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“The IEEE CQR International Workshop is held annually with the purpose of bringing together industry and academic experts to present and discuss communications quality, reliability and security issues as they relate to real world issues. The output from the workshops adds to the community’s body of knowledge and serves to inform, help form opinion, and to assist in the development of best practice and relevant standards […] this year, special focus will be on the challenging issues related to the requirements, metrics, measurement, management, and dissemination of Communications Quality & Reliability.” – 2014 Annual IEEE CQR International Workshop.

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I am looking forward to CQR 2014, which will be held in Tucson, AZ, this coming week. I am glad to share that this is my third consecutive year speaking at this event.

Moreover, this time around Alcatel-Lucent will also be represented by Roy Amir, VP of Product & Strategy. His experience with cloud computing encompasses former work at British Telecom and his current responsibilities at the CloudBand Business Unit, which delivers ALU’s leading platform for NFV (Network Functions Virtualization).

Roy will join a panel on “Cloud and Security” on Wednesday, May 14, which will be chaired by Michael P. Ryan of Verizon Wireless.

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Back in 2012, I joined a panel on “the impact of OTT (Over The Top) services on telecommunication networks” with AT&T, Cisco and Ortiva Wireless (now part of Allot Communications) in San Diego. My contribution to that discussion focused on the need for thIS industry to look beyond network measurements and QoS (Quality of Service) to fully embrace and understand what it takes to deliver the kind of QoE (Quality of Experience) that moves the needle far enough to make a business difference.

This remains very relevant in a world where network operators still risk becoming disintermediated from new sources of growth. Much of what I stated was centered around achieving specific benefits by correlating end to end analytics in the advent of big data in telecoms. I wasn’t able to stay for the full conference since I was also presenting CloudBand and Bell Lab’s Networked Cloud demonstrations at Alcatel-Lucent’s Tech Symposium in the Silicon Valley.

Last year I joined another CQR panel on “infrastructure considerations given the rapid raise of all kinds of cloud services” with AT&T, Oracle and Juniper in Florida. My focus was on conveying the game changing nature of the so-called “carrier cloud” and how NFV and SDN were set to transform the telecommunications industry.

Long story short, my delivery was about adopting cloud technologies to actually solve cloud problems and open up new opportunities in the process. Note that network operators are also known as “carriers” and, therefore, the term “carrier cloud” environment relates to cloud systems, which happen to be mostly handled “on premise” today.

Interestingly enough, both panels were followed with great interest and registered full house. These were controversial topics as seen in the Q&A sessions. The fact that post-event feedback was very positive was very rewarding. My understanding is that CQR’s audience is largely concerned with network operations. This has to do with applications, platforms and sophisticated multi-layered systems subject to regulations, and with most of the underlying technology being transparent to end users. Note that when factoring carrier cloud requirements, we not talking about cloud computing’s business as usual either.

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I would like to thank both Scott Poetsky and Carol Davids for their kind invitations for me to join this year’s IEEE CQR and speak at the following two sessions:

Tuesday, May 13 – Cloud / SDN / NFV / Domain 2.0 Services: “Our networks are changing from being confined to traditional models of servers in a single building or buildings defining a network to software defined network (SDN) or Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and scaling capacity by leveraging cloud architectures.  This segment will focus on how we use these architectures and technologies to build and scale our networks in a highly reliable manner.” Chair: Scott Poetsky of Allot Communications

Wednesday, May 14 – Distinguished Expert Panel – Real-Time Evolution of Real-Time Communications: The Architectures, Technologies, Services and Applications that will shape Tomorrow. “The Internet, the Web and smart mobile devices have moved telecommunications into the data domain augmenting – and sometimes replacing – it with text and video.  Global resources – network, machine and human – are called upon to support even simple voice calls and chat sessions.  Multiple identifications on multiple networks are available, including phone numbers, email addresses, and ecosystem IDs such as Skype, FaceTime and Gmail.  While the various networks and ecosystems may be closed, we expect seamless interworking between them all as well as privacy, security and a good end-user experience. This panel of experts will discuss the future of telecommunications networks as they are being shaped by contemporary technologies including WebRTC, SDN, Cloud, 4G, 5G and more.” Chair: Carol Davids of the Illinois Institute of Technology and Chair Elect at IEEE CQR.

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See you in Tucson and stay tuned for more posts on IEEE CQR ; )