Looking ahead to 2020, Rackspace CTO Joel Friedman offers his predictions

As the New Year 2020 begins, hybrid and multi-cloud will continue to gain traction, as will software as a service (SaaS). Security remains a tough nut to crack, and edge computing will gain ground, but Joel Friedman, Rackspace CTO, predicts more modestly than the current hype may suggest.

PREDICTION 1: HYBRID/MULTI-CLOUD REMAINS ASCENDANT

Smart organizations have locked onto the benefits of running apps and data in the places that make the most sense, whether that’s public or private cloud, colocation or, most commonly, a bespoke combination of these that can evolve as business needs and resources dictate. However, the complexity of managing multiple clouds across the dimensions of cost, security, governance, identity and DevOps patterns will continue to grow in 2020.

This complexity is related to the forced reliance upon a multitude of platforms, the rate of technological change, disruptions to traditional service delivery models and a real shortage of skill sets required to bring it all together. Due to these factors, it is likely that multi-cloud solutions will prevail, while the search for qualified external help will intensify.

Finding external help may prove difficult, as not only will managed service providers need to maintain a multi- or hybrid cloud instance, but internal and external vendors will need to work together to manage a multitude of issues around cost governance, security and tagging, to name a few. Fortunately, 451 Research has found these growing pains can be alleviated with clear communication and flexibility on each partner’s part.

PREDICTION 2: SAAS = PROBLEM SOLVED

On top of infrastructure, one of the cloud strategies I hear on repeat when working with customers is that “cloud first” starts with SaaS. They don’t want to reinvent the (inferior) wheel by developing applications for ‘solved’ problems. Mature SaaS offerings are a culmination of many iterations of customer mandated features, user experience analysis, and just as important, industry best practices around process workflows.

In many cases, organizations choosing to fit their internal process to best match their SaaS vendor’s implementation – as opposed to always opting for customizing the platform to suit legacy workflows. Furthermore, SaaS has a compounding effect with data; once data is in the system, other ecosystem players can offer turn-key integration and add-on services, further enhancing the value proposition of SaaS. 

While this isn’t necessarily a new trend, Friedman predicts this will be the norm in 2020 and expects to see more and more niche, and vertically-focused applications developing a SaaS model.

PREDICTION 3: SECURITY REMAINS A STRUGGLE

When it comes to security, many organizations remain burdened with legacy systems riddled with technical debt and corresponding security vulnerabilities. They understand the need to harness cloud-compatible security frameworks, operating models and tools to operate securely in cloud-native environments, but it can be slow and rough going.

Most industries simply have not reached the place where mature cloud security practices are being implemented, and this creates fertile ground for breaches. Too many are still attempting to apply traditional security controls and methodologies to cloud-native environments and deployments. 

This generally does not work well; not only is the security implementation likely to be ill fit, it also creates drag on the organization’s desired benefits of agility. This sometimes leads to fragmentation, where business units go around central security and implement on their own shadow security. The risks of this should be obvious.

In 2020, Friedman thinks that the cloud continues to present some growing pains to even the most digital-native and forward-thinking organizations. These organizations understand how the cloud can aid their business in moving fast, but they don’t yet have the maturity to implement real-time or just-in-time posture management and ‘least privilege’ protocols in the ephemeral, complex and constantly changing world of multi-cloud. 

While security teams straddle the old world of insecure legacy applications and platforms (those which cannot or should not be modernized), and the relative newness of cloud operating models, I unfortunately expect to see the breach headlines continue in 2020 along with all of the free credit monitoring can handle.

Even when the security teams agree in concept that it’s possible to be more secure in the cloud, many do not have cloud compatible security frameworks, operating models and tools to aid the business in operating in cloud-native environments securely.

PREDICTION 4: CLOUD CONTROL PLANE WILL BECOME THE NORM

There has been a trend over the past few years in which the management plane has been reversing from the datacenter to the cloud. For early cloud adopters, the datacenter was still the central control point. Organizations burst into the cloud or had back-end projects with no internet accessibility. As cloud grew in popularity, more and more greenfield projects became cloud-native.

Granted, many still integrate with on-premises or hosted private clouds for identity, business intelligence or other data enrichment requirements, but the hyperscalers have now moved past denying that hybrid cloud is real (in attempts to capture all workloads), and pivoted their strategy to capture those datacenter workloads where they stand and bring them into their ecosystem. 

This includes Snowball Edge, AWS RDS of VMware, Azure Stack/Azure Arc and Google Anthos. Expect to see more such services in 2020. And why shouldn’t we? Cloud providers have proven their effectiveness of securely operating at scale, and API-enabling everything.

PREDICTION 5: EDGE WILL GAIN MODERATE GROUND

Edge computing is a new frontier — no player is currently dominating this space, as it is a naturally fragmented market. When choosing locations over platforms to address local markets, data sovereignty, and other use case specific needs, I believe organizations may want to align in a technology-neutral and consistent manner. And based on the trends over the past year, containers and serverless seem like a natural beneficiary for edge.

As Kubernetes dominates in the container orchestration arena, serverless is another story in which, as of yet, there are no victors. AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform all have their own flavors of Function-as-a-Service (FaaS), which are embedded within their respective cloud ecosystems. Will OpenFaaS with kNative gain some ground based on open standards, addressing the often spoken lock-in avoidance and mobility potential? We shall see. 

Either way, Friedman predicts that 2020 will see lots of innovation and exploration in the edge space, but he suspects this is the year of gaining momentum and the floodgates won’t open until 2021.

Schneider Electric releases its initial integrated rack with immersed, liquid-cooled IT for data centers

Schneider Electric, vendor of digital transformation of energy management and automation, with Avnet and Iceotope, announces creation of commercially-available integrated rack with chassis-based, immersive liquid cooling. Optimized for compute-intensive applications, the solution combines a high-powered GPU server with Iceotope’s liquid cooling technology to increase energy efficiency. 

Avnet integrates the liquid-cooled server with Schneider Electric’s NetShelter liquid-cooled enclosure system for simple deployment into data centers or edge computing environments. The system is EcoStruxure Ready since the solution is available with next generation data center management software, EcoStruxure IT Expert and our digital service EcoStruxure Asset Advisor. 

This liquid-cooled solution is ideal for applications such as big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine-learning algorithm training development, where high compute demands more energy use. In a recent report published by Gartner, liquid cooling was identified as a technology to watch. 

Analyst Henrique Cecci advised data center operators “maximize cooling energy efficiencies by employing modern liquid cooling solutions.” Liquid cooling offers greater efficiency, lower operating costs, smaller footprint, increased reliability, and nearly silent operation despite the high-power density of the GPUs. 

Avnet, Iceotope and Schneider Electric plan to expand the offering as demand grows by welcoming other server OEMs into the partnership. 

“Schneider Electric is committed to making data centers more sustainable and liquid cooling is a very compelling approach,” said Kevin Brown, CTO and SVP of Innovation, Secure Power, Schneider Electric, who is presenting on liquid cooling at the Gartner conference. “This latest development marks a significant step toward industrializing chassis-based immersion solutions which offer the efficiency and effectiveness of tanks based solutions while providing the compatibility and serviceability of more traditional, ‘direct-to-chip’ liquid-cooling designs. Given the growth of compute-intensive applications, we believe this approach is very promising.”

“As a leading global technology solutions provider, Avnet has always excelled at adapting to changing markets, trends, and technologies,” said Scott MacDonald, global president, Avnet Integrated. “We do well at this by partnering with the world’s best technology designers and hardware manufacturers. In this case, we’re partnering with liquid cooling-specialist, Iceotope, and global infrastructure giant, Schneider Electric, to make the best possible liquid cooling solutions for our customers. We’re excited to integrate, fulfill, and support this solution that smartly addresses customer cooling challenges around rising chip densities, harsh IT environments, rising energy costs, water use restrictions, and space constraints.”

“Iceotope is thrilled to be making its innovative chassis-level, immersive liquid cooling technology available to the general market,” said David Craig, CEO of Iceotope. “We offer the only liquid cooling tech that scales easily from edge computing devices to large server farms in the cloud. And compared to direct-to-chip liquid cooling systems, our approach is more efficient, more reliable, saves more space, eliminates fans, and when deployed across the data center, it lowers cost.”

Scale Computing debuts small HCI edge appliance for edge computing, IT infrastructure deployments

Scale Computing released its latest HC3 Edge appliance, which is powered by Intel technology, offers a low-cost edge solution that is built on a tiny form factor, making it ideal to deploy in small clusters where highly available computing was previously cost-prohibitive. The appliance also introduces HC3 Edge Fabric, which eliminates the need for a backplane network switch requirement, lowering the TCO and delivering simpler connectivity for edge networks.

The HE150 appliance is a small, all-flash, NVMe storage-based compute appliance that delivers simplicity, efficiency, and enterprise-ready virtualization associated with Scale Computing’s HC3 platform. 

Built specifically for sites that need highly available infrastructure, the HE150 can be deployed almost anywhere, without requiring a rack or server closet. Taking up only the space needed to stack three smartphones, it also includes disaster recovery, high availability clustering, rolling upgrades and integrated data protection.

The HE150 is based on the Intel NUC, offering excellent performance to handle a wide range of workloads. The cutting-edge construction and connectivity comes ready for industrial and IoT applications. The extremely small form factor consumes a small amount of power, offers ease of installation and an ability to rapidly add devices that scale up rapidly, along with the reliability needed for edge computing and IoT applications.

“The high-functionality, reliability and performance of HE150 represents a major breakthrough that will open up new markets for Scale Computing and its partners, including Infrastructure Technology Solutions,” said Joel Althoff, president at Infrastructure Technology Solutions. “With Scale Computing, HE150 opens up a new door to edge computing, delivering an affordable edge solution equipped with disaster recovery and resiliency, that is truly innovative in the marketplace.”

In addition to the new Scale Computing HE150 appliance, HC3 Edge software, which is available to large multi-site customers and partners, is also introducing general software support for Intel NUC based systems from other hardware suppliers. HC3 Edge software will be available soon for Lenovo’s new Smart Edge portfolio of fan-less, small form factor PCs. 

“With no IT staff on site, downtime is a constant concern at each of our locations. Downtime can cost us tens of thousands of dollars, and therefore is not an option for Jerry’s Foods,” explained Jeff Miller, director of IT at Jerry’s Foods. “I was blown away by the simplicity and functionality of Scale Computing’s edge solutions. It’s making a huge impact on my day-to-day IT operations. With the addition of the HE150, distributed enterprises now have the ability to scale up or down depending on their edge computing needs. It’s a win-win!”

“A growing number of distributed organizations require infrastructure at the edge of the network, specifically at sites where there are limited IT staff available. With edge computing on the rise, organizations are requiring solutions that can fit small footprint requirements with robust application performance, while still being affordable, efficient and simple to manage remotely,” said Jeff Ready, CEO and co-founder, Scale Computing. “This is why we created our newest HE150 appliance, making edge computing a financially viable and practical option for more organizations. Our ability to deliver HCI technology in a smaller form factor and lower price point is making edge computing capabilities and resources more accessible to many organizations.”

A10 Networks Orion 5G security lineup delivers business transformation for service providers

A10 Networks announced its Orion 5G Security Suite that enables mobile carriers and service providers to be ready for the business transformation 5G and NFV brings. The suite allows customers to meet the requirements needed today and helps them future proof their networks for tomorrow by delivering security, scalability, agility and analytics, while integrating with a partner ecosystem. A10 brings unique expertise from working with many of the production 5G networks that are now operational around the world.

A10 Networks has been at the forefront of initial 5G rollouts with tier-one carriers worldwide and is working with many others to plan for their future 5G initiatives. 

With the announcement of the 5G Orion Security Suite, service providers have a proven comprehensive suite of secure applications services that have been engineered for cloud-native architecture to aid in making their 5G and NFV strategies successful. 

The Orion 5G Security Suite enables advanced security and reliability functions as individual services by modularizing and offering them as a service layer with a set of connected technologies that employ automated intelligence, machine learning and centralized visibility and control.

Partnering with tier-one operators, A10 has honed its solutions to meet the critical 5G requirements for improved security, reliability and performance learned from 5G network rollouts over the last year. A10 provides an interconnected suite – virtual or physical – resulting in lower latency, larger scale, higher reliability and lower TCO—all of which have been required for the emerging 5G use cases customers are enabling.

In the last year to 18 months, first movers have deployed the first wave of 5G networks and demonstrated improved customer satisfaction and increased average revenue per user (ARPU), despite an increase in network demands, including higher data usage and download rates.

The Orion 5G Security Suite addresses existing and emerging mobile network architecture requirements for agility, consolidated services, greater scale, and lower latency communications across the Gi-LAN, virtualized evolved packet core (vEPC), and multi-access edge computing (MEC) environments. 

The Orion 5G Security Suite’s disaggregated, cloud-native security services provide agility while maintaining scale and performance by leveraging cutting-edge technologies. It also goes beyond just protecting the data plane through a GiFW by adding protection for the control plane and signaling plane with full visibility.

The Orion 5G Security Suite represents a major evolution of the company’s 5G strategy outlined in late 2018 by providing a comprehensive solution for mobile operators and other service providers to successfully deploy 5G non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) solutions at hyperscale for 5G devices and new NFVi requirements.

A10 supports existing 4G and 3G network architectures and use cases for the Gi-LAN and EPC, while catering to demanding requirements for 5G architectures, including the cloud-native agility needed for MEC. These solutions can be deployed in infrastructure but are future proofed for 5G deployments. This includes functional consolidation for application visibility and control, subscriber-aware intelligent traffic steering, Gi/SGi firewall with carrier-grade NAT (CGNAT), GTP/SCTP firewall, integrated DDoS for frequently attacked services, intelligent traffic steering and more.

5G demands are inherently different than 4G, with smaller packet sizes, more throughput, and higher concurrent session counts. A10 solutions can scale concurrent sessions to multi-billion levels and throughput to multi-terabit levels in a scale-out cluster. 5G deployments can benefit from compact and efficient options, for example, 385 Gbps in compact physical network functions (PNFs), or high-performance 180 Gbps virtual network functions (VNFs) and cloud-native network functions (CNFs). 

Support for Kubernetes and Docker containers are available now. The compact PNF form factors and very high-performance software offerings (including containerized) are especially beneficial in emerging MEC use cases where space and power are at a premium.

With new user-plane and control-plane security requirements coupled with the increased attack surface and scale brought by 5G and IoT device proliferation, more advanced, scalable and automated approaches are needed. To guarantee uptime and ensure control- and user-plane security, components include edge firewall, GTP firewall, Gi/SGi firewall, control- and user-plane policy enforcement, DNS protection, RAN security gateways (SeGW), and more. 

Additionally, A10’s advanced DDoS protection solution includes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities with its Zero-day Attack Protection (ZAP), continuous base lining, and One-DDoS for distributed intelligence. This provides full visibility into all packets versus traditional sample-based-only solutions. Network-wide ML-powered DDoS detection and mitigation for in-house protection can also be offered as a customer scrubbing service.

A10’s solutions can be delivered in a variety of form factors to meet the demands of the emerging NFVi architecture including, VNFs, CNFs, bare metal and PNFs. These solutions are integrated with leading NFVi architectures and interoperate with multiple MANO environments for faster network roll-out and optimized performance and agility. A10 also provides flexible software licensing and consumption with FlexPool subscription-based capacity pooling licensing.

A10 Harmony Controller provides actionable intelligence to manage subscriber services, meet law enforcement agency mandates and compliance, and deliver per-subscriber analytics. Harmony Controller provides visibility, management, orchestration and automation. Coordination of distributed One-DDoS data from all the Orion 5G Security Suite solutions is seamlessly orchestrated from the integrated aGalaxy TPS system.

A10’s products integrate with multiple third-party solutions and vendors, ranging from DevOps tools, such as Ansible, to providers of 5G solutions such as Ericsson, Red Hat, NEC, Tech Mahindra and Lenovo.

A10 Networks extends carrier-class firewall product lineup with a container offering, new 5G network ready features

A10 Networks announced Wednesday that it is extending the capabilities of the Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW), part of the A10 Orion 5G Security Suite, to support the coming cloud-native 5G requirements. The container-based carrier-class firewall delivers up to 180 Gbps throughput, one of the fastest in the industry. 

A10 is also releasing a new version of its Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS) 5.1, which includes multiple 5G-ready updates. Thunder CFW running ACOS 5.1 brings functionality, performance and scale of the existing physical and virtual appliances to the container firewall, helping to prepare service provider customers in their transition to cloud-native 5G infrastructures.

The Thunder containerized firewall was recently demonstrated as part of the Linux Foundation’s end-to-end cloud-native 5G network proof of concept at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. This first of its kind proof-of-concept (PoC) was a fully containerized, end-to-end 5G non-stand-alone (NSA) distributed cloud network, which paves the way for commercial deployments in mobile operator networks globally.

The Thunder CFW includes functionality that helps ensure the security, reliability and availability of 5G networks as they transition from physical network functions to be completely cloud native. It can be broadly deployed in mobile networks at the SGi, roaming and radio access network (RAN) interfaces. 

The A10 vThunder virtual network function (VNF) package has been integrated and validated with leading NFV-MANO solutions, including Ericsson Cloud Manager, NEC Netcracker HOM, Red Hat OpenStack, and tested in recent ETSI NFV Plugtests for end-to-end VNF lifecycle operation capabilities.

“The Thunder CFW release is an integral foundational element to our comprehensive A10 Orion 5G Security Suite. With the ACOS 5.1 release, A10 has integrated comprehensive feedback from multiple proven deployments in tier-one mobile operators over the last year. These production networks have required hyperscale, lower latency, automation, and advanced security,” said Yasir Liaqatullah, vice president, product management at A10 Networks. “As 5G adoption increasingly requires multi-terabit performance on the Gi-LAN, we continue to provide industry-leading scale in virtual network functions (VNFs), cloud-native network functions (CNFs) and physical network functions (PNFs), including scale-out agile deployments with containerized solutions for virtual mobile edge compute requirements.”

In addition to the release of the high-performance containerized firewall CNF, A10 Networks also released new PNFs with its 7600 series models, delivering up to 385 Gbps throughput in a compact RU physical appliance.

The A10 Orion 5G Security Suite is available now. Thunder CFW with ACOS 5.1 and the new CNF and PNF form factors will be available later this month.