iPhone failed to support Adobe’s Flash Player, meaning many websites were unsupported.

DECEMBER 14, 2009 Consuming content on a mobile phone had become popular since the release of the iPhone back in 2007 and the slew of Android phones that followed, but slow speeds meant that it wasn’t always the best experience. Fortunately, on December 14, 2009, that was all set to change, as 4G mobile broadband was switched on for the first time in Stockholm and Oslo. This enabled users to watch streaming video on their phones without having to worry about buffering.

38 | March 2019

MAY 28, 2009 Following the failed purchase of Yahoo a year earlier, Microsoft announced its latest attempt at competing with Google in the search engine market. Bing would eventually solidify its spot as the third largest search engine in the world, still far behind Google and Baidu but ahead of Yahoo.

Coincidentally, Yahoo’s search is now powered

by Bing.

DECEMBER 13, 2007 Netflix introduced its first video on demand service in early 2007, but it wasn’t the only company hoping to offer easy access to traditional media. The BBC debuted iPlayer as an early Christmas present to British viewers, giving them access to a wealth of TV content from the last seven days of broadcasts. The platform became a huge success within its first year of operation.

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MARCH 25, 2009

SEPTEM 2008

The biggest change in dating since the mid 90s took place on March 25, 2009. That’s thanks to the launch of a new hyperlocal dating app for the gay community called Grindr. The app used the GPS signal on the user’s phone and displayed a list of guys nearby based on their proximity. While the app was billed as a revolutionary dating app at the time, it has since been described as a ‘hook-up’ app.

Despite Mo to challenge of Internet E to ever eclip market shar 2, 2008, ho was launche eventually b most popula in the world be the brow Microsoft in Internet Exp browser wa Chrome, an on the Web engine that with Apple’s

UARY 22, 2008

eb was on course to e forever on January 08. That was the day e World Wide Web rtium announced the oposals for HTML5. t wouldn’t be formally ed until six years later, 5 would be the largest to the HyperText p Language that the basis of the Wide Web since ation. It introduced p and APIs for ex web applications, en removed the or Flash Player for ing media.

MBER 2,

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HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

FEBRUARY 1, 2008 Google’s dominance in the web space was being felt by more established rivals, in particular Microsoft.

In order to build up its online services arsenal, Microsoft announced its intention to purchase Yahoo for $44.6 billion.

Ultimately, the deal never came to fruition as the two could not agree on a purchase price.

JULY 10, 2008 The doors swung open to Apple’s App Store on iOS, and led to the flood of web-based applications.

Services previously unheard of in the web space proliferated on the platform and led to the likes of Uber, Instagram and more.

AUGUST 11, 2008 Would you like to make money from putting an airbed in your living room and renting it out over the web? Well, that was the concept behind Airbedandbreakfast.com that launched on August 11, 2008. The site would eventually rebrand to Airbnb.com a year later, and would completely turn the lodging industry on its head. Instead of concentrating on airbeds, the company allowed users to offer spare rooms for short-term rent on their platform. It allowed people to avoid the cost of hotels, while simultaneously contributing to paying off the homeowner’s mortgage. The site has evolved from simply offering spare bedrooms to offering a whole slate of lodging solutions, including apartments, houses, igloos, castles, boats and even private islands.

March 2019 | 39

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

OCTOBER 16, 2009 The whole world was transfixed as news spread across the web that a six-year-old boy was trapped in a runaway helium balloon over Colorado.

The story turned out to be a hoax, demonstrating how the World Wide Web could be used to disseminate false information quickly and effectively.

JULY, 2010

OCTOBER 6, 2010

With Airbnb promising to shakeup the lodging industry in 2008, Uber came on the scene in 2010 to transform transportation.

The company would allow anyone in the world to sign up and be a taxi driver as long as they had a driving licence and a suitable car. It offered passengers around the globe access to affordable direct transportation, while drivers got the opportunity to choose their hours and earn extra cash on top of other jobs. The company has since expanded into autonomous vehicle development, bike sharing, food delivery and much more.

Facebook may have offered a convenient way for users to share their personal photos with friends, while Flickr was great for showing off professional quality photographs, but Instagram identified a gap in the market.

It wanted to offer an app that would allow iPhone users to showcase the very best photos taken using the iPhone camera, and would even offer ways of improving those photos through filters. The app was released on October 6, 2010, and would become a huge success. Facebook would eventually acquire the app in 2012 for $1 billion.

DECEMBER 1, 2014 The UK became the latest country to announce plans to censor the World Wide Web. The Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014 introduced a series of restrictions on pornography, recommending that porn sites require the input of passport details in order to verify a user’s age. The law also banned female ejaculation, humiliation, spanking beyond a gentle level, full bondage and being tied up. Porn actors were also forbidden from facesitting or fisting. The law is set to come into full effect in April 2019, with those wishing to view adult content being offered an £8.99 pass to bypass the porn block if they would rather not verify their age.

40 | March 2019

OCTOBER 17, 2013 Internet Explorer was once the dominant name in web browsers, but on October 17, 2013, the company released the final version of the software – Internet Explorer 11. The browser would eventually be replaced with Microsoft Edge in 2015, killing off the Internet Explorer brand.

JUNE 16, 2013

While the World Wide Web was available in pretty much every country across the globe, it didn’t mean everyone had access. In fact, those in remote areas had to rely on expensive and unreliable satellite broadband if they wanted to get connected. In June 18, 2013, the founders of Google wanted to change that through the use of hot air balloons.

The project was called Project Loon and laun was chosen for the test site. Despite being qu on to find commercial partners and is set to b areas by the end of 2019.

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

JANUARY 28, 2011 Despite the intention of the World Wide Web to remain open for everyone, the Egyptian government did the unthinkable on January 28, 2011.

Following criticisms of the government by many citizens on social media, Egypt saw its internet cut off with 10 of its largest ISPs without any traffic whatsoever. It’s estimated that 88% of Egyptian internet access was successfully shut down by the government.

nched as a test on June 16; New Zealand uirky for the times, Project Loon has gone bring an internet connection to Kenya’s rural

MARCH 14, 2011

JUNE 28, 2011

YouTube had created many viral hits in its six years of existence, including ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’, ‘Chocolate Rain’ and ‘Numa Numa’, but none reached the height of Rebecca Black’s Friday.

The video amassed more than 166 million views in just a few months and propelled Rebecca Black to stardom. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite the attention she was hoping for, with users on social media slating the music video for its poor lyrics and awful use of auto-tune.

Given the success of Facebook and Twitter in the social media space, and its dominance with just about any other online service, Google decided it wanted to launch its very own social media website. It marked the company’s fourth foray into social media, having previously announced Google Buzz, Google Friend Connect and Orkut, but it was also its most significant.

Google+ spread throughout the company’s entire portfolio, adding a social layer to Gmail, YouTube and just about every other service Google offered.

Ultimately, it would reach its demise on April 2, 2019.

2012

JULY, 2011

Facebook cemented its place as the dominant force in social media in 2012, having successfully signed up its one billionth user.

E-commerce was also a winner that year, having eclipsed $1 trillion in annual sales globally. The same year Facebook and e-commerce came out as winners, the World Wide Web almost lost its freedom after US congress proposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa). Both of these acts were designed to combat internet piracy, but instead threatened to censor the web. In protest, Wikipedia and Reddit went dark on January 18, 2012.

An iOS app named Picaboo launched onto the Apple App Store offering users the ability to share photos that would disappear after a set amount of time. In September that app would be rebranded as Snapchat, eventually becoming a major name in the social media space. As of February 2018, the app has 187 million daily active users.

March 2019 | 41

HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

FEBRUARY 26, 2015 The FCC ruled in favour of net neutrality by adopting Title II (common carrier) of the Communications Act of 1934 and Section 706 of the Telecommunications act of 1996 to the Internet. Unfortunately, that would not see the end of the debate.

With the election of President Donald Trump came new attacks on net neutrality, with the President firmly opposed to a fair and open web.

2015

SEPTEMBER, 2017

In 2015, Sir Tim Berners-Lee proposed that the future of the World Wide Web be changed. His idea was for a decentralised web with the users themselves in control, rather than corporate monopolies or governments. The project is called Solid and is still being developed to this day, with BernersLee starting a new commercial entity called Inrupt in order to fund Solid’s development.

Given attempts to censor the web had hit the UK and US, it wasn’t entirely unexpected that the European Union would look at its own efforts to bring in censorship.

Despite having helped foster an open web, the European Union announced Article 13 of the Copyright Directive. This threatened to ban memes and user-generated content, although the EU defended it, citing it was needed to protect the original creator. Online juggernauts such as YouTube and Twitter have actively voiced opposition to the plans, with YouTube’s CEO noting it would ‘put the creative economy at risk.’

THE FUTURE… The World Wide Web has come a long way in its 30year history and it’s showing no signs of slowing down.

Rather than being the catalyst for new creations that it once was, however, the web has become a series of services controlled by a select few large corporations.

Email has gone from its own protocol to being intrinsically linked to the web thanks to Gmail, while Google also dominates search, mapping, analytics, video streaming and even online advertising.

It’s not just Google that owns the web that we know today. Facebook controls the most popular social media platforms, Amazon is the dominant force in e-commerce, and MindGeek controls the world of online adult entertainment. That’s not to say these firms don’t have competitors, but when they do, more often

42 | March 2019

than not those competitors are swallowed up by the bigger firms. Take Facebook for instance, it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to ensure that they couldn’t compete with Facebook’s own services.

No one knows where the web is going in the future, as that future is still very much uncertain. Sir Tim BernersLee may be trying to develop a decentralised web, but it’s unknown whether users will flock to it. Those large companies that dominate the web today could no longer exist in 10-15 years’ time, with some of those in government calling for them to be broken up; 2020 Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Warren is one such voice.

There’s no denying that the World Wide Web has transformed humanity into a golden era. The last 30 years have been defined by rapid human evolution and

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HISTORY: THE WORLD WIDE WEB

ECEMBER 6, 018

most 10 years after oogle unveiled its hrome browser, Microsoft dmitted defeat in the owser wars. Rather an simply shuttering browser business, crosoft decided to dopt Chromium in the evelopment of Microsoft dge. The company opes that the new hromium base for Edge ll put it back in the race, hough, as of publishing, e’re still waiting to e the results of the angeover.

MARCH 13, 2019 Verizon announced that it would make accessing high quality content on the web easier than ever thanks to the roll-out of 5G. The company confirmed that it would switch on its 5G network in April, with the Moto Z3 set to be the first phone compatible with the new network through a separately-sold 5G Moto Mod.

the World Wide Web has had a big role in that evolution.

Without its invention, who knows where we would be as a society today. The World Wide Web has given every human their own voice and the ability to share it en masse. That has led to some spectacular developments

surrounding both gay rights and women’s rights, and who knows whether we would have achieved such breakthroughs if it wasn’t for Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s creation in 1989. And for that, from all of us here at DCNN Magazine, we’d like to say thank you Tim.

March 2019 | 43

VPN

VERIFICATION BEFORE TRUS SCOTT GORDON CMO AT PULSE SECURE EXPLAINS WHY SECURE ACCESS TECHNOLOGIES ARE GAINING A WELCOMED BOOST AS ORGANISATIONS

S

DEMAND UBIQUITOUS CLOUD ACCESSIBILITY IN A ‘ZERO TRUST’ WORLD.

ecure access technologies continue to evolve and are a requirement for every business that connects people and devices with remote data centres and cloud resources. According to GlobalWebIndex, around a quarter of the world’s internet users will use a VPN at least once a month.

Yet meeting modern secure access requirements is increasingly complex and dynamic. Organisations are under growing pressure to support a mobile workforce while ensuring protected and compliant access. Resources are migrating to public and private cloud and users are demanding easy, 24/7 access to applications and information, regardless of their location.

This is prompting the move to a zero trust approach to secure access that requires ‘verification before trust’. This enforces stronger user and device authentication, granular access control, and enhanced segmentation no matter where the application and resources reside.

44 | March 2019

VPN REVAMP

To meet this demand for zero trust, VPN technology is gaining a bit of a facelift with the addition of a software defined perimeter (SDP) architecture that enhances the existing ability to create a secure communications channel between user and resources, with fortified layers of security and enhanced cloud access.

A typical SDP reference solution consists of three distinct components that enable secure connectivity, enforcement, and management. At the heart is the SDP controller that acts as the ‘control plane’, directing the permission of network traffic to specific applications and resources. It provides centralised policy management and AAA services, and acts as a trust broker between SDP client (requestor), certificate authority, identity providers, and SDP gateway (resource/application). It frequently checks security state against policy to determine if the connection should still be granted.

The SDP client enables user, device and security state verification, and receives routing authorisation to utilise a data plane to access whitelisted

WITH DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION ACCELERATING, SECURE ACCESS IS BEING REDEFINED

BY MOBILITY, BYOD, IOT AND CLOUD SERVICES.

VPN

ON ST applications in the data centre and in the cloud from the SDP controller.

The SDP gateway is at the other end of the ‘data plane’, transmitting network traffic to resources as specified by the SDP controller. It serves as a termination or access point for the mutual TLS connection from the SDP client and the protected application resources. The SDP gateway is the primary policy enforcement point in the data path.

ONE OF THE WAYS PULSE SECURE PROVIDES USERS A SIMPLE WAY TO SECURELY CONNECT TO APPLICATIONS AND RESOURCES IN THE DATA CENTRE AND CLOUD.

SDP yields a variety of benefits that includes reducing unauthorised access due to insecure or stolen credential. Users connected via an SDP-based process will only see and access the resources that have been defined in a centrally managed policy. It also enables greater app and resource segmentation through more granular resource access control.

This eliminates the means for a malware, privileged users or cyber attacker to gain unauthorised resource access or move laterally because everything else on the network is effectively undiscoverable.

However, it is important to note that SDP is not a panacea. The world is hybrid and many applications and resources are perimeter bound in the data centre. As such, SDP is not a replacement for VPN but rather an extended mode of secure access to enhance accessibility to an increasingly mobile and cloud-centric landscape. The move to VPN with SDP capabilities is growing with recent market research by analyst firm Technavio estimating the global software-defined perimeter market is expected to post a CAGR of over 34% from 2019-2023.

PULSE SECURE, PULSESECURE.NET

March 2019 | 45

VPNs

THE VPN WHO LOVED ME VPNS ARE A KEY TOOL IN SECURING A BUSINESS NETWORK, BUT THEY COULD ALSO BE A MAJOR WEAK POINT. TECHNOLOGY JOURNALIST JORDAN O’BRIEN HIGHLIGHTS HOW IMPORTANT IT IS

V

TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT VPN SOLUTION FOR YOUR BUSINESS.

38 | March 2019

PNs promise to protect the privacy of their users, but could using a VPN actually put you at risk of being spied on? This is a concern

being bandied about by two US senators, who have urgently asked the Department for Homeland Security to investigate foreign-based VPN apps for possible national security risks. They’re also calling for a ban on the use of VPNs by US government employees.

VPNs

Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Ron Wyden of Oregon believe that users who push their internet traffic through external servers outside of US jurisdiction could potentially be putting their privacy at risk.

While many users are trying to avoid their ISPs from snooping on them, they could actually be at risk of being snooped on by a foreign government. The worry is that VPN companies in other locales could be compelled to provide access to their servers to the jurisdictions they’re located in – which could mean US citizens are at risk of being spied on by the likes of China or Russia.

While both Rubio and Wyden didn’t cite any particular case that led to their concerns of VPN services; they’re not exactly wrong about the risks using VPNs could pose.

Private Internet Access became embroiled in a situation where its customers could have potentially been put at risk after the Russian government demanded that the company shared information about its users and seized control of its servers in the country. Thankfully, PIA chose to shut down its services in the country rather than complying with the order. Other VPN services may not opt to do the same.

WHAT ARE THE RISKS? Nearly all VPN services tout encryption, but what that actually means is that your internet traffic is encrypted between the VPN server and your device. The VPN server will then decrypt the data and send it on; that means that while your identity is private, your data might not be. If the endpoint expects plain text, then your data will be sent in plain text.

The only way to ensure encryption is to use encrypted services.

Just because a VPN service promises encryption doesn’t mean it actually offers it. Many free VPN services utilise weak protections for your data, and even if they do encrypt your data; their server is decrypting it. That means anyone with physical access

to those servers could potentially monitor your usage. What’s more, there’s nothing stopping the VPN servers from being tapped by foreign governments, and in areas with loose data privacy laws, the data centre operator may not be that concerned about keeping the servers secure.

WHAT CAN BUSINESSES DO TO PROTECT THEMSELVES? Businesses rely on the use of VPNs all the time; whether it’s for the sharing of sensitive data to other offices, or simply ensuring that competitors can’t spy on them. Given that security is the key reason for businesses using VPNs, what could Rubio and Wyden’s concerns surrounding their use mean? Well, it shouldn’t mean that the use of VPNs is outlawed, but instead it should mean that choosing the right VPN service is more important than ever.

Choosing a VPN service located in a country with relaxed data privacy laws should be the first red flag. It’s also important to use a service that uses end-to-end encryption and prides itself on security. Don’t just take their word for it, however, do your research, contact security companies and get their recommendations – don’t put your business at risk. If you’re truly concerned about security, you could even opt to run your own VPN service using an in-house server or VPS. Companies such as Cisco and Synology provide their own solutions for setting up a VPN that you can manage in-house.

March 2019 | 39

PROJECTS & AGREEMENTS

US CELLULAR SELECTS ERICSSON FOR 5G DEPLOYMENTS US Cellular, has signed a multi-year contract with Ericsson in order to support the deployment of its 5G network. Under the contract the Swedish vendor, which already has an existing relationship with the carrier, will provide 3GPP standards-based 5G New Radio (NR) hardware and software.

US Cellular says it will leverage Ericsson’s extensive 5G Portfolio and equipment to move from its LTE network to 5G, providing customers expanded coverage while simultaneously futureproofing its current network.

Michael Irizarry, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, US Cellular, commented, “We’re constantly working to ensure that our customers have access to the latest technology available. We value our longstanding relationship with Ericsson and are impressed with their 5G-ready portfolio. We also know Ericsson is committed to meeting our deployment timeline in order to bring 5G to our customers in the second half of 2019.”

50 | March 2019

The announcement followed the successful joint testing of various 5G use cases. The tests, a significant step toward the launch of a 5G network, were conducted in rural and suburban environments in Madison, Wisconsin. The companies tested virtual reality, augmented reality, advanced beamforming, massive MIMO, dynamic TDD, and large channel bandwidth under a variety of real-world conditions.

Niklas Heuveldop, President and Head of Ericsson North America, added, “We look forward to enhancing our strong relationship with US Cellular and supporting the 5G network rollout to their customers. We work constantly to ensure our customers have access to the latest 5G solutions, and US Cellular customers will certainly reap the benefits of innovative applications that 5G networks will enable.”

US CELLULAR, USCELLULAR.COM; ERICSSON, ERICSSON.COM

VODAFONE LAUNCHES 5G AT MANCHEST Vodafone has announced the launch of a 5G trial in Manchester Airport, installing a ‘Gigacube’ in Terminal One – effectively a hotspot – to allow customers to experience the 5G euphoria.

Though there are still no 5G devices on the market, and all 5G trials to date have made use of Massive MIMO technology, the fixed wireless access gives customers with connected devices a taste of what’s to come.

Compared with 4G speeds, Vodafone said that the launch of its 5G Blast Pod will mean travellers can enjoy download speeds of under a minute to download a TV episode, and roughly six minutes to download an entire series – which is around four times faster than 4G. Nick Jeffery, CEO of Vodafone UK said, “5G, with its fast speeds and quick response times, will make that quick and easy, even in busy locations.

We are proud to be the first provider

PROJECTS & AGREEMENTS

SMART BOAT INITIATIVE TO HELP RECOVER GLOBAL FISHERIES

G TRIAL TER AIRPORT to bring 5G to an airport and will be adding more major travel hotspots to our 5G network throughout the year.”

“We are delighted to support Vodafone’s 5G trial at Manchester Airport,” added Brad Miller, COO at Manchester Airport. “As we progress with the design and delivery of our £1 billion transformation programme, we are constantly exploring how new innovations and technology can be applied to improve the airport experience.”

While the UK’s 5G buzz has been a slower process than elsewhere around the world – namely the US and South Korea – it certainly is catching on. According to Vodafone, Manchester airport was the first of its travel-related 5G initiatives, with the next trial set to continue in Birmingham on the Snowy Hill railway station.

At World Ocean Summit held in Abu Dhabi last week, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) announced the launch of its Smart Boat Initiative; designed to accelerate the exploration and adoption of powerful new technologies to greatly improve sustainability, efficiency, transparency and profitability in the fishing sector across the globe.

Although the digital revolution is transforming nearly every sector, it has largely left the fishing industry – currently experiencing a crisis of overfishing – in the dark. The new initiative from EDF hopes to address this issue, which could see severe repercussions for three billion people worldwide who rely on seafood as a major source of protein, by leveraging technological advances: sensors, AI, broadband communication and data analytics.

“Just as smart phones provided a platform for a wave of innovation,

we believe there is an equally unprecedented opportunity to usher in a new era of sustainability in the global fishing sector led by digital transformation,” said Katie McGinty, Senior Vice President, EDF Oceans program.

With even some of the most advanced fisheries still collecting data onboard with a piece of paper and a pen, EDF says its initiatives goal is to demonstrate the transformative power of technology with on-the-water pilot projects, scientific inquiries, and policy advances across a variety of fishery types and scales.

As part of the Smart Boat Initiative, EDF Oceans also released two new guides on how to implement electronic monitoring technology, as well as the results from recent pilot projects on the US West Coast and in Mexico’s Gulf of California.

EDF, EDF.ORG

VODAFONE, VODAFONE.CO.UK

March 2019 | 51

COMPANY SHOWCASE

SPONSORED STORIES FROM THE INDUSTRY

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC EXTEND AWARD-WINNING GALAXY UPS At DCW earlier this month Schneider Electric introduced its Galaxy VS, a highly efficient, modular, easyto-deploy, 10-100 kW, three-phase Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) designed to meet the critical power requirements of IT, commercial, and industrial facilities.

With its compact and flexible design, the Galaxy VS addresses the unique requirements of edge computing and small data centres where space and access are at a premium. Up to 99% efficient and with optional lithium-ion batteries, doubling battery life, the Galaxy VS total cost of ownership (TCO) is unmatched in the industry.

“With its impressive TCO and availability, the Galaxy VS is a new technically superior offer that resonates with customers because it solves numerous modernisation challenges while providing Schneider reliability,” said Christopher Thompson, Vice President, 3 Phase Line of Business, Schneider Electric. “Our newest UPS strikes the right balance for edge and cloud customers who need innovative solutions that are easy to deploy in this hybrid ecosystem. With its compact, modular design, the Galaxy VS can deploy faster and in a smaller space than traditional UPS’s, saving users time and money.”

The innovative and robust Galaxy VS is also EcoStruxure Ready. Site managers or technical personnel can

50 | March 2019

remotely monitor their Galaxy VS system status anytime, anywhere with the smartphone app.

GALAXY VS BENEFITS • Cost savings: provides up to 99% efficiency when operated in Schneider’s patented ECOnversion mode.

• Footprint savings: compact design provides high-density technology especially suited to confined spaces with full front access for easy and fast connection and services.

• Longer life energy storage: lithium-ion battery technology options restore backup time quickly, protect your load even during repeated power interruptions, and provide longer life than traditional battery solutions.

• Increased uptime and simplified maintenance: critical system components are built as modules with a fault-tolerant design. This provides internal redundancy at reduced load levels and a shorter mean time to repair.

• EcoStruxure ready: makes it easy to manage with global visibility of equipment performance and status supported with a 24x7 expert service bureau.

• Green premium certified: offering sustainable business performance by design.

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC, SCHNEIDER-ELECTRIC.CO.UK

DS S SERIES

SPONSORED STORIES FROM THE INDUSTRY

COMPANY SHOWCASE

STORDIS LAUNCHES FIRST OPTIMISED BAREFOOT TOFINO SWITCHES Stordis, a provider of open networking infrastructure solutions, has announced the launch of two bare-metal switches powered by the fully programmable Barefoot Tofino ASIC. An industry first, the Stordis Advanced Programmable Switches (APS) offer comprehensive 1588v2 time synchronisation support, as well as providing more powerful processing, higher memory and greater in-built storage capacity.

Next generation networking functionality is delivering significant, and often critical, business advantage across an increasing number of markets.

The implementation of the open source P4 programming language on Barefoot’s Tofino networking ASIC, is sparking a new boom in open networking innovation, allowing industry groups, system integrators and end-users to engineer significant new advantage for themselves.

Stordis’ new, more powerful and feature-rich bare-metal switches have been built in response to previously unmet customer requirements across a variety of markets including telecoms, finance, media and broadcast, cybersecurity, industry and academia.

“After delivering P4 trainings for Barefoot in Europe and speaking to customers, we found that users needed a more powerful hardware platform to capture the full benefits of the Tofino ASIC’s programmable architecture. Support for time

synchronisation is also essential to engineer solid business advantage across a range of industries,” stated Alexander Jeffries, CEO of Stordis.

“These are the first switches to go beyond simply swapping out the chipset in a standard OTS bare-metal switch. We have put a lot of thought and research into building a broader, open hardware architecture that supports real-world use cases. And we will be releasing the full switch specifications and design documents to the Open Compute Project.”

Support for 1588v2 time synchronisation on the Stordis APS range is also designed to enable users to program more advanced (often application-level) functionality into the network. For example, accurate time stamping enables more efficient 5G features development in Telco environments, IP Studio and live digital broadcast for media companies, and can be essential for accuracy within financial trading environments.

Both switches are available from early April from Stordis.

STORDIS, STORDIS.COM

March 2019 | 51

COMPANY SHOWCASE

SPONSORED STORIES FROM THE INDUSTRY

MICROCHIP EXPANDS DUAL- AND SINGLE-CORE DSPIC DSC FAMILY System developers designing highend embedded control applications need flexible options to provide scalability as projects increase in complexity. To meet these needs, Microchip Technology has announced new dual- and single-core dsPIC33C Digital Signal Controllers (DSCs) with more options to meet changing application requirements across memory, temperature and functional safety.

52 | March 2019

Microchip’s new dsPIC33CH512MP508 dual-core DSC enables support for applications with larger program memory requirements.

The dsPIC33CK64MP105 single-core DSC adds a cost-optimised version for applications that require smaller memory and footprint. Developers can easily scale across product lines using the new devices, which are pin-to-pin compatible within the dsPIC33CH and dsPIC33CK families.

The dsPIC33CH512MP508 (MP5) family expands the recently introduced dsPIC33CH with flash memory growing from 128 KB to 512 KB and triples the program RAM from 24 KB to 72 KB. This enables support for larger applications with multiple software stacks or larger program memory, such as automotive and wireless charging applications.

SPONSORED STORIES FROM THE INDUSTRY

The dsPIC33CK64MP105 (MP1) family extends the recently introduced dsPIC33CK family with a cost-optimised version for smaller memory and footprint applications, offering up to 64 KB Flash memory and 28- to 48- pin packages.

Package sizes are available as small as 4 mm x 4 mm. This compact device offers the ideal combination of features for automotive sensors, motor control, high-density DCDC applications or stand-alone Qi transmitters. Both single- and dualcore dsPIC33C devices enable fast deterministic performance for timecritical control applications, providing expanded context selected registers to reduce interrupt latency and bringing faster instruction execution of math-intensive algorithms.

“With 76 dsPIC33C single- and dual-core devices in the family, the common tools, common peripherals and footprint compatibility make it easier for customers to scale as their memory, I/O, performance or budget needs change,” said Joe Thomsen, Vice President of Microchip’s MCU16 business unit.

“In addition, the dual-core options enable easier software integration for separate software development teams to focus on control algorithms versus communications and housekeeping code.”

MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY INC, MICROCHIP.COM

COMPANY SHOWCASE

BRIGHTCLOUD GROUP UNVEILS NEW CONTACT CENTRE OPTIMISATION SOLUTION BrightCloud Group, Cisco’s customer journey service partner of the year for the last three consecutive years, has announced the launch of CCBox Aloha V4.0 – the latest iteration of its contact centre customer experience optimisation solution.

CCBox is a standalone, modular solution, compatible with Cisco CCE, CCX, PCCE and HCS platforms. It is the only scalable customer experience optimisation solution featuring everything contact centres need to achieve their customer experience goals, in one single solution.

“CCBox Aloha gives businesses everything they need to achieve customer experience goals, with a combination of tools that helps time pressed contact centre managers get real actionable insight from the data coming in and going out of their contact centre. Our team worked hard on the modular and scalable functionality of this V4.0 of CCBox to ensure success is achievable, regardless of the size of the contact centre, the business, or the budget,” said Alex Morrison, CEO of BrightCloud Group.

WHAT IS CCBOX? CCBox Aloha V4.0 has three unique packages, each with a set of products chosen because of the way they work together to give contact centre managers the functionality and features they really need, and to remove those features that add clutter with no real business benefit. CCBox brings simplicity to the vast number of product concepts around performance, compliance, analysis, forecasting, measuring, insight and efficiency.

CCBox V4.0 will be launched at EMEAR CCX Technical Partner Summit in Amsterdam 18-20 March 2019.

BRIGHTCLOUD GROUP, BRIGHTCLOUDGROUP.GLOBAL

March 2019 | 53

NEXT ISSUE: AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES/SMART CITIES/UC EXPO

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