The Future of Work

By Dan DeBacker

The face of enterprise communications is changing and the rate of change continues to accelerate. All types of enterprises use technology as a differentiator, a way to get a leg up on the competition, a critical toolset in conducting day to day business. The workforce demands for tools and applications are putting significant pressures on enterprise IT departments. They are being asked to do more with less and do it faster, and by the way, also ensure the network is always on with high performance, and a consistent quality of experience regardless of where or how it is being accessed.

Think back just ten years ago and how we all worked. There was no such thing as "presence", we actually left voice mails that had to be listened to via the phone and they weren't delivered to our inboxes so we could hear them on our PCs. Instant messaging and texting weren't even forms of communication, where now they have in some cases become the primary method. We were trying to figure out this whole idea of remote access and how to get to applications and run voice over IP over the Internet. The way we worked was different, we had multiple modes of communications that weren't all tied together: a desk phone, a cell phone, a corporate email address, a personal email address. We had to go to a conference room to do a video conference that took quite a long time to set up and configure (usually by the "video guy" that knew how it all worked).

The network infrastructure to support these forms of communications wasn't very well integrated either. It was more about speeds and feeds and creating several separate and disparate networks to ensure security and separation. There was very little network authentication done except for that remote access thing that we were tackling. We needed networks that could support Voice over IP, it was all about packet-based forwarding that was best effort with some sort of Quality of Service to make it work, well kind of work. Reliability was a concern. The voice TDM network was always on, and we always had dial tone - but voice running over the data network provided all new challenges there.

Fast forward to present day; business collaboration is en vogue and brings new meaning to things like Voice over IP, video conferencing and instant messaging. The way we work today and the expectations are much higher than in the past; the business collaboration experience will be both wired and wireless, with more emphasis on wireless capabilities and the freedom to work untethered. We are integrating the methods of communications and bringing intelligence to how and on what device someone can contact me. For example, in my own work life, no longer will I have all these different numbers and addresses, it can be simplified to a single address that will have the backend infrastructure and smarts to know how best to reach me depending on the rules I provide. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is the enabler, moving communications from best effort packet based forwarding to session-based real time ready. I can now initiate a video call from my desktop and if the person I'm calling isn't available, I can leave a voicemail - I don't have to hang up the video call and initiate a voice call to make that happen. I can create ad hoc conference calls of video or audio or a combination of both. Colleagues and friends can see my status via presence and know when and how to contact me. We've added tremendous capabilities to reshape the way we work, the way we collaborate.

These new tools and applications are exciting and of course enterprises see tremendous value in deploying these to increase worker productivity and gain that competitive advantage. Now the task falls back to the IT department because the applications are only as good as the networks that they run across. Is the network ready to support this? How quickly can we get these new tools rolled out? All the things to think about and consider; bandwidth needs, network re-designs perhaps, security, quality of service, resiliency and redundancy. We must give IT the ability to create the private cloud, allowing them to say "yes", reduce the complexity of the network, and significantly decrease the time to service for deployments.

Avaya's Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture (VENA) is the strategy for next-generation data networks, allowing enterprises to build their own private clouds, extensible from the data center to the campus and beyond. With Avaya VENA enterprises will see an immediate benefit by creating a virtualized and holistic backbone, making operations more efficient, and allowing for tighter integration between application and network delivery. Enabling the creation of the network core as a single, one-time act reduces the human-error factor involved in ongoing configuration changes, and greatly reduces time-to-service. The result is a simpler, more dynamic network that is easier to deploy, manage and troubleshoot.

Avaya creates a Virtual Services Fabric which is the basis for the private cloud infrastructure. This Fabric creates a virtualized data center backbone and can be extended out of the data center and into the campus, creating a common architecture and framework. The Virtual Services Fabric is empowered by the Virtual Service Networks that run across it. Each of these networks can be dedicated to specific types of applications, users, or traffic types. The power of traffic separation is being put back into the hands of the administrator without the burden. Provisioning of the network happens only at the Fabric edge (the edge of the cloud), thus reducing the complexities. New applications and services can be instantiated quickly without the need for cumbersome re-designs, no significant configuration changes across the network, and a much lighter change control process.

Wireless capabilities are another area that needs attention to support this new way of working, the expectations are to run all applications while having the freedom to roam and not be cabled in at the desktop. This will definitely exercise the wireless infrastructure in all new ways. Avaya has recognized this forthcoming need and developed a truly unique architecture (Split Plane) to address these requirements. Split Plane refers to the ability to separate the data plane from the control plane in the wireless system. Data plane traffic will be switched within the Avaya Ethernet platforms and will no longer be required to hairpin through a purpose built wireless controller. This will greatly improve the resiliency of the network (leveraging the industry resiliency solutions offered by Avaya's Ethernet switching platforms), reduce the latency of the network by eliminating the need for the wireless controller, and improve the total cost of ownership. The control plane functionality will reside on a virtual machine and scale much better than the thin AP architectures of today. This new and innovative technology will be the enabler of true high performance business collaboration over a wireless medium.

Avaya's vision is about providing enterprises the tools they need to design next-generation virtualized networks, both wired and wireless, that are "fit-for-purpose." The flexibility of the hardware platforms and virtualization techniques allows Avaya to uniquely fit the network to meet the business needs of the enterprise.