Message from the Director

“The University of Pretoria’s vision to be a leading research‐intensive university means that the guiding strategy will be to locate the core activities of research, teaching and learning…” - UP 2025 Strategy

The notion of the Future Internet (FI) is increasing these days, as this buzzword reflects the evolution of the Internet in different domains, including the Internet of Services, the Internet of Things, and the network of the future. Nevertheless, these domains contribute to one major vision, which represents a totally connected planet, in which humans and machines are seamlessly interconnected and new applications, such as Smart City applications, become a reality for a better living. Network service providers are well positioned to address many of the concerns that relate to cloud computing (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS). Given the control they exercise over access transport networks, they can provide secure quality-­of-service (QoS) connectivity to and from data centers. Better still, network service providers can take cloud computing one step further by adding dynamically scalable communication to the cloud service offering (CloudCommunication). Emphasizing the importance of adaptive connectivity, this next phase of evolved cloud computing could be called Cloud Networking as a Service (NaaS). This concept is based on the vision of a unified management framework for computing and communication. Rather than controlling network and computation facilities as separate entities, with little or no power over the underlying resources, cloud networking can optimize resource allocations by considering network and computing resources as a unified whole. Our industry partners provides a mixture of network, service and application providers as well as users of cloud. This project will consider the unification of Cloud Computing, Cloud Communication and Technology Convergence, moving towards a Future Internet network called FutureCloud.

According to an article in The Institute magazine (Volume 38, Issue 4, December 2014, http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org), entitled "Five Skills for Managing Software-Defined Networks: What IT and network engineers will need to succeed" by Kathy Pretz,

"In today's networks, most management operations are carried out by people. But software-defined networks (SDNs) are going to change that by automating many processes to reduce human input and the mistakes that can be made. And with those changes, IT professionals will need new skills. hese people are going to be on the front lines where SDNs are designed, operated, and managed. They will also be implementing policies that increase performance and troubleshooting programs that go awry. According to Antonio Manzalini, chair of the IEEE Software Defined Networks Initiative, IT and network engineers will need to acquire a “systemic” mind-set aimed at integrating design and operations in data centers and telecommunications networks, as the border between the two domains blurs. These engineers will be in charge of enabling successful SDN deployment. 

With the softwarization of telecommunications infrastructures engineers will need the following five skills to develop new SDN tools, products, infrastructure, and applications:

1. The ability to incorporate know-how from the IT and network domains, which have grown independently of each other over the years but are now converging.
2. An understanding of industrial mathematics, a branch of applied mathematics. Those with this knowledge will be better able to understand technical issues, formulate precise and accurate mathematical models, and implement solutions using the latest computer techniques. An understanding of this field will help in developing systems by applying machine learning and cognitive algorithms, which are expected to lessen the complexity and dynamic nature of SDNs.
3. A mastery of software architecture and open-source software, which is needed to develop SDN tools and applications. It will also be helpful to understand software verification and validation processes, which ensure that software meets specifications and fulfills its intended purpose. Some engineers assume they’ll need programming skills, but that’s not necessarily so, because software applications for SDNs from third parties are already available.
4. A background in big-data analytics in order to understand how to handle the huge amounts of data expected from SDNs. Someone skilled in big-data analytics will not only be able to manage more data but also know the right questions to ask should problems arise. Such analytics will also help engineers make smart, data-driven decisions.
5. Expertise in cybersecurity, because security must be everywhere within SDNs. It needs to be built into the architecture and also must be delivered as a service to protect the availability, integrity, and privacy of connected resources and information. 

“Education is very important, because the IT and networking communities are speaking different languages,” Manzalini says. “Telecommunications engineers are the ones who developed and are executing the telecommunications metrics in place today. The IT people developed and are executing cloud computing, so there is a conflict between the two specialties, coming as they do from past architectures. “We need to teach both of them to speak the same language.” 

Jacques van Wyk - Director CeTEIS