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Former PacketFabric and Cisco exec Dave Ward was recently appointed CTO of Lumen Technologies
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Ward thinks the company is well-positioned to bridge a key gap in today's internet infrastructure
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AI is driving a wave of demand that can only be served with a series of new network fabrics, he said
One of the most important lessons of Dave Ward’s three-decade-long career came early on. As a young professional, Ward, who was recently appointed CTO of Lumen Technologies, said mentors including internet programmer Yakov Rehkter and Cisco veterans Fred Baker, Dave Katz, Kirk Lougheed and Dave Oran convinced him that “if something doesn’t exist, you can invent it.” It’s no wonder then, that Ward has big plans for Lumen’s nationwide telecom network.
At the top of his list is an initiative designed to plug what Ward flagged as a huge hole in modern internet infrastructure that is hindering digital transformation efforts.
“Cloud has to be a first class citizen, and it’s not on the internet today,” Ward told Fierce in an exclusive interview. “The protocols that were developed over time both for Ethernet and IP…there’s no attention being paid to the fact that a data center is not an enterprise, it’s not like your normal on-prem.”
Ward’s vision for fixing this involves reweaving the tapestry that is the internet with a series of new fabrics. More specifically, Ward is eyeing the creation of a new cloud fabric as well as segment fabrics for things like storage and security.
By “fabric,” Ward said he means a network that is already lit and can be consumed and reconfigured on demand.
“You can get individual links to individual providers in the old telco model, but if there’s a notion of fabrics within these different segments and exchanges, you suddenly have access to move data [for instance] within that storage fabric and across that storage fabric boundary,” he explained.
“Each of these fabrics have different capabilities, different bandwidth and different latency requirements and so they can be built differently,” Ward continued. “A company like Lumen can build to those pieces” and fill the gaping hole that exists in the internet’s infrastructure today.
Why though?
As if the ongoing digital transformation push among enterprises wasn’t enough of a reason for Lumen to pursue this model, Ward noted the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is making it more important than ever before for enterprises to have data, storage and networking strategies. He wants Lumen to be the one they turn to.
“What we’re seeing is that the companies that are in the AI business or in the data generation business…individual companies are coming to us for dozens of 400-gig wavelengths at a time,” he said.
“So, the whole move is AI strategy is a cloud strategy is a data strategy is a networking strategy. And I firmly believe those that have the real-time on demand fabric and can do this” at Layers 1, 2, and 3 will be best positioned to meet AI demand," Ward added.
All of this might sound like a mega-feat, but if anyone can pull it off, it’ll be Ward. Before joining Lumen, he spent three years as CEO of network-as-a-service company PacketFabric and nearly two decades at Cisco, though his time there was broken up by a two-year stint at Juniper Networks.
And Ward said he knows how to build the right team to make it happen. The key, he argued, is diversity – and not just the physical kind.
Back in the 1990s, when Ward was tasked with building Cisco’s IOS XR network operating system, he said he tried to build a team of engineers with the best computer science resumes. To put it nicely, that didn’t pan out.
He discovered what he really needed was a team of diverse thinkers – folks with PhDs in philosophy and logic to help conceptualize an entirely new system, distributed systems experts from fields other than networking to offer a fresh perspective and team members with educational chops to help explain this newfangled contraption to customers and internal executives alike.
That’s the kind of team he’s looking to create within Lumen.
During our conversation, Ward also shared his views on what the future of Lumen’s broadband products could look like. Don’t worry, we’ll tackle that in a separate piece.
Tech for conservation
Ward’s plan for Lumen isn’t his only ambitious project.
When he’s not busy plotting to transform the tech landscape, Ward said he spends his time outdoors fishing, hunting and enjoying the ocean near his home in California. He also travels to Alaska a few times per year to soak in the wilderness.
It’s little surprise that Ward has merged his two passions. The CTO is a board member for the Connected Conservation Foundation. Founded in 2015, the foundation’s mission is to connect conservancies to the tech tools they need to more effectively manage, protect and preserve ecosystems and natural resources.
Ultimately, that’s where Ward said he hopes to end up some day: wielding tech to help save the world.