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Interview with Fragkiskos Sardis, contributing author of "Cloud-Based Service Delivery Architecture with Service-Populating and Mobility-Aware Mechanisms"

The Future of Cloud Computing and Mobile Networks

By IGI Global on Nov 25, 2013

Contributed by Nathan Laird, Discipline Manager

Fragkiskos (Frank) Sardis is a contributing author of "Cloud-Based Service Delivery Architecture with Service-Populating and Mobility-Aware Mechanisms", a chapter in Mobile Networks and Cloud Computing Convergence for Progressive Services and Applications, which has just been released this month. He took some time to answer a few questions before heading off to the Global Broadband Traffic Management Conference in London.
The Future of Cloud Computing and Mobile Networks

The Future of Cloud Computing and Mobile Networks

IGI Global: Firstly, what sparked your interest in cloud computing and mobile networks?

Fragkiskos Sardis: The main feature of Cloud computing that sparked my interest is the elasticity of resources and the capability to add processing power with little effort. I was first introduced to the idea of having centralized virtual resources accessible by thin clients in a discussion I had with a colleague during my student years. I was first dismissive of the concept because I strongly believed that people will always prefer to have local storage and processing over storing things online. Years later, the technology landscape changed so much that I started exploring the concept. At the time, Cloud technology was still in very early stages, but as it quickly matured and showed its potential, I wanted to explore the different possibilities it offers.

My opinion is that in the future, people will prefer to store their content on the network and access it via thin clients, whether those are static or mobile. Maybe the traditional desktop computer will not disappear but for the average user, having a desktop computer will offer little benefit in contrast to the maintenance it requires. With mobile devices the landscape is a bit different. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to pack more processing power and storage in a small package while keeping the power drain reasonable. Furthermore, offloading tasks from these mobile devices to the Cloud can yield much better performance. I believe Cloud will become a more prominent technology for the average user through mobile devices. Once it has its breakthrough in the mobile market, the desktop computer will follow. The ability to have platform agnostic applications that perform the same on a mobile device and on a desktop computer is what people will expect in the future. Cloud technology is what can make this happen.

In regards to the mobile networks, I believe that they are the enabling technology for Cloud to show what it can do for mobile devices that are starved of local resources. The biggest challenge there is to ensure that mobile networks can offer a consistent and high QoS (Quality of Service) in order to guarantee a good connection to the Clouds and provide a good user experience. LTE is one mobile technology that is giving my high hopes in achieving this requirement. There is a lot of research happening in the field of mobile networks with the aim of facilitating seamless handovers between different wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi and LTE. There are experimental platforms that can achieve this to some extent and therefore open a path to a world where mobile devices can proactively decide which network is best suited for the user based on his mobility and on the QoS he requires.

What is the goal of the Global Broadband Traffic Management Congress and what do you hope to achieve by attending this event?

It is a conference that takes place in various places worldwide with its main focus on exploring technologies that will enable better traffic management on the Internet. We are quickly moving towards a world where everything will be online and the average user will make extensive use of online services. We have mobile operators that are now deploying LTE technology and promote the use of online content on mobile phones. We have emerging markets where smartphones and other internet-enabled mobile devices are being promoted. I think traffic management and methods of monetizing traffic management solutions are going to become a very big factor in the future of the Internet.

What impact does cloud computing have on the wireless network with the increased number of internet capable devices and the speed at which they access information?

Mobile devices have the inherent disadvantage of limited resources. Because of the small package, there are only so many things we pack inside such as device. Furthermore, battery life becomes an issue when we are dealing with tasks that are quite taxing on the local processing resources. Cloud technology is perfect at addressing these weaknesses of mobile devices in a way that not only covers some basic functionality but also greatly expands the abilities of a mobile device. The catch is that if we are going to use Clouds, we need to guarantee constant connectivity to them. Modern wireless networks such as LTE offer the potential of moving towards a world where mobile devices are constantly connected to Clouds for storage and processing. This definitely means a huge amount of traffic going through wireless networks and it is a scenario that I don’t believe network operators are prepared for at the moment. However, in the near future, this may well be a scenario worth investigating in order to make future proof wireless networks.

How does the ever spreading use of LTE change the way mobile networks operate?

This is an interesting question with many possible answers. I think it is a bit too early in the lifecycle of LTE to start guessing where all this will take us from the perspective of mobile network evolution. LTE certainly gives us the basis of developing wireless technologies that cover a wide range of users to the point that fixed networks may not be required for them. So we may be witnessing the start of a conflict between wireless and wired technologies for market segments where the absolute fastest speed is not a requirement.

The deployment of LTE is also more convenient since there are no requirements for engineers to bring copper cables or optical fibre to the doorstep, and with LTE-Advanced we are seeing a boost in the bandwidth that may make it a viable solution even for SMBs (Serve Message Blocks). On the other hand, in the wireless world we are seeing VoLTE being a technology that facilitates a fully packet-switched network but at the same time we have telcos that argue against it for various legitimate reasons such as keeping the existing circuit-switched infrastructure for cost-cutting, relying on circuit-switching for more reliable communication and even keeping 3G operational alongside LTE for users that do not require high speeds.

Another idea investigated is having 3G and LTE co-operating and mobile devices switching between them depending on the type of content that the user is trying to access. If you want to stream a video, your phone gets it from LTE; if you want to load a news article, you fall back to 3G. There is a lot of research still going on that will shape the future of LTE and the research is often pulling in different directions. I don’t think it is possible at this point in time to make a prediction on where all this is going to take us. At the very least we can say that wireless technology is slowly entering market territory that was covered by fixed networks and this availability in bandwidth will hopefully enable Cloud technology to reach its full potential in the mobile market.

What direction do you see mobile networks and cloud computing going in the next 10 years?

For the future of Cloud computing, I would expect interoperability to be a big factor in the next decade. Cloud technology providers are still a bit skeptical of the concept but eventually, I am hoping that technology will move in this direction and allow Cloud applications to be platform agnostic. This means Cloud developers will be free of risk in getting locked-in to a platform. It is not necessarily good news for Cloud owners but at the same time, Clouds will be able to share resources and form federations in order to balance their loads more effectively and therefore increase their profits. Various auction mechanisms are being discussed taking into consideration factors such as the energy consumption of a Cloud, the QoS it can deliver and the amount of renewable resources it is using for power. These mechanisms are then used by service providers to determine which Cloud is better suited for their application and also allow the dynamic reallocation of services when criteria and conditions change. This is where I believe Cloud technology can make a difference in traffic management since we can create mechanisms that take into account the QoS required by an application and the network locations of its clients and find which Cloud is better suited for hosting it. As more players enter the Cloud market and more people are willing to use the technology, we will start seeing many datacenters appearing in different locations worldwide. In the future it could make sense to look for ways of federating all these datacenters and operate them as a big “Cloud of Clouds”

As for mobile networks, I think the next natural evolution would be to achieve seamless connectivity switching across heterogeneous technologies. It doesn’t matter if we use Wi-Fi or LTE 10 years from now, what is important to understand is that it is almost impossible for a single network operator to provide perfect connectivity everywhere using a single technology. Similar to Cloud federations, it may not be such a great idea for telcos to keep building larger and faster networks in an attempt to overprovision resources for their clients. It may well be better for all of them to run smaller, more efficient networks and share their resources and try to shape traffic and manage resources so that everyone stays happy.

Mobile Networks and Cloud Computing Convergence for Progressive Services and Applications is part of the Advances in Wireless Technologies and Telecommunication (AWTT) Book Series, which aims to provide researchers and academic communities with quality research on the concepts and developments in the wireless technology fields. Developers, engineers, students, research strategists, and IT managers will find this series useful to gain insight into next generation wireless technologies and telecommunication.

Fragkiskos Sardis received his Bachelor (First Class Honours) from Middlesex University in 2008. He received a scholarship for a Master degree in Computer Networks at Middlesex University, which he completed in 2009 with distinction. In 2010, he received a scholarship by Middlesex University for PhD in the area of Cloud computing and mobile networks. Throughout his studies, he has worked as an IT administrator, network architect, and IT consultant. His other areas of interest include network security, wireless communications, and distributed computing.

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