Nantes Digital Week
Workshop on
Software-Defined Networks and Virtualization:
Are the Energy Efficiency Benefits Obvious?
18 September 2014
La Cité Nantes
GreenTouch is proud to have been invited to participate in a workshop hosted by Nantes Digital Week.
About the Workshop
As we look towards the future of the ICT industry, software defined networks (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) are increasingly seen as disruptive and transformative technologies that enable the next frontier to provide adaptive and efficient networks, communication and computing platforms. Along with a fundamental paradigm shift towards greater adoption of cloud-based applications and data centers, SDN and NFV are expected to provide significant benefits to operators, content providers and consumers through increased network and service flexibility, efficient utilization of resources, reduced operational and capital expenses, simplified maintenance, network evolutions and network automation. This transformation towards a complete software-defined and virtualized world requires new dynamic network architectures, control and management platforms and policies, and even new adaptive and reconfigurable hardware.
One area, however, that has not received a lot of attention is the potential for energy efficiency improvements and the impact that SDN and NFV have on the energy consumption of future networks. While such energy efficiency benefits would seem intuitively obvious, there are nevertheless several competing trends at play that will be discussed during this workshop.
- Are SDN and NFV inherently energy efficient? Can we quantify their energy benefits? If not, what are the fundamental obstacles to energy efficiency gains?
- What functions should be virtualized? Are there limits to the benefits of virtualization from a performance and energy efficiency perspective?
- What are the benefits of centralized versus distributed network architectures and data centers?
- What impact does virtualization have on the traffic demands in the network and the associated energy consumption?
- Where and how should content be processed, stored and transported for minimum energy consumption while meeting the service delivery requirements?
- What are the pros and cons of dedicated custom-built hardware versus general-purpose reconfigurable hardware?
Ultimately, this workshop aims to address the question of how we should design and build future networks, communication and computing platforms that take advantage of the benefits of SDN and NFV, maximize the utilization of resources and provide significant benefits to the industry and the consumers.
Agenda
8h30 – 9h00Welcome Coffee / Tea and Registration
9h00 – 9h30
Welcome Remarks:
Karine Daniel, Vice President, Nantes Métropole
Dr. Thierry Klein, Network Energy Research Program Leader, Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent
9h30 – 10h00
Dr. Christoph Lange, T-Labs Research and Innovation: “An operator view on energy efficiency aspects of software-defined networks and virtualization“
10h00 – 10h30
Mr. Joaquin de la Vega, Senior Manager, Cloud Consulting Services, Alcatel-Lucent Cloudband Business Unit: "Enhancing energy efficiency with NFV & SDN”
10h30 – 11h30
Prof. Jaafar Elmirghani, University of Leeds: “Green Network and Data Centre Virtualization”
11h30 – 12h00
Prof. Laurent Lefevre, INRIA: "Energy Efficient Traffic Engineering for Backbone Networks"
12h00 – 12h30
Mr. Bruno Chatras, Orange Labs
12h30 – 12h45
Closing Remarks
12h45 – 14h00
Lunch and Networking
For program details and to register for this free event, click here.
For more information on Nantes Digital Week, visit http://www.nantesdigitalweek.com.