Platform on Platform (PoP) Model for Meta-Networking: A New Paradigm for Networks of the Future

2. Platform On Platform (Pop) Model

Let us first try to understand that every network – be it wired or wireless – be it high speed or low speed – be it multicast or broadcast – be it voice or video or multimedia - is basically a “platform” (Evans & Schmalensee, 2010). We are now-a-days familiar with the term ‘platform’ due to rise in the popularity of cloud computing where Platform-as-as-Service (PaaS) is one of the offerings along with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) (McAfee, 2011). The concept of platform is also age old in economics and that concept has been used by researchers to explain the behavior of the Internet – arguably the best network ever designed on this universe. According to Wikipedia, “two-sided markets, also called two-sided networks, are economic platforms having two distinct user groups that provide each other with network benefits”. Common examples of platforms having two sided markets are eBay, Facebook, Skype, and Google. Extending this simple definition to n-sides, we can write ‘multi-sided markets or multi-sided networks are platforms having multiple distinct user groups that provide each other with network benefits’. Examples of n-sided platforms are galore today; an operating system, like Android, is a 3-sided platform – users, app developers, and handset manufacturers forming the 3 sides. Definitely, the main driver behind the development of any intermediary (aka platform) is economies of scale offered by the market that links two or more distinct but interdependent groups of customers. The earliest telephone exchange or a modern day router or a simple N×N switch is also a platform in its very basic mode – connecting just two sides. In this framework, the Internet is a worldwide available platform; every intranet is a company-wide platform; every LAN is a campus-wide platform; every WAN is a global-scale platform; so on and so forth. For instance, TV network is another good example of a mass-scale platform, though its ‘platform utility’ has not been explored to the fullest extent till today. So we are ready to accept a network as a platform.