I know it is a horrible, tired, stale old cliché, but I just really do have to say it. It is good to live in interesting times. And, as 2004 draws to its close, one has to confess that it has certainly been that.

Two immediate highlights stand out from a local perspective: the announcement of the results of the 2010 World Cup bid, and the statement by the Minister of Communications on the deregulation of the telecommunications sector.

Both the victory and the changing legislative environment offer tremendous potential for the economy of the country. Both imply new opportunities and far-reaching development potential. And, if implemented with the passion which we as South Africans put into our professional lives, both are likely to play their part in putting the country on a firm footing in the global economy.

This issue of Network World is dedicated not only to these two key moments in 2004, but to the happenings, announcements, events and trends which have emerged over the past 12 months to shape the local networking arena.

Local area network and security

Let us kick off with the baseline arena of the networking sector, the LAN itself. Says Jeff Jack, technology marketing manager at Dimension Data Holding PLC"s Network Solutions Division: "There has been some hype about gigabit to the desktop, but we have also seen that, with a capable backbone in place, you can get a lot of traffic across a 100Mb link, if managed and allocated correctly. Networks have become faster, but they have also needed to become more intelligent."

Clearly software monolith, Microsoft Corp., and networking powerhouse, Cisco Systems Inc., are aware of this need, announcing a closer working relationship working towards driving self-healing networks. With these leaders in their respective industries taking the initiative, we will see automatic patching and upgrade mechanisms begin to gain native support on the hardware and software layers, to form an interoperable solution.

Enterasys Networks Inc. has already taken steps towards a similar goal with its Secure Networks design stratagem. Explains MD, Martin May: "What we have noticed is that, while we have been developing faster and faster networks over the years, this has enabled threats to these systems to propagate ever faster, too fast for human intervention at times. Therefore we have integrated an intrusion detection solution into our hardware and network management tools, enabling automatic response to threats based on policies set at the physical infrastructure layer itself."

Meanwhile Hewlett-Packard Co., with its ProCurve range of network equipment, has been rapidly gaining customers in the local market, and, with the acquisition of Riverstone Networks technology in June, the organization announced plans to develop its Adaptive Edge architecture into a fabric allowing for the seamless interconnection of intelligence edge devices, be they security, mobile or even IP telephony components.

From a technology perspective, this integration of intelligent solutions and convergence of networking functions was what the last year was all about, leaving us with more complex platforms, which are more easily managed and maintained, while delivering traffic for a larger number of critical applications.

Mobile solutions and Wireless LAN

Then of course, there is the mobile workforce and the WLAN. Both critical considerations in any network being designed today, these components have spent the last year maturing, to the point where they are de facto requirements in a modern business architecture.

Intel Corp. has been a strong driver behind the growth of wireless networking, and continues to push the envelope of the technology with partners across the globe, and of course its Centrino integrated mobile platform was launched in March. Says Joubert de Lange, market development manager at Intel SA: "Centrino was a whole new way for us to approach microprocessor design, and has been very successful. This year we drove the integrated wireless component from 802.11a to b to g, ensuring backward-compatibility all the way to protect customers" investments. "Corporate customers in particular recognized the productivity gains of a mobile workforce, and there has been rapid adoption of Centrino platforms in this space over the last year. 2004 saw mobile growth far exceed desktop growth, with 90 percent of corporate sales and 50 percent of SME sector sales being Centrino solutions. We also began focusing more on the consumer space during the last 12 months, driving integrated platforms down into this volume market," continues De Lange.

The biggest barrier for the technology without a doubt, has been security concerns. While some development has gone into the wireless protocols themselves to improve on this aspect of WLAN, getting past this obstruction has taken education of the market. After all, a WLAN implementation is as secure as a wired LAN at the end of the day, provided that the network has been implemented with proper policies and security principles in mind.

Concludes De Lange: "From an SA perspective, we would like to see a faster roll-out of hotspots now. There has been some promising news on this recently, with joint ventures being formed around entirely new business models. Wireless access and a broadband communications fabric, and then ultimately a wireless broadband connection, are the next major developments, which will drive these technologies to ever greater heights."

Telecommunications and cellular

Speaking of broadband, I had to return to this gigantic and hot sector of the networking industry sooner or later. While preparations have already begun in every quarter around assumptions based on the deregulation focused specifically on VoIP, it will not be until next year, when liberalization happens, and the realities of the process come out in the open, that this will have its real impact.

Says Neil Friedman, product manager in charge of telecoms and communications at Tellumat: "There is no doubt that the most important event to hit the SA telecoms market in 12 years occurred in September. If you compare telecoms to the data networking market, things happen a lot slower. We have had VoIP solutions in place for five years already with certain limitations, but deregulation essentially steps it up to mass deployment time. At least the quality issues of original VoIP kit have all been resolved, thanks to the extended time of limited deployments."

On the cellular communications front, 2004 saw the introduction of different tariffs for calls that remain on the same network to those that break out and into another network. Says Orion Telecom Networks Inc. South Africa director, Jacques du Toit: "We have seen so many dynamics changes and rule changes this year, but, as yet, there has been no real consumer benefit from all of these happenings. Until the SA consumer has freedom of choice with respect to a telecoms and bandwidth provider, none of the hyped benefits can really be delivered."

The GSM space has seen a number of strong trends emerge in 2004. Growth in the data traffic across these mobile networks has been a key indicator of where the technology is going, according to Vodacom Group PLC"s Chris Ross, director of sales, products and services.

"The strong move into the data space by GSM users has had a major effect on the way in which we operate. While we would not neglect our core business of voice communications, we have invested in ensuring that our network is ready to handle large amounts of data traffic as well, if this year was anything to go by. 2005 will see an even more extensive adoption of GSM handsets as a tool for data," he adds.

The premium-rated SMS space is another application which has quickly grown into a strong position, creating a whole new industry and class of business called Wireless applications service providers (Wasps). Continues Ross: "Through the VodaCom Developer Zone we have been encouraging small businesses to enter the content and Wasp market. There are many businesses using such a solution to enable a truly mobile workforce today, and more killer ideas just waiting to be developed."

Comments Du Toit: "At Orion we are in the business of reducing our customer"s communications costs, through more intelligent routing and preferential rates negotiations. For us then, 2004 has been a year with challenges and highlights. The on-net tariffing packages coming from the GSM network operators, and then the telecoms liberalization announcement arriving, but without any rules of engagement attached, have thrown the market into some turmoil. There are fantastic opportunities ahead without a doubt, but only after getting the situation properly bedded down."

And, concluding the year, the Icasa Telecoms Colloquium was held at the DiData Campus, beginning the process of communication with the industry to decide, come February next year, just what the SA telecoms landscape will become.

While all reports suggest that little headway was actually made on the business at hand, due to large scale legal maneuvering, the colloquium was nonetheless an encouraging step towards establishing an environment in which the industry and SA economy can grow with transparency and no hidden agendas. Icasa seemed to fall into the role of independent regulator at long last, and took the matter head on.

The Year in Review

There has clearly been a huge amount of positioning going on in the networking sector during 2004, with new announcements and trends driving organizations this way and the next, but slightly closer examination reveals that is has been primarily a year of discussion.

Comments May: "While there has been a lot of government legislation happening this year, a lot of it has been debate, such as the BEE topic, which has been going on the whole year. It would have been nice to have the results of these discussions settled this year, but all this discussion will undoubtedly make the introduction of the final legislation next year smoother, so it is valuable in the end."

While the industry did experience some of the upswing predicted last year, the boom which was optimistically hoped for never really materialized. With all the opportunities of next year in the process of being laid out and made clear, however, I am certain that the wait for massive growth in networking is nonetheless almost at an end.

Mobile solutions and, by attachment, WLAN have continued carving a rapidly expanding niche for themselves. While mobile platforms appear to be rapidly attempting to overtake their more conventional equivalents, the WLAN will remain a complementary technology for a number of years yet, due to the performance and stability of wired network infrastructures.

And as for telecommunications, well the possible outcomes of the upcoming deregulation process are both numerous and varied, and making any predictions at all without waiting for the finer details would be entirely premature. 2005 could, however, be the year which sees our great country become ripe with global opportunities, if this sector is handled with a view to the long term.