Presentation 2

The Future of Dynamic Circuit Networking
A pleasant residual of the dot-com boom is that many parts of the world were left with high-speed fiber optic cables that link many points together. This glass-based system of transport has capabilities of supporting transmissions as fast as 1,000 Gb/s and is 1,000 times larger than the total radio bandwidth of planet Earth. Unfortunately, fast optical networks are significantly bottlenecked at routers that are reading and evaluating every packet of information that is sent through them. Although throughput of routers has increased significantly over time, they are still a far cry away from being able to process information at fiber optic speeds of a Terabyte per second. Internet2 is paving the wave of the future to full utilization of fiber optic transmission lines through the creation of the Dynamic Circuit Network (DCN). Using IPv4 or IPv6 protocol, this revolutionary re-design of packet transmission will the first step of a complete re-structuring of the world’s data network as we know it, discussed throughout this paper.
In traditional IP networking, the packet transmission of data is randomly sent over data lines (this packet takes this route, that packet takes another route, etc.). This mechanism necessitates that every packet generated and sent has to: a.) Contain origination and destination information, b.) Be evaluated by each router along the path, and c.) Be deconstructed at origin and then re-assembled at the destination once all packets have arrived. This has proven efficient in the past for redundancy, in that a single downed line would not prevent the transmission of data, but it does not make the best use of resources available. Conversely, in DC networking the entire path from origination to destination is pre-determined before any information is sent. This virtual circuit is dynamically created for the transmission of the defined data. The circuit is established and reserved for this data, the data is transmitted directly from origin to destination using this path, and the transmission line is freed up after the completion of the transmission.
The technical aspects of a Dynamic Circuit Network can be found in U.S. patent No.: 6,707,820 as well as in the presentation originally done by the author on March 6th, 2008. Moving forward with the research on the DCN and the great capabilities it can facilitate, the author began to wonder if there may be a future for router-less networking. If packet transmission is no longer random and follows a predetermined path, routers would only need be aware of their place in any dynamic circuit created and transmit that data accordingly. They would no longer have to evaluate each packet and determine the best path to forward each one to its next destination. Router-less networking, in its simplest form, simply consists of a cross-over cable between two computers. What if each host in a given geographic area connected to a DC domain, established a virtual circuit to that DC domain? The DC domain relays that virtual circuit to the receiving host, completing the virtual circuit. If all of these entities could be recognized as being in the same segment, then the communication could be created completely without routers. The same as a crossover cable creates a connection between two hosts, that same kind of connection would be created dynamically between two hosts over high-speed fiber optic lines.
Moving even further ahead and discovering very little research information is what this author believes to be the next great emerging technology, even beyond the router-less network: packet-less internet transmission. Some of the greatest emerging technologies have gone back to the past to find their roots. Think of Sky Sails and how they simply modernized utilizing wind to move marine vessels. Packet switching networks provided the means to move data quicker and more reliably than standard analog phone circuits. Now that technology has caught up to the speed requirements of data, we will someday retire packet switching in a way to fully utilize the new dynamic virtual circuits. There will be no need to packetize the data in order to put it on transmission lines, as the data will have the capabilities to be streamed directly from the application layer from host to host. This idea of nullifying the creation and transmission of packets was first introduced to the author in a presentation of the capabilities and future of the Windows Server 2008 Hypervisor for Virtual machines. Currently, each operating system running within a virtual machine must access the network through a software-virtualized network interface. ii Even if the network transmission is not transmitted over any physical lines, it is still broken into packets by the originating operating system and reassembled by the receiving operating system. As the world works towards more server consolidation and the virtualization of servers, the network responsibilities of each guest server will be passed to the host hardware to be transmitted to other hosts. If the Microsoft Engineers are right, and packet-less network traffic can be transferred via this hypervisor that the guest sit upon, why could it not be successfully achieved on a larger scale? Overheads of network virtualization can be overcome using CDNA (Concurrent Direct Network Access), and using this technology to directly access virtual machine NIC drivers via the hypervisor, is really just a small-scale version of what could be created with a large scale, dynamically created circuit. The creator of this circuit would act as a type of hypervisor, from only a network perspective, by having location information of all guests that is under its domain. Machine A makes a request to the DC domain acting as a large scale hypervisor requesting a network to Machine B. The DC domain knows if Machine B is up to receiving requests, and if it is then the DC creates the circuit between Machine A and Machine B and securely manages the transfer at a super high rate of speed. See Exhibit A.

Packet switching and T3 network lines are going to become obsolete in the upcoming years. Internet2 and the Dynamic Circuit Network is going to break out of academia and research and become mainstream, much like Arpanet did. The advantages to be taken of this super high-speed network are going to be plentiful to those brave enough and ingenious enough to take full advantage of it.

Wharton Chapter 7

Chapter 7 focuses on the marriage of technology and market segmentation. Technology markets are defined as “lumpy”, in that they can be fickle in determining what certain market segments want today and what they will want in the future. Using a very low-level example using laptop computers and two-dimensional variables, they create an envelope defining the technology associated with the two variables. They then create a market segment diagram using three market segments’ utility for the two valuables. It was fascinating to see the result when they overlapped the two envelopes to create an estimate for where they were, and where they may want to be. This could be a determinate as to what technology they may want to improve upon to reach a more diverse market, i.e. multiple market segments. They can also use this information to determine if investments in certain technologies will help them advance their market share.
Everything in this chapter focused on the idea of attributes. Attributes are the differentiating factor between the good of one company to a similar good of another company. These attributes require heavy analysis which can be broken into three components: Basic (expected feature), Discriminators (distinguish between providers), and Energizing features (discriminators that draw a sharp distinction). The authors then explore options to infiltrating these lumpy markets through clever use of a market niche either by combining two niches of two different markets (Fusion), or by advancing their technology barrier to a place where they can offer a superior product to a competitor in a single niche (Single Niche Domination). Or, they can take the most difficult road and create a new technology envelope by essentially revolutionizing the entire attribute set for a technology. An easy way to think about the value of attributes is to think of the history of the automobile. I think of the new Smart Fortwo car as an example of technology and market working together to establish a niche. If Smart had put out the car before a certain market segment was ready for it, it most probably would have failed. On that same premise, had there been a market segment for a car that got 33/41 2008 EPA miles per gallon and was only 8.8 feet long, but Smart did not have the technology investments in the right area, they may have failed to make it to market and attract this niche customer at an attractive price.

Wharton - Chapter 6

Traditional market research will not cut it in emerging technology. That is the general idea surrounding chapter six in the Wharton book on emerging technologies. This chapter explores the uncertainty and unknown that comes with putting out a technology to market that does not exist. It is not prudent to use the standard focus group or an assumed market to test your product, as these may lead to incorrect or uncompleted information, as well as possibly uncommitted or uninformed testers. The worst thing a company can do is to use a close-minded approach to market research that attempts to direct their product to a specific market or to the market they think they are addressing. They are best to embrace a wide range of possibilities and use a "Triangulation of Insights" and use multiple methods such as using lead users or learning about latent needs or anticipating inflections. Adoption of a product takes the shape of a bell curve, and the forefront of that adoption is the lead users. They are not picky or high-maintenance, just adoptive of the technology as-is and can provide valuable insight into what processes the technology can be valuable for or the needs or requirements the technology may need to further develop. Latent needs are needs that the customer does not even know they have, such as the example that Kimberly-Clark noticed that parents do not want diapers to be waste collectors, but rather "clothing" for their children. And the anticipation of inflection if the high point of the aforementioned bell-curve, which assess the areas of opportunity within a technology where people can evaluate what they may want in a more "futuristic" environment that this technology may address. As Clayton Christensen states in his book "The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail" (Page 50), once a technology is past its point of inflection, and its technology is decreasing at a decreasing rate (I would call this diminishing returns to technology. That's my new term) then a new technology is ready to emerge to supplant that existing one. Anticipation of that point of inflection on the technology S-curve is where the company can gain a comparative advantage ahead of their competition.

Wharton Chapter 5

This chapter focuses on the role of government and its relationship to emerging technologies. The whole chapter used the history of the Internet and the communications industry as the basis to exemplify ten important lessons. Sometimes the government has a very satisfactory role in emerging technologies, as described by their development of the ARPANet and the privatization of the Internet backbone network from the National Science Foundation. But sometimes the government can take on a non-satisfactory role for a company with additional regulations or the provisioning of a universal service obligation. The idea of a monopoly and how these work was brought up many times in the chapter, including the role for government to regulate natural monopolies where a current market has only room for one competitor and to prevent a company from getting monopoly by stifling competition like Microsoft has been accused of doing, and treating their customers poorly or overcharging can also bring about governmental regulations. Whether a company expects supportive, adversarial, or no governmental effect at all, they should be prepared to deal and adapt to all scenarios with their emerging technologies. With this chapters’ focus on the Internet and its global outreach, very good examples were made of the challenges a company will have with overlapping jurisdictions of federal, state, and local laws, as well as global regulation. The idea of a conduit and content and vertical integration are very important, as to avoid a “closed” architecture that does not allow other companies to compete, the government may become involved to resolve this bottleneck to competition, and thus stifle the company’s ability to vertically integrate. It was interesting to read that most of the lessons (two, three, five, nine and ten) either directly or indirectly point to lobbying for favorable positions for the company’s perspective. Lobbying can be a very effective and powerful negotiator that can lead to substantial success for a company. Would Enron have become the powerhouse it was had it not contributed $572,350 to the campaign of George W. Bush and gotten Kenneth Lay to spend an evening in the White House with Mr. Bush? Even before Mr. Bush came to power, throughout the nineties “…Enron needed help in Washington, and it got it in a series of actions by Congress and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that undermined the traditional monopoly of utility companies over power plants and transmission lines.” (“Campaign Gifts, Lobbying Built Enron’s Power in Washington”, Washington Post, December 25, 2001). Sometimes Lobbying can give a company the influence it needs to succeed…and beyond.

Wharton Chapter 4

Chapter four centers it's message around the story of AquaPharm Technologies Corporation, and the different components involved in assessing emerging technologies. Assessing emerging technologies involves four components: Scoping, Searching, Evaluating, and Committing. In scoping the company aligns their strategic intent and their capabilities with the technology they wish to explore. There are many considerations to explore when in the scoping stage, including the target market, financing, R & D options, and organizational culture. Searching includes exploring the different avenues of how and what technologies a company is going to pursue. The company will explore various obvious literature and public information, as well as even private and borderline un-ethical avenues to create a pool of candidate technologies. From the pool of candidate technologies, and select few are chosen for what I perceive to be the most important assessment step: Evaluation. Time or specifications spared at this step could lead to expensive and unnecessary failures of the technology if it goes to market. At this step, the company assesses the various risks involved with the technology. The newer the technology, the more risky it becomes. Once a technology is ultimately decided on, the final step, Commitment, takes place. This is the step where the company chooses a path it will use to introduce the product to market using a variety of strategic intents including: Wait and Watch (not actively develop the product, but actively keep an eye on the technology and/or market), Position and Learn (keeping an option open to develop the technology, and further pursue learning about it), Sense and Follow (active commercialization, but not be first-to-market), and Believe and Lead (full commitment and no fear being first-to-market). Throughout the chapter the different stages are exampled by the story of AquaPharm and their decisions at each step of the assessing process. In their efforts to consistently secure investment capital, they took on more than they could handle, and learned some expensive lessons for their lack of completion of thorough evaluation of technologies. The company ultimately failed and the end of the chapter revealed they may have been a success if they had assessed their technology and their market (their core market, had they focused on it, ultimately became successful) the company would most likely be alive and successfully operating today.

GAPE in the Enterprise....Does it have a future?

"Google Apps in the Enterprise" is a compelling article that dissects both the pros and cons of Google's attempts to to promote their Google Apps Premier Edition to large enterprises. It talks about the various components, including Gmail, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Page Creator, Google Talk, and the control panel to administer these in an enterprise environment, and compares the functionality and feasibility of these against against offering found in Microsoft Office or Sharepoint 2007. The author explores the maturity of "Software as a Service" (SaaS) and the pitfalls and potentials of Google entering the Enterprise Content Management industry. The compare the infancy of SaaS to the infancy of the LAN to network PC's together and the early days of electricity (giving credit for AC to George Westinghouse instead of Nikola Tesla...I was offended), and thus recognizing the immense potential for SaaS in the future. They brought up some good points in that Google likes to release software that is "not quite ready" and that a company that adopted GAPE is loses a substantial amount of control of the versions of their applications and may sacrifice some privacy. But a couple other thoughts came to mind in reading this article. Companies that utilize a NAS and use their domain authentication to access files on that NAS would not be able to pass-through domain credentials to access files stored on Google servers. For the common user, this may create some complaints. Also, no matter how simple GAPE would be to use, there would still be a learning curve as people adapted to the interface when we as a society have become so accustomed to Microsoft Office. But, even through these pitfalls and the descriptions of different markets addressed by Google or Oracle or Salesforce.com, this brought memories of the idea of Application Service Providers. providing Applications from a central location that same way ISP's offer Internet connectivity. Although the term "ASP" was not mentioned in the article, this idea has been around for a few years and seems to be the way of the future. The same way IBM was okay to let Microsoft license the OS because "everyone knows the money in is the hardware", maybe now the money is in offering only the software a company needs, when they need it, and only in the amount they need.

Energize Your Teaching..........with MySpace!!!

In reading the blog on "Erergize Your Teaching", a very
clear example was posted, that seems to be the future of social
networking: Facebook and MySpace. I would like to discuss MySpace, as
I have more familiarity to it and it is the largest social network in
the world. Although MySpace started out as a fun way to connect with
friends and even make new ones, it has grown so much larger than that.
It has created a whole new world of web developers, even out of people
who had never seen one line of HTML code and thought Javascript was
the coffee stain on thier shirts. It has created a relationship not
only amongst people, but with their computers. They control how teh
computer protrays them by creating fancy profiles complete with
images, music, and videos. They have begun to understand how a video
from YouTube can be embedded into my page on MySpace. It becomes a
computer version of a person's persona. You can create groups and post
messge and blogs with such ease, there is no reason any of your
"friends" cannot know exactly how you are feeling or what you are
thinking at any giving moment. I can even tell you personnally that if
I am wondering what kind of mood my girlfriend is in, I check her
MySpace page and it tells more accurately than if I asked her!

I believe AOL started this craze, with their revolutionary
"buddy list" and opening up chat with your friends that you could see
were online. To their detriment, they never realized the immeasurable
potential of this technology they implemented, and let it lie dormant.
They fell into Trap Two of the Pitfalls of Emerging Technology that
are discussed by Day and Shoemaker. MySapce is so expandeded now that
it can go to your mobile phone and alert you with updates of
information. If you search for a person on MySpace and they are not
there, it feels like they are not even living in the Information Age.
Socail networking is only going to grow and make a further impediment
on our personal lives. There lies an immense danger in this, as we
have seen with the child predators on MySpace and defamation that can
be posted about an indivisual, such as that teacher in Florida I
believe that was attacked and libeled by some upset students. There is
a lot of liability in social networking, but the potential in how
these threats are handled and the more poeple seems to not enjoy
meeting face-to-face anymore will create a market and a future that is
almost unfathomable.


Personally, I do not like social networking sites such as
MySpace, but to use that idea and contain the technology to more
individualized benefit would make me a believer. I would love to make
"friends" and communicate with people I have a common interest with,
and that thought in-link with the "Energize Your Teaching" topic makes
me think it would be cool if MBA students had a POPULAR site they
could freqeunt and make friends with and discuss topics important to
them....without the risk of getting "friend requests" every day from
solicitors who aren't even real people (you MySpace people know
exactly what I am talking about).