FINAL WORD
40% expect to be doing so in line with
digital aspirations.
To refer back to the Lord Mayor’s point,
the scale of the compute power offered
up by the cloud confers the level of agility
that digital business requires, since making
decisions on the back of historical data is
no longer good enough. The cloud allows
organisations to spin up the tools in minutes
to turn unending quantities of unstructured
data into decisions to put them at the
forefront of the digital marketplace.
However, that decision-making takes place
off campus, often in a data centre run by
a third party, so accessing the data and
acting on those decisions is now a critical
consideration. Nevertheless, enterprise
networking is still largely based on a
traditional model, similar to the enterprise
IT market before the cloud. Lead times are
still measured in weeks, bandwidths are
fixed and configuration changes need to be
manually requested.
Technological developments in Software
Defined Networking (SDN) have enabled
the introduction of on-demand network
services, bringing the cloud experience to
connectivity. Customers have direct control
over their services via a customer portal and
new connections can be delivered in near
real-time with bandwidths that can be flexed
up and down to meet application demand.
Both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web
Service (AWS) are now enabled on
Colt’s On Demand platform, allowing
connections to the Azure cloud in real
time from 200 data centres and 5,000
enterprise buildings, or giving the over
100,000 UK-based customers already using
existing AWS Regions the leverage to run
their applications and store their data on
infrastructure in the UK.
Of course, while the benefits of SDN are
becoming clear to the enterprise in terms of
the on-demand capability we have grown
so used to expect as consumers, it’s also
transforming businesses behind the scenes.
SDN is transforming our own network, but it
is also driving our business processes and the
way our teams collaborate in much the same
way that many of our customers undergoing
the digital transformation process are
experiencing now. n
104
INTELLIGENTCIO
How do you verify
fibre for European
regulations?
Intelligent CIO spoke to Didier Claeys, Director of
Product Line Management for in-building cable
at CommScope, and questioned him on ways of
verifying compliance of fibre optic cables to new
European CPR regulations for in-building applications.
the proper Declarations of Performance
for their cabling products, organised in
Euroclasses A to F.
H
e informed us that the
Construction Product Directive
(CPD), later the Construction
Product Regulation (CPR), was introduced
in 1989 by European regulators and
designed to ensure materials and
equipment that comprise buildings such
as offices, schools, and shops are safe
from fire hazards and other risks.
Safety is top of the agenda
With further classification published
in 2016 on how products such as
communication cables react to fire, a
deadline for the mandatory CE marking
of cables was set for July 1 2017. The
European Commission mandates
construction materials like fibre optics
have a common technical language like
CPR 305/2011 for example.
All manufacturing facilities serving the
European market will need to have
been audited and approved by Notified
Bodies, and the building industry will be
required to work only with vendors that
have carried out extensive testing with
these Notified Bodies, and can provide
This has been the first ever pan-European
implementation of a ‘hierarchy’ of
cable fire requirements. In order to
demonstrate specific class compliance,
manufacturers must provide a Declaration
of Performance containing details about
the Notified Body, and the applied
verification system, found in the applicable
harmonised standard (EN50575).
Every product will be required to carry the
CE label appropriate to the applicable
Euro classification. The type of testing
is determined by the type of verification
system being used by the Notified
Body. Euroclass Cca and B2ca use the
most stringent verification ‘System 1+,’
requiring continuous audits and of the
production facility and product testing.
System 3 includes Euroclass Dca and Eca,
which are lower safety classes.
Approximately 80% of the Notified
Bodies are accredited for System 1+ and
can assign Euroclass Cca and above. It’s
important for organisations to ensure
they are using the appropriate Notified
Body which can be found on the NANDO
website of the European Commission.
CommScope covers the full range of
cables and performance across Europe,
including single-mode/ multi-mode fibre
cables, unshielded/shielded twisted pair
cables and Category 6, among others. All
organisations can ensure safety through
compliance with EU cable regulations. n
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