CloudEthernet Forum lines up its targets

MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: The CloudEthernet Forum (CEF) launched its keenly-awaited white paper outlining the challenges that are emerging with the explosive growth in datacentres and cloud services enabled by the availability of high speed Ethernet.

Among the key issues identified, in addition to scaling challenges, are requirements for technology and device-agnostic provisioning end-to-end, and for deterministic traffic behaviour and performance.

"Cloud has grown faster than anyone could have anticipated", explains James Walker, CEF president and VP, Managed Network Services, Tata Communications. "As demand grows the big name providers have had to throw money at their infrastructure to work around some of the challenges - and that just raises demand even faster!"

What is needed is for service providers, network equipment manufacturers and other stakeholders to put their heads together and find solutions fast. The CEF is the forum to achieve this, and to anticipate future challenges. Today's white paper is a great example of the power of co-operation in driving technological progress."

The CEF, launched in May this year, is driven by early recognition of an impending storm, as demand for cloud services soar while the industry's ability to scale datacenters risks stalling. The founding members' first self-appointed task was to poll stakeholders and produce a white paper enabling discussions with other interested companies to identify the issues and prioritise work.

Among the issues spelled out in greater detail in the white paper is the need for:

* Scalability of Ethernet to support millions of VLANs and MAC addresses in a way that maximizes the transparency and geographical reach of deployment, and minimizes the configuration required for setup and operation.

* End to end provisioning that is agnostic to the specific devices and technologies across the network, and requiring minimal or no human intervention for rapid deployment of services.

* Deterministic traffic behaviour and performance to meet specified SLAs or legal/regulatory requirements - such as for keeping data within national or jurisdictional boundaries.