At the AT&T Developer Summit in Las Vegas today, the AT&T unveiled its next-generation data-sharing network, Indigo to create a trusted environment where organizations can share data and collaborate on analytics. Indigo will leverage AT&T's advancements in technology such its ECOMP software-defined networking orchestration platform.
"A data-sharing community. It sounds like a simple concept. But it’s not simple if you’re dealing across multiple organizations, each prizing its own data. Almost anyone could list the obstacles: security, privacy, identity management, ownership, said Victor Nilson, Senior Vice President - Big Data, AT&T. "Today we introduce the concept of AT&T Network 3.0 Indigo. It’s our major push to create a trusted environment where organizations can share data and collaborate on analytics."
AT&T sees AT&T Network 3.0 Indigo as having the following three pillars:
i. A new platform to enable closed communities of data sharing and collaboration - This platform will have strong identity management, a policy engine (rules enforcer), rightful retention of data ownership, and two types of analytics – built-in and bring-your-own. Organizations will create communities and invite others to join.
ii. Running on a virtualized network, such as the AT&T software-defined network - The AT&T SDN has API access, built-in secure access channels such as NetBond, and identity and access-management services. As other networks adopt our open-source ECOMP framework, community memberships can span across networks.
iii. Necessary infrastructure services – compute, network and storage. Any virtual private cloud provider with API-accessible cloud orchestration could enable these services.
Imagine this simple example. A city has an electric utility, an internet company and a major heating/air conditioning repair company. They join a technician dispatch community to share their data – such as vehicle, traffic and appointment data. Through cooperative machine-learning and the broader data set, they get better and better at timing their dispatches. Their work becomes more efficient and customers are happier. And they are still able to keep their proprietary information safe, said AT&T.
