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Case study #2: The Green Sustainable Telco Cloud project (www.synchromedia.ca/node/870)

Author: Professor Mohamed Chériet (Green ICT initiative steering committee) University of Quebec’s École de technologie supérieure, Canada.

The Green Sustainable Telco Cloud (GSTC) project, supported by Ericsson, Canada’s NSERC and the Prompt consortium (www.promptinc.org) through the Equation initiative (www.equationict.com) is the first project at this scale in the world, which addresses the challenges inherent in building green and sustainable Telco services based on cloud computing technologies. Unlike most of the server-centric public cloud solutions on the Internet, the proposed cloud model is network-centric and targets the telecommunications industry. Path and bandwidth planning for both the physical and virtual layers of the system, as well as mathematical models and optimization methods have been proposed using load modeling and prediction tools empowered by cognitive approaches to understand and model the system's energy consumption and environmental footprint. This research has generated significant results in terms of efficient cloud operation, environmental assessment, and optimization. It has the potentially create a new real time economic model for both energy and telecommunications sectors. The facilities and software developed during the project have then become an industrial-scale open research testbed for Canadian researchers to support R&D activities, while being compliant with the environmental standards like ISO 14044 and ISO 14064.

The project is an important embodiment of Prompt’s Quebec-based Equation mega-project (www.equationict.com) which is a major Green ICT initiative of a total value of $70 million over 4 years, based on a public-private partnership with the aim of developing and demonstrating new ICT products and services for reducing GHG emissions and energy consumption, and in general ICTs with a positive environmental impact on Quebec, Canada and the world. Rooted from the GreenStar Nework project funded by CANARIE and led by Prof. Cheriet, which is one of the first testbeds in the world designed to migrate virtual data centres between geographically distributed nodes according to the availability of renewable energy, the EcoloTIC project has been an innovative collaborative initiative and positioned Quebec at the forefront in addressing the growing carbon footprint in telecommunications services. This is confirmed by a number of high-quality publications, large media coverage, industrial patterns, and read-to-market products resulting from the project.

Green cloud computing as leverage for Green Sustainable Telco

Based on the academic-industry collaboration of University of Quebec’s Ecole de technologie superieure, University of Toronto, Ecole de Polytechnique at Montreal, Ericsson, and Inocybe Technologies, as well as the support of Canada’s government and the Quebec government (through Prompt), the GSTC project has successfully demonstrated the ability of: i) cloudifying Telco systems, ii) profiling and environmental assessment of Telco Cloud, and iii) smart and sustainable provisioning of Telco Cloud services. Vibrant outcome of the project includes a robust, scalable and reliable architecture for Telco Cloud infrastructure, an open Telco Cloud middleware enhanced with environmental controls and intelligent management, and solutions for energy efficiency, GHG emissions reduction and life-cycle analysis. These prototypes and methodologies have been commercialized successfully and greatly contributed to the product portfolio of Ericsson as world’s leader in Telco Cloud solution.

Green Sustainable Telco Cloud research framework

The entire life-cycle of Telco data centers and services have been analyzed, and leveraged by advanced real-time power mix assessment models for environmental emissions. Optimal offloading scenarios have been built, which is crucial for the establishment of a sustainable network of Telco data centers for cloud services in Canada.

Telco Cloud virtual machine real-time energy assessment and an Optimal Telco datacenter network

The successful achievement of this project has also provided clear evidence that technological, economic and social development can be combined with environmental protection to promote the prosperity of future generations of Quebecers and Canadians. The Telco Cloud model developed in this project contributed building blocks to the establishment the first smart university campus in Quebec, and to the development of a digital and sustainable economy of Quebec. In particular, a scalable Telco Cloud testbed resulting from the GSTC project has served to host new cloud-based Telco services deployed in the smart homes of a rapidly growing urban community at the heart of Montreal.

Real-time life-cycle footprinting and optimization models

The models and solutions developed in this project are on the leading edge of rapidly growing areas of science and engineering, such as cloud computing, communications, cognitive modeling, predictive analytics, behaviour learning, large-scale systems, environmental impact assessment and energy efficiency. They help increase cost-efficiency and reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions of Telco services, and leverage Canada’s expertise as a leader in green and sustainable ICT technologies, smart city and the green economy.