The Edge and the Evolutionary Jump of the Internet‍

Run Almog, Head of Product Strategy at DriveNets‍

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The OGA is heavily focused on reimagining the internet. How do you envision the Internet evolving over the next 10 years?

You don’t need to imagine the internet, we all live it. And the way we live it has evolved the Internet into what it is today, on the brink of an evolutionary jump. From a centralized reduced set of services, we have evolved into numerous services and data sources which are being generated and consumed at a growing pace - exhausting the centralized architecture of the Internet. The Internet, as the collection of services accessible via the network also known as the Internet, will become more distributed and oriented towards the consumer end. It will reach more geographies and a wider population, where data is heavily consumed and generated while centralized service points will act as a second tier in a multi-tier architecture that, while it will clearly carry more traffic than today’s links, will run more effectively and prevent unnecessary travel of data across the globe. The location and definitions of such localized internet grid points, and their behavior as a complete grid, is the implementation of the OGA vision.

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As a society, we’re built and heavily reliant on digital services. What are some of the new applications you see emerging, and how does the Internet need to evolve to meet those? 

We grow as a society, and technology evolution (digitalization specifically) is inevitable. The threats derived from such reliance on systems controlled from cyberspace mandate that segregation of services take place to minimize the blast radius of any such system collapsing. The applications we will see emerging are two types. First is the type of applications we see today, which will become less centralized and as a result more reliable, stable and accessible. The second type is applications that feed off of that reliability, and implement more mission critical functions like transportation (also aviation), healthcare, food production and other production systems. Supporting applications for this distribution - like security and data processing done locally - will also evolve as new applications in the new space. The internet will become more distributed and less monopolized to cater for these new applications.

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Why push forward with the grid versus focusing solely on the edge? What role will the Grid play in 5-10 years, and how does the edge fit?

What is the edge if not where service meets the subscriber? The OGA will further extend the physical presence of the edge and to a wide extent becoming the edge, which is part of a grid vs. a traditional edge. Since the grid is built to be open, such satellite edges will morph themselves into it or stay service/vendor specific. There is no conflict here, both models are applicable.

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What industries do you think will benefit most from the Grid, and why are they important for a better tomorrow?

Production, transportation, healthcare, education and finance, to name a few. The more digitized these industries become, the more productive and accessible they will be, reaching a wider population with better service level. These industries will become more accurate and personalized based on conclusions derived from fast and local data analysis and artificial intelligence.

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How does your company’s mission and services fit with the Open Grid Alliance? Why are you passionate about the Grid?

DriveNets is building networks like cloud - extending the attributes of cloud implementation, such as flexibility, agility, scalability, and multi-tenancy, into the network itself. This extends the reach of services as close as possible to where data and services are consumed as well as enable the network with the operational model of a cloud and the ability to handle traffic locally or remotely. You could say that DriveNets carries the ability to turn the array of service points into a manageable grid.

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