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‘Software-Defined Networking Will Enable Innovation and Business Agility in Middle East Organizations,’ says Expert
Published Mar 9, 2014
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The network has never been more critical to business success of enterprises in the Middle East. For organisations of any size and in any sector, it is the network that will turn the promise of new and evolving technologies like cloud, Big Data, Machine-to-Machine communications, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and seamless mobility into reality.
Yet the network that will underpin these shifts cannot cope with today’s pressures, let alone tomorrow’s. Exponential traffic growth and increased server virtualisation are putting more strain on the network than ever before. And, with nine out of ten IT decision makers admitting that their infrastructure requires substantial upgrades[1], it is clear that the network has to evolve. If it does not, the potential benefits of these new technologies will never be fully achieved.
Marcus Jewell, VP EMEA at Brocade Communications says that fortunately, the next stage in the network’s evolution is almost here. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) will radically transform the network, unlocking its intelligence to provide the new services and powerful analytics that are needed to deliver the applications and services demanded by today’s business leaders and their customers.
What is SDN? As a technology, SDN is still in its infancy. However, it is already clear that it has the potential to profoundly change the way that enterprise networks and data centres are built, managed and provisioned. Given SDN’s huge potential, it is no surprise that IDC has predicted it will be a $3.7 billion market by 2016[2]
From a technology standpoint, SDN refers to the separation of the part of the network that is responsible for routing and directing traffic (known as the control plane) from the part that carries the traffic itself (known as the data plane). The goal is to allow organisations to respond rapidly to changing business requirements. By simplifying how network resources are deployed and managed, SDN gives businesses far greater control of their data and applications and makes network management simpler and faster.
So, what benefits can SDN deliver for Middle East businesses?
#1 Faster application deployment
Increased network intelligence and an open environment centralises network operation and management and facilitates rapid application development. This means that businesses are able to offer and scale an increased number of network applications to support new services.
At a business level, reducing the time taken needed to manage the network and deploy new resources or applications can have a major impact. If an employee does not have to manually provision the compute, storage and network resources needed to deliver an application, businesses are able to get new services up and running far more quickly. As well as greatly increasing an organisation’s agility, this also boosts competitive advantage by reducing the time it takes to get new offerings to market.
#2 Greater automation
We are already seeing Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) adopting SDN functionality for precisely this reason. With traditional networking technologies, a business that wants to run an application within a public cloud environment would use a self-service portal to manually provision the required resources. This is not only time consuming, and therefore costly, it can also result in misconfigurations through human error.
SDN allows this process to be automated. Customers simply need to select what kind of application they want to run in the cloud and the resources required. The intelligence of the control plane, through orchestration, will then automatically deploy the service using the optimal configuration of compute, storage and network resources.
#3 Simpler network management
SDN will also significantly alter the way that network infrastructures are configured and managed. By separating the control function from the rest of the network, SDN will give IT teams the ability to manage network environments at a higher level. This will make it easier than ever for businesses to take a holistic approach to network infrastructures; managing them as a unified whole rather than a collection of siloes, and increasing overall network efficiency.
The principle is similar to that of a road network. Often, the most direct route will also be the most popular, resulting in traffic jams and, therefore, delays. In those circumstances, the sensible approach would be to take an alternative route, one that might be a longer distance but will allow you to travel faster. SDN gives the network the holistic viewpoint to make these sorts of decisions, optimally directing data traffic across the entire infrastructure according to current usage levels.
#4 Improved policy control
However, it is not just about getting data from A to B. By giving organisations greater control over every aspect of their network, SDN will also make it possible for IT teams to design and implement effective security policies and controls.
Given the proliferation in mobile devices and BYOD schemes, policy based networking is an increasingly popular way for organisations to control how users can access sensitive data or applications. For instance, a policy might be implemented so that the network will allow users to access work email from a tablet or smartphone, but not the company’s CRM or payroll system. With traditional network architectures, these policies are vendor specific and have to be configured for each element of a campus or Local Area Network (LAN). The higher level of control enabled by SDN solves this problem; you simply have to configure a policy once and it can be applied automatically across the entire network.
SDN will deliver significant Return On Investment (ROI) for IT teams. Michael Kennedy, a principal analyst at ACG, has predicted that it could reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for enterprise networks by up to 50 percent. He explains; “most of the cost reduction is derived from the automation of operations and the centralisation of network control. In addition, further savings are realised from much faster service delivery and maintenance processes that reduce service intervals from weeks to minutes.”
Deloitte’s Chris Weitz echoes this, estimating that firms using SDN can save up to 50% on their networking bills, which on average will account for 10-15 percent of IT budgets.
The adoption curve
There is already a real interest from enterprises that are keen to be among the first to see how deploying SDN in their own private or hybrid cloud environments can deliver greater business agility and to roll out innovative services faster and more efficiently. With IT departments becoming increasingly service-orientated, the ability to support business units by quickly and easily deploying new services through SDN will become hugely valuable.
One thing that will be vital to the future of SDN is the establishment of open standards. These are crucial since they guarantee that network products will be interoperable regardless of which company manufactured them; something which is a key factor in enabling a more holistic approach to network management.
Fortunately, the move to open standards is well underway, with OpenDayLight, OpenFlow and OpenStack the leading organisations pushing the industry to embrace openness.
However, it is still very early stages for SDN and, although some early adopters are already seeing the benefits it can bring, it is likely to take another few years for these technologies to be ready for widespread adoption. In the meantime then, how can IT directors and CIOs make sure they are ready to take advantage of SDN in the future?
The power of SDN
The promise of SDN is vast and extraordinarily powerful. By making networks smarter and simpler to manage, it will facilitate innovation throughout the enterprise, helping businesses to develop and deploy new applications and respond to changing market forces faster than ever. As the technology matures, we will see SDN have a major impact across all aspects of IT; radically changing the way we approach networking, helping to increase agility, flexibility, security and efficiency for organisations across every sector and enabling us to realise the potential of Big Data, Cloud and BYOD.
Posted by
VMD - [Virtual Marketing Department]
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