One man's magic is another man's engineering. Supernatural is a null word.
Robert Heinlein

Dear Vorticians,

This week's edition is a bit of a grab bag, a collection of items I've been meaning to present to you over the past few weeks. I hope you'll find them interesting, if not magical.

All of them relate to our discussion on the role of service providers (telcos, etc.) in the emerging extended-enterprise economy. Shortly after my first piece on the challenges facing service providers, I met with folks at Juniper Networks regarding a new organization that Juniper has helped to create. If you're heading to Supercomm in Chicago in a couple of weeks, you'll be hearing more about this "Infranet Initiative".

In a nutshell, the Infranet Initiative aims to transform the role of service providers by, in the group's own words, "creating a new architecture that is more predictable, reliable, and secure -- and capable of supporting a broader set of applications than is possible on today's Internet. The Infranet Initiative is an industry call to action to create public networks that combine the reach of the Internet with the assured performance and security of a private network. This new approach is designed to overcome the current limitations of the Internet through the creation of 'infranets,' delivering an enriched experience for consumers, business-critical performance, and opening new markets for service providers."

In the vision of the Infranet founders, the service provider could become the key link between diverse companies in a business ecosystem, a central repository for application services and other enabling capabilities. Already, the Infranet Initiative is supported by AOL, BT, Deutsche Telecom, Ericsson, Lucent, Oracle, Orange, Qwest, Seimens, Polycom and Telenor, along with Juniper. I'm told the group will be announcing additional, high-profile members at Supercomm, where the Infranet Initiative will hold its first formal meeting.

Go to http://www.infranet.org to read more, including a white paper on the infranet concept written by Tom Nolle, who's spoken at VORTEX on a couple of occasions. There's also a useful FAQ that will deal with, yes, frequently asked questions. (Though I'll bet some of them aren't asked all that frequently.)