Building and Deploying IOWN: Interview with Dr. Masahisa Kawashima, NTT IOWN Technology Director (Part 2 of 2)

(This is Part 2 of a two-part interview with Dr. Masahisa Kawashima,?NTT IOWN Technology Director . The IOWN [Innovative Optical and Wireless Network] is an initiative for networks and information processing infrastructure that can provide high-speed, high-capacity communications by using innovative technology focused on optics and tremendous computational resources. NTT is a world leader in providing technology and business solutions to people, clients, and communities. With $108B in revenue and over 330,000 employees in over 80 countries and regions, they are committed to being a long-term trusted partner by always contributing to society through their business operations. Part 1 was published on April 4, 2023 )

Kevin: Is the Cognitive Foundation how the digital twins interact? I think that is a very unique aspect of IOWN.

Dr. Kawashima: Yes, that's true. Digital twin is intended to support our customer’s digital twin applications, but at the same time we will build a digital twin-based operation system for infrastructures, and that would be the foundation of the cognitive foundation.

Kevin: Much of your explanation references how IOWN can improve global society. It's not surprising since NTT has always been focused on improving society, as that is a key component of the company's culture. What other ways does IOWN address that aspect of the company's culture?

Dr. Kawashima: One contribution we can make is contributing to the decarbonization of data center infrastructures. Today, data centers are becoming bigger and bigger, creating spots that require a huge amount of energy. Many cities have started resisting the construction of hyperscale data centers. Some cities have started “data center moratoriums,” which bans the construction of new hyperscale data centers for a few years. IOWN APN can address this issue by changing the concept of cloud from centralized to decentralized. Instead of having a limited number of hyperscale data centers, we can create many small size or medium size data centers and connect them with IOWN APN to form one big data center virtually. As each data center does not have to be so big, we will be able to operate each data center with locally available green energy.

Kevin: Is this disaggregated computing?

Dr. Kawashima: Disaggregated computing is the concept to leverage such data center architecture, but you don't need to have disaggregated computing system, even with today's computers, if we decentralized data centers with IOWN APN , we can distribute energy demands over a wide area. That way, it is easier to leverage green energy.

Kevin: So this new approach to computing can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the amount of energy that's used by hyperscale data centers, by distributing them across a broader geographic area. That way, you could have these data centers in areas that are using sustainable energy sources.

Dr. Kawashima: Yes. In order to achieve carbon net zero, it is not just important to reduce the total energy consumption. It is also important to reduce the peak power demand per area. We would like to avoid creating a spot where there is a huge energy demand in a small geographic area. If we can distribute power demand over a wide area, it would be easier for us to leverage green energy. We can achieve this concept with IOWN APN.

Kevin: That's very impressive, but you're not doing this all by yourself, are you? You have also have the IOWN Global Forum . How does NTT leverage the forum to make IOWN a reality?

Dr. Kawashima: Many of the most influential companies in the world of IT and networks are now members of IOWN Global Forum. There we are discussing societal issues along with the use cases and application systems that can solve society’s challenges. We identify the system architectures needed to solve society issues and, through these discussions, we will create a consensus between service providers and equipment vendors regarding what kind of IT and network products are needed. IOWN Global Forum members will then develop IOWN compliant network and computing products. At the same time, we will do proof of concept activities so that we can demonstrate the value of IOWN technologies and application systems.

Kevin: You've really given me a much better understanding of IOWN and how this new approach is really going to help in the creation of a smarter world. Have we missed anything that the audience should know?

Dr. Kawashima: I may be repeating myself, but IOWN will drive a paradigm shift in cloud computing. Today, cloud is about centralization, which is creating several issues which include data center moratoriums, energy challenges and sustainability issues. Another issue is data sovereignty. As the cloud gets bigger and bigger on-premises infrastructure is getting smaller and smaller. This drives concern by many customers about data sovereignty. With IOWN APN, cloud will be about decentralization. We can distribute data centers over multiple regions, and also allow customers to have their own small DC as a part of the whole cloud infrastructure. This will allow customers to keep data sovereignty of their own data. IOWN will change cloud from centralized to decentralized.

Kevin: Data sovereignty is a very important aspect of a modern cloud strategy. It also has a big impact when it comes to laws and regulations. IOWN seems to help protect data. Is that what you're saying? Could you explain that?

Dr. Kawashima: Yes, with ION APN. Because the network is slow today, when we leverage a cloud computing infrastructure, the customer has to store their data in the cloud. Since IOWN APN is a high-speed, low-latency infrastructure that can connect multiple data centers, customers can store their data at their customers own DCs. At the same time, if they want to analyze their data, they can transfer their data to the cloud in a relatively short time and do the processing, leveraging cloud providers’ advanced computing infrastructure. Of course, they may be concerned about, data leakage while data are being processed in the cloud infrastructure, but that can be protected with today's secure computing technologies. So with that, we can separate data centers to store data and data centers to execute computing. Maybe in the future, cloud will be called “computing centers” while customers' data centers would be called “data centers.”

Kevin: Excellent. What is the best way of learning more about IOWN and how it's going to really change the ICT industry?

Dr. Kawashima: To learn more about IOWN, visit the IOWN website at https://www.rd.ntt/e/iown/ and the IOWN Global Forum at https://iowngf.org/ .

Kevin: We really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today Dr. Kawashima.

Dr. Kawashima: Thank you very much for having me.?