As the global business environment heads towards recovery, Verizon Business has identified the networking trends that will help companies grow their business in 2010.

According to the global operator, enterprise networks will have to support an increasing number of applications and service models that will help business be more agile, interactive and smarter.

The trends range from the introduction of social networking on the enterprise network, the adoption of cloud computing service models, and the integration of mobile and video technologies in enterprise communications, to the need to leverage smarter, application-aware networks and smart technologies such as machine-to-machine communications to automate business processes.

At the same time, business will have to increase their focus on security, environmental sustainability and their ability to deliver services and applications across multiple geographies.

In this email interview with CommsDay International, David Kim, Verizon Business’ managing director, North Asia, talks about what those trends mean for enterprise networks, and the kinds of technologies that will be critical in enabling those trends.

CommsDay International: What kind of network technologies will be key in supporting the predicted trends? MPLS? Ethernet? etc? What are the trends for Asia?

David Kim: Verizon Business has several aggressive network programs that support the growing the trends in our industry and the Asia-Pacific region. As the owner and operator of one of the largest global communications networks in the world that spans six continents, 159 countries and 2,700 cities, the company is deploying new technology on its network in almost every region of the world.

Current global network expansion programs include its Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network around the world for its Private IP customers; Ultra Long Haul network in the Asia-Pacific, the United States and European regions; submarine cable builds; Converged Packet Architecture; and the global mesh network. All of these network expansion projects help Verizon Business customers meet their communications needs to tackle the new trends in 2010. An example of meeting communications needs is the company’s Converged Packet Architecture which enables the convergence of communications services onto a single packet access connection via a simple Ethernet interface. This gives customers the ability to move seamlessly from legacy time-division multiplexing (TDM) to packet-based technology, resulting in improved efficiency.

One key network program helping the Asia-Pacific region is the deployment of the Verizon Business mesh network. As a leader in developing and deploying a global mesh network that circles the globe, Verizon Business began its global mesh network deployment in early 2007, and now has numerous global meshed nodes around the world including seven-way mesh diversity in both the Pacific and Atlantic.

The diversity provided on the global mesh network provides two important customer benefits of a mesh network include availability and predictable latency in the event of a network disruption. A third important customer benefit is automatic restoration and real-time management of the voice and data traffic on the mesh network. Verizon Business has seen a dramatic improvement in our overall network performance since we introduced meshing. The Pacific mesh network is operating at 99.999 percent of network availability.

During the recent submarine cable breaks near Taiwan where 10 submarine cables were damaged in 20 locations, the Verizon Business global mesh network operated exactly as designed during this service interruption. Within milliseconds of the multiple cable breaks, the Verizon Business global mesh network automatically rerouted restorable customer traffic from the damaged submarine cables by providing additional network paths. As a result, customers could keep their operations running without missing a beat.

The mesh network operated so well during the Asia Pacific service interruptions, which were caused by the results of Typhoon Morakot and earthquakes in the region, because the Verizon Business mesh network had multiple node diversity, route diversity and capacity built into the design. For example, the cable breaks affected five of nine Verizon Business mesh routes serving Hong Kong, two of five mesh routes serving Taiwan and one of three mesh routes serving Singapore. Due to the extensive reach and diversity of the mesh network in the region, multiple routes were available to carry the rerouted traffic. Currently, the Verizon Business Asia-Pacific mesh network extends from India to Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and over to the U.S.

Verizon Business recently announced its global mesh network also will expand to the Middle East in 2010.

All of the network programs which support new trends are developed for worldwide deployment so Verizon Business customers have the same experience across the globe from one service provider.

How will those trends change enterprise networks? in terms of bandwidth? network architecture?

As the network landscape shifts toward Ethernet-based infrastructures due to the increased demand for high-bandwidth services, Verizon Business is leading the effort to stay ahead of the game. Verizon continues to deploy 40G technology on its backbone network while also testing 100G technology for later deployment. With the increase in data, video, IP traffic and wireless services around the world, customers will continue to push the bandwidth demands, and it’s the company’s responsibility to ensure the network is ready to meet those customer needs.

While enterprise customers expand their businesses around the world, their network managers are working smarter and faster to keep up with the pace, especially in the Asia-Pacific, India and the Middle East growth regions. Dealing with one service provider like Verizon Business where the network architecture and capabilities are the same worldwide, can give business customers peace of mind during the expansion process as 2010 approaches.

Businesses also are placing more mission critical traffic on their enterprise networks today which encourage security teams to select the best network security solutions available in the industry and Verizon Business has some of the best.

What are the challenges for enterprise IT departments in supporting those trends?

The pressures on today’s businesses are unrelenting: whether from competitors or customers; in domestic markets or abroad. Customers, suppliers and shareholders alike expect ever faster service, in ever broader geographies. And economic turbulence makes the ability to bring new products to market quickly and effectively more important than ever, yet, companies are also under tremendous pressure, as outlined above, to do more with less.

Technology is increasingly playing an integral role in enabling companies to do just this. Whether looking at linking offices and individuals around the world, optimising global networks, automating business-critical processes or enabling access to information and expertise, technology, and particularly today, Internet-protocol (IP)-enabled technology, can provide a solution. The key is to create a Technology is increasingly playing an integral role in enabling companies to do just this. Whether looking at linking offices and individuals around the world, optimising global networks, automating business-critical processes or enabling access to information and expertise, technology, and particularly today, Internet-protocol (IP)-enabled technology, can provide a solution. The key is to create a

In terms of video, what can enterprise network managers do to optimise their networks to support video?

The unreliability of the open internet and the costs and rigidness of the fixed telecom lines are fortunately obstacles of the past. In the 1990s, IP based video-conferencing became possible, and more efficient video compression technologies were developed, so today's video conference networks offer guaranteed-capacity at affordable rates enabling any business, regardless of size and budget, to maximise their video conferencing experience. The technology platform supporting Verizon Video Conferencing includes both switched digital and IP service provisioned on our digital network (public and private)

This state-of-the-art multipoint bridging capability supports H.320 (ISDN) and H.323 (IP) services to improve network ubiquity and provide a high quality experience for all customers. Today’s codec's offer compression standards that enables video conferencing systems to achieve highly error resilient IP video transmission enabling wide scale deployment of high definition desktop video conferencing, reducing latency between transmitting source and receiver, resulting in fluid communication without pauses.

In terms of smart networks, what is Verizon working on to enable enterprises to leverage smart networks and devices?

Our industry is building smart networks that are becoming platforms for growth, and Verizon is in the very center of this transformation.

With the ongoing investment in IP technology and other new technologies to build smart networks, Verizon Business is developing new and innovative products and services that will give customers more flexibility to conduct their business more economically and with ease around the globe.

New devices and applications will continue to be developed for use on the smart networks because the network of today and tomorrow is truly a smart intelligent network. Long gone are the days when communications companies simply had “dumb” pipes that only transported voice traffic from one country to another country. The Verizon Business global network today is smart, hungry and able to handle as much data, video and IP traffic as any customers want to place on it.