Fascinatingly differentWho says time machines aren’t real? Just look at

digitization: it has catapulted us into the future. One of the motors driving this machine are

communication networks. And they shouldn’t be neglected in our drive to modernize.

Alexa can shop online, parking garages can communicate with

cars, and department stores can welcome customers from a

distance – all thanks to networks.

Networks

Foundations of digitization

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Alexa is a real workhorse. She lends a hand wherever she’s needed in the home: doing the shopping, turning on TV bias lighting and re-serving the nearest vehicle through a car shar-ing platform. She’s an inexhaustible font of

knowledge, tells jokes and, best of all, is never grouchy, but always has a sunny disposition. Alexa is popular, too. She works in over eleven million households in the United States alone. How? She’s a computer – albeit an extremely intelli-gent one: a 24/7 virtual assistant.

Though only two years old, Alexa had over 15,000 “skills” by mid-2017 – apps that give her new abilities. If you wish, your digital roommate will remind you to put out the trash for pick-up, update your shopping list or provide a current traffi c report. But Alexa needs the Internet to work her magic. That’s because Alexa lives and thinks in an Amazon data center and connects to her owners over a data network. And she only works properly if the data trav-els so fast that users don’t even notice the delay.

Alexa is a digital assistant – and just one of many new tools that digitization has conjured up out of thin air. “Digiti-zation has created entirely new markets and driven rapid growth in existing ones,” said Prof. Marion A. Weissen-berger-Eibl, Head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) and Professor for Innovation and Technology Management at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. According to analysts, expectations have

peaked for technologies such as machine learning, auton-omous vehicles and connected homes. Virtual reality, for its part, is already tantalizingly close to the productivity stage. Like Alexa, these technologies are all about data – storing, linking and analyzing it. Not to mention transmit-ting it securely and reliably at inconceivably quick speeds. If organizations want to climb onto the digitization train, though, they will have to clear additional hurdles -- includ-ing the need to swiftly roll out suitable network connec-tions. To do that, corporate networks need innovations that can accelerate global data transfer rates to a rapid pace. “We’re standing at the cusp of an entirely new era in net-work technology,” said Patrick Molck-Ude, Director of the Telecommunications Division at T-Systems (see page 14). “We’re moving away from rigid, complex local networks and toward agile, simple, global ones.”

COPY Yvonne Nestler

ILLUSTRATION Matthias Schardt “We’re standing at the cusp of an entirely new era

in network technology.” PATRICK MOLCK-UDE,

Director of TC Division T-Systems

WHO’S AFRAID OF ONLINE GIANTS? One group that has benefi ted from the new era of connect-edness are retailers. E-commerce giants have thrust digital transformation onto the entire industry: from Alibaba to Za-lando. In 2017, ten percent of retail sales currently come from e-commerce; by 2021, the percentage will increase to 15.5, according to eMarketer, a market research outfi t. The engine powering this long-term trend is clear: customers carry around gateways to their favorite store in their pocket or purse. Or they go directly to a virtual assistant and order goods by voice command from their couch.

For retailers, it’s both a challenge and an opportunity. Digital opportunities are wide open for every company. From personalized advertising and freshness sensors for produce to mobile payments. “Could online retailers be more of a blessing than a curse for us?” asked Jens Jän-icke, who runs a grocery store in Adendorf, Lower Saxony, Germany. “Obviously, there’s some risk involved in going digital. But it helps to try things out.”

THE STORE NEXT DOORTo succeed, retailers have to maintain a presence near their customers, who might otherwise end up ordering on-line. One solution: open as many stores as possible. An ex-pansion that dramatically places big demands on the corporate network since each new store needs its own net-work connection. “It used to take up to six months to run lines to new locations,” said Molck-Ude. “Service providers

don’t have dense networks in every corner of the world, after all.” Instead, corporate network operators often had to embark on lengthy negotiations with local partners. And that took time.

To address this bottleneck, T-Systems has rolled out “Smart SD-WAN” (see page 12). This latest enterprise net-work solution from the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary pig-gybacks on the global infrastructure of the ngena alliance, which interconnects its partners’ local networks to provide international lines and network services. No coordination required. Best of all, the entire global network is highly au-tomated, thanks to software-defi ned networking technol-ogy (SD-WAN). Instead of confi guring each network component manually, specialists can now manage the network centrally from a software console. On any infra-structure, too. “Today, we can provide connectivity for orga-nizations much more quickly; it almost takes only one keystroke to provision fi rewalls and other services,” ex-plained Molck-Ude.

RAPID RESPONSE IS NEEDEDHere’s an example. A new branch offi ce, needing to get on-line quickly, uses a temporary cellular connection until a dedicated line can be provisioned. It then painlessly cuts over to the new line – a switch that no longer requires time-consuming manual confi guration. So fl exible is this innova-tive network approach that retailers can not only set up new permanent locations, but can respond quickly to online

With the advent of 5G cellular technology, thousands of additional “virtual reality

spectators” will attend concerts or sporting events.

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Foundations of digitization

If cars are going to drive autonomously and ambulances are going to be able to turn traffi c lights green, sender/receiver information should take no more than a millise-cond to transmit.

competition by opening pop-up stores. As long as there is Internet access, they can essentially get the network infra-structure for these provisional shops overnight.

There are calls for adaptable networks in other indus-tries, too. For example, Hartmut Beuß, CIO of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, has said, “A modern state data network needs to provide high bandwidth and be able to adapt it quickly.” By 2018, 60% of enterprises will adopt software-defi ned networks for remote branch connectivity, predicts IDC.

FLEXIBLE CONNECTIVITY FOR A FLEXIBLE CLOUDOrganizations want more fl exibility in using clouds, too. It’s easy to get cloud services ready. And even easier to give users access to public clouds over the Internet. But these connections just don’t offer the security or performance that many businesses and governments demand. It takes time to provision high-performance connectivity between a cloud and a secure network for thousands of employees. This is partly because each provider has different technical and organizational rules for connecting to its cloud. “How-ever, organizations want the ability to connect to and switch cloud platforms quickly,” said Molck-Ude. To meet this de-mand, T-Systems plans to connect multiple clouds to enter-prise networks over preconfi gured gateways. That way, connections can be up and running in just a few days, in-stead of weeks, as is currently the case. The service is al-ready available for Microsoft Azure Cloud in Germany, but will extend in the fi rst half of 2018 to Microsoft Cloud Global and several data centers for Amazon Web Services. Other cloud providers and locations will follow.

TIME FOR REAL TIMEIt helps little to provision networks quickly if the network it-self is slow, though. Alexa, for instance, would seem posi-tively slow-witted if her voice data lazily chugged its way from the data center to your living room. Or take cars. They should be completely autonomous by 2022, forecasts con-sulting fi rm Frost & Sullivan. But that implies that vehicles can look far into the distance – and so see black ice com-ing or know about the traffi c jam around the next turn. For that to happen, data has to fl y through the cellular network at a mind-boggling speed. Specifi cally, information needs to travel from sender to receiver in one millisecond or less. That’s a requirement that next-generation 5G cellular net-works will meet.

Deutsche Telekom is already vigorously researching the superhero of cellular technology. At 5G:haus, its inno-vation laboratory, it works closely with start-ups, research institutions and network equipment vendors. By using technologies similar to SD-WAN, 5G:haus has managed to virtually separate high-bandwidth video streaming and time-critical autopilot functions while physically supporting them with the same infrastructure. Ultra-high data rates re-quire something else, too: “We need new and signifi cantly more antennas than before as well as running fi ber to our base stations,” explained Christian Wietfeld, who re-searches 5G at the Technical University of Dortmund (see page 22).

Two-thirds of European internet users shop online. Source: Statistical Office of the European Union (EUROSTAT), 2016

Problem is, there’s no practical way to roll out a stan-dardized security concept to millions of connected de-vices. “That’s why we need security embedded in the network,” said Molck-Ude. “A global SD-WAN can help. It lets us provision network security services quickly, simply and consistently: fi rewalls, web security and separate vir-tual networks.” Networks can fend off DDoS attacks, too. T-Systems can automatically cut off an incoming deluge of requests at the backbone as soon as it receives attack re-ports from detection systems in the customer data center.

ONLINE WORLDWIDE – RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX Companies interested in connecting their products to the Internet – say, in order to offer customers value-added ser-vices like remote maintenance – face another obstacle: they need worldwide cellular Internet service. Sounds easy – the Internet is everywhere, after all. In reality, it’s hideously complicated. Laws prohibit the use of one SIM profi le to access the Internet for extended periods in different coun-

Mobile bandwidth has reached a turning point, too. In August 2016, a Deutsche Telekom test lab broke through the one-gigabit mark for the fi rst time. Bandwidths are poised to skyrocket under 5G. ITU, the European standard-ization body, expects to see upload rates of 10 gigabits a second and download rates of 20 gigabits a second under ideal conditions. At that speed, you could don a virtual real-ity headset and experience live soccer matches as though you were sitting in the stands with the crowd instead of rest-ing on your couch at home. And the 5G network wouldn’t even stumble if thousands of virtual viewers tuned into the match. According to ITU, it can feed data to a million de-vices per square kilometer – without any loss of quality. That’s 1,000 times more than today’s cellular networks.

SECURITY IN THE NETWORKCars and VR headsets aren’t the only things going online. Today, vending machines order refi lls, machines request maintenance and smoke detectors notify fi re departments. According to analysts, by 2020, over 20 billion devices will be connected worldwide. Numbers of this magnitude re-quire more than just greater cellular network capacity; they demand an entirely new approach to cybersecurity. Every new device, every connected sensor opens up another po-tential backdoor for hackers.

Exhibit A are the botnets controlled by the Mirai mal-ware, which gained notoriety after a DDoS attack on the DNS provider for Twitter, Paypal, Netfl ix and others in Octo-ber 2016. Cyber criminals had infected hundreds of thou-sands of cameras and refrigerators and directed them to fl ood DNS servers with innumerable requests. “Big compa-nies such as Microsoft, Google or Apple employ experts for IoT security to make things like smartphones as secure as possible,” said US security expert Bruce Schneier. “How-ever, if you buy a webcam to monitor your baby, a refrigera-tor or a thermostat, no expert for IoT security will have been involved with it.”

Literally fundamental. Telematics and IoT will be the foundational solutions for transportation and logistics systems and their value chains.

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tries. Let’s imagine that a camera maker wants to package mobile connectivity with its products in 50 countries so that photographers can instantly upload their pictures to Insta-gram from anywhere in the world. To do this, it would have to sign a contract with a local Internet service provider for local SIM cards in every single country. Translation: 50 part-ners, 50 approaches, 50 rates. As if that’s not enough, the manufacturer has to charge photographers for their indi-vidual data use. Talk about a daunting task.

“But that’s exactly what our core competence is,” said Molck-Ude. “We offer organizations global integrated mo-bile connectivity as an all-in-one, single-source package.” T-Systems negotiates with local carriers and handles the billing. BMW, for example, brought in the Deutsche Tele-kom subsidiary to implement an in-car mobile hotspot so that passengers in over 50 countries could watch stream-ing video on the road. One day, these solutions may be built around eSIM technology, where an integrated SIM card switches, on command, from being a card for a French car-rier to one for an Italian carrier.

MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS MADE EASYContract chaos is a problem for connected workers, not just connected devices. In the US, UK and Australia, 80 percent of employees have one or more corporate-issued mobile devices, according to analysts. And they have the same problem as the cameras in our previous example. Organizations end up partnering with multiple cellular car-riers, depending on where they do business, and then juggle different contracts, rates and invoice formats. To avoid these kinds of headaches, Deutsche Telekom has joined forces with TeliaSonera, Orange and Telecom Italia to form the European FreeMove Alliance. Being a sub-sidiary of an alliance member, T-Systems can provide mul-tinational corporations with mobile communications in over 100 countries – but with only one point of contact.

of all network changes are manually driven. Source: Gartner

More than

80 %

Point and shoot, not point and search: with embedded connectiv-ity, companies can connect their products to networks worldwide. Camera makers, for example, can offer devices that come bundled with mobile connectivity.

Next-generation communications networks are fast, agile, simple and secure. That’s how they drive digital in-novation around the globe. They can beam virtual assis-tants onto our smartphones as we sit in a train or on a beach. And who knows? One day, Alexa may end up as a secretary, sorting e-mails, booking conference rooms and answering phone calls. Or maybe she’ll help customers fi nd their favorite pasta at the grocery store – all thanks to a powerful network.

frank.westermann@t-systems.com www.ngena.net

www.t-systems.com/solutions/networkswww.t-systems.com/solutions/network-security

www.t-systems.com/video/network

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