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The Big ChallengesIT Futures Research Centre
© British Telecommunications plc
Introduction
What is BT?
What is Research and Venturing?
What is the IT Futures Research Centre?
What are our challenges?
Where do we go from here?
© British Telecommunications plc
BT Group CTO - Research & Venturing
BT Exact & BT LoBs
Long
Ter
m R
esea
rch Mobility
ICTNetwork TransformationImproving CustomerExperience
CTO
Research Centres
Ventures
• Business Support• Service Innovation• Partnership
Mob
ility
I
T Fu
ture
s
Net
wor
ks
Per
vasi
ve IC
T
Fore
sigh
t
Inte
llige
nt S
yste
ms
Asi
an R
esea
rch
Cen
tre
External Venturing
IPR Licensing
Sector Programme
Sec
urity
BroadbandB
road
band
App
licat
ions
© British Telecommunications plc
What we do
The primary objective of the IT Futures Research Centre is to carry out world class research that will generate Intellectual Property and identify new revenue opportunities for BT’s growing business in ICT.
The Centre brings together research experts in areas such as: virtualised computing and storage infrastructures; automated ICT service assurance; architectures for next generation operational support systems; business and customer analysis to support new products and services; next generation semantic web technologies; managing system integration complexity to ensure the delivery of
customer solutions that are on time, on budget and meet customer requirements.
© British Telecommunications plc
The IT Futures Research Centre Teams
Strategic and Business Analysis Research
Next Generation Semantic Web Research
ICT Application Platforms Research
Future ICT Management Systems
Next Generation Computing Infrastructures
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Next Generation Computing Infrastructure
Managing the ICT Infrastructure of the future through:
Distributed Computing Management
Policy Based Management
Service Level agreements
GRID Computing
Large Scale Distributed Storage
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Future ICT Management Systems
Architecting Next Generation ICT Support Systems through:
Component Software – MDA
OSS
Open Source
Network Management
Enterprise ICT Support
Rapid Application and Service Provisioning
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ICT Application Platforms Research
Stimulating revenues and cost reduction through a better customerexperience
Multimodal technology
Application Development Platform
APIs
Service Agency
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Next Generation Semantic Web Research
Enabling Next Generation Business and Knowledge Management
Knowledge and Information Fusion
Search and content management
Collaboration technology (P2P)
Semantic Web Services
Web 3
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Strategic and Business Analysis Research
Supporting Strategic ICT Decision-Making through:
Commercial Analysis
Business Simulations
Socio-economic/ ethnographic studies of the impact and use of emerging ICT
Risk mitigation Dynamic Systems Modelling
Services Science
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Some Assumptions on the Impact of Technology
There will be an increased demand and provision of network-centric solutions
There is rising expectation on ICT from increased converged services in the home/SoHo.
Outsourcing will grow to provide management of virtualised resources Infrastructure no longer dedicated and physically bound to a task. Infrastructure will be flexible, distributed, dynamic and can be used on a
pay-as-you-go basis. Industries, markets, products, service delivery processes are all growing in
complexity - enabled by technology, driven by competition and regulation At the same time customers expect straightforward, complete, helpful
experiences Automation will lead to increased self-service solutions. Several developing technologies could have a significant impact on ICT
over next 5 years It is unlikely that any totally new technologies will have major impact over
next 5 years
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Technology Domains
Infrastructure LayerVirtualised Resources
InteroperabilitySemantic LayerSense-Making and Semantic Technologies
Quality and R
eliabilityService Integration LayerIntegration & Orchestration
Managem
ent Services
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Virtualised Resources Key objectives
To provide virtualised computing and storage infrastructure distributed over an IP network
To investigate methods, tools and techniques that will enable the undertaking of total ICT infrastructure and processes health analysis
To undertake research that supports total ICT Service Assurance
Key Research Challenges Automatic Inventory analysis – Virtual Monitoring Framework Analysis of Computer Estate (N/W, IT, Applications) Automatic ICT Service Assurance to assess performance – Total Performance
Knowledge Dashboard ICT Root Cause Analysis Dynamic SLA management
Negotiation and the illusion of choiceVocabularies and translationAutomatic generation of policies – interaction with the computing fabric
Large Scale Distributed Storage ManagementReal-time Access
Business Process discovery and Performance
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How did we get here?
Web services
Business process management
Grid deployment
MainframePersonal
InternetClient server
The adaptiveenterprise
Service-centric management
Horizontal architecture flexible, stable, supply matches demand
Leve
l of e
nter
prise
ada
ptab
ility
Silos of technologyinflexible to change, over-provisioned
Time
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GRID will become mainstream 2007/08
Focus
GRID technologies
Key drivers
Companies using GRID computing <1% 2% 5% 10%
…BUT early opportunities are emerging NOW
• Academia• Research institutions• Early adopters in enterprise space
• IT seen as a cost centre
Intra-enterprise GRID Inter-enterprise GRIDNascent
• Large enterprise private grids
• Focus on cost reduction and efficiency
• Business process improvement benefits begin to take effect
• Initially single applications• Dynamic partitioning• Network load balancing
• Distributed Storage• Large scale distributed performance management
• Security and Trust solutions
• Enforceable SLAs• Dynamic virtual partitioning Improve operational costsImprove efficiency and hardware ROI
• GRID for commercial use between Corporates
• End to End SLA management
• Shared IT resources and infrastructure adoption
• Self healing/autonomic systems
• Policy based management
• Opportunistic management
2006 2008
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Service Integration and Orchestration Key Objectives
To enable the migration towards architectures where desired services are created automatically as required, and integration provided automatically for the duration of the transaction
To support rapid Service Creation and hosting environments based on re-useable application and OSS capabilities, backed by integrated 24x7 operations and guaranteed QoS
To enhance integration of network-based, application-based, and content-based services with (Semantic) Web technologies
Identify SLA requirements at the Application / Service level of Abstraction Key Research Challenge
Take a high level SLA and generate the SLA requirements for the constituents
SLA’s that straddle the Organizations, Business, Application, Middleware and end-to-end Networks
Architectures and Methodologies that support rapid, low cost service delivery
Service Discovery and Composition Automating Network Based Integration Services
© British Telecommunications plc
Managing ICT Services
21C ICT Management Architecture
Real-Time ICT Service Assurance
& Provisioning
RequestingApplication
DatacentreApps
BranchDesktop
CEODesktop
Policy Direction(Real Time)
Policy Enforcement
Policy Administration
Billing for Complex ICT Services
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Open Systems
Realising best in class systems
Customer
IP PBX Order
Partner
ProductShipmentOrdered
Network Provider
CreateConfig
Partner
IP PBX Delivered
Customer
IP PBXAuto
Configures
Service Provider
Active Service
Reported
Reduced Time-to-Market
& Cost21C Architecture& Futures
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Convergence – Service Agency Platform
Concept developed in 2005 New opportunity for a
business to intermediate between consumers and 3rd party service providers
Support core consumer services through Identity & Authentication
Management User interaction Purchasing and Payment
Prototype Server – web services Mobile (J2ME and MS)
and PC clients Scenarios such as eBay
bidding SE
RV
ICE
AG
EN
CY
Cap
abili
ty
Exp
osur
e
Paymentmanager
Acc
ess
De/
MU
X
TCP/
IP
HTT
P-TC
P/IP
GPR
S
HTT
P-G
PRS
3G
Aut
hent
icat
ion
Use
r Int
erac
tion
Paym
ent
Loca
tionSelf-care
Web Portal
AdminWeb Portal
MA
NY
MO
RE…
Register/Selector
Locationmanager
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Sense-Making and Semantic Technologies Key Objective
To make sense of a Complex and Dynamic Commercial Environments To maximising the value of Unstructured Corporate Information To determine the impact of Web 2 technologies on BT systems Use of semantic technologies to enable interoperability between
systems in the absence of common integration standards
Key Research Challenge Developing tools for sense-making, policy and decision-making (“Tools
for Thinking”) Semantic integration of heterogeneous information sources Intelligent analysis of structured and unstructured information To develop models that manage complexity
System dynamics and Agent Based Models Semantic Grids Real time Business Intelligence
© British Telecommunications plc
Next Generation Web
Today’s web– Machine-to-human
Tomorrow’s web Also machine-to-machine “an extension of the current web in which information is given well-
defined meaning” (Tim Berners-Lee) making web-based information machine-understandable
Enabling Semantic knowledge management
Intelligent search, integration of multiple information sources Automatic web service discovery and composition
“I want a 10 day holiday in France starting next week sometime. Find me the cheapest hotels and flights and book taxis to and from the airports on my credit card.”
Faster, less costly next generation systems integration via semantic description of components facilitating automatic integration
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Semantic technology timelineenabling next generation ICT via rich descriptions
Information integration & KM
System interoperability
2000 20102005 2015
Semantic Intranet
Virtual Organisations
Semantic BPM
Semantic Web
Services
Business integration
Semantic Grid
PervasiveComputing
Ambient Intelligence
Automatic service discovery and composition leading to faster, cheaper integration.30% of all IT costs are on integration (Gartner)
Solution specification at the business level: system integration as a result of BPM updates. “Business processes inside the organization are generally not accessible to machine reasoning “ From business goal to ICT solution. Networked devices
embedded in the environment: continuous and unobtrusive connectivity and services
Service provider alliances torespond to particular market opportunities. The ability to create reliable and scalableVOs on demand in a dynamic, open and competitive environment
Unified access to heterogeneous information sources. 43% of business resort to manual processes and/or new software when integrating data for reporting.Intelligent search.
“The only path to scalable interoperability of data, services, processes and devices”
© British Telecommunications plc
Business Analysis
Key activities Develop computer simulations to support strategy development. Strategic business and customer analysis, in support of BT’s
strategic plan and new products and services. Socio-economic/ ethnographic studies of the impact and use of
emerging ICT
Volumes
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for M
odel
ling Field Frames Build
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07Volu
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usto
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Driv
en In
stal
l Ord
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FMP SMP LLU Fibre
Lead times
Field provision completion time - FMP
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0123456789
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The way we dynamically deploy our skill pools to deal with
incoming volumes determines what we deliver to our customers
People
People - skills pools total Field Install people
total Field Repair people
total Field Install & FieldRepair peopletotal Build people
total Build & Field Installpeopletotal Frames people
total Frames & Field Installpeopletotal Audit etc only people
total Audit etc & Field Installpeopletotal contingency field people
Create, adapt and apply computational economics,to address BT's business problems
© British Telecommunications plc
A Vision too far?
Software will be personalised to provide users their own tailored, unique working environment suited to personal needs.
Software will be self-adapting, containing reflective processes to understand how it is being used and implement ways to adapt to users requirements.
Software will also identify the need to commission new or changed software and decommission redundant software.
Software will operate transparently to provide a high degree of resilience against failure.
All interactions with software will be conducted through natural forms and anticipation of user’s needs will be such that any such interactions, natural or otherwise, are minimised
© British Telecommunications plc