In the past few years, enterprise computing has experienced major upheavals brought about by cloud apps, Wi-Fi, mobility, and BYOD. The enterprise WAN, meanwhile, has not evolved much since it was transformed into an MPLS Layer 3 VPN infrastructure more than a decade ago. Things are about change.
Based on my experience with customer deployments, more than 50% of enterprise traffic from branches is currently Internet-bound. This is due to outsourcing of utility applications, including email, search, voice, video and collaboration, not to mention cloud application use.
Despite this trend, enterprises have resisted using the public Internet to provide remote offices with direct access to cloud applications. This is primarily due to compliance issues, especially in the financial and healthcare industries. Doing so would require extensive security policies at each location and would introduce a management nightmare. The alternative, backhauling traffic to the corporate DMZ, is not feasible. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A software-defined networking start-up has emerged from stealth mode proposing accelerated deployment of applications and services spanning private, public or hybrid clouds.Avni Networks was founded by engineers from Cisco and Juniper Networks. They built the Avni Software Defined Cloud (SDC) platform to eliminate vendor lock-in in the development and deployment of hybrid cloud applications and services.+ SNEAK PREVIEW: Network World Blogger Zeus Kerravala's earlier take on Avni +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As it awaits to be swallowed up by Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent continues to expand its switching and virtual networking portfolio.The company this week rolled out a new switch and software enhancements designed to simplify network operations through automation and design flexibility. This follows last week’s announcement that Nokia would acquire Alcatel-Lucent for over $16 billion to strengthen its presence in fixed and wireless networking.+ MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Eyes turn to Ericsson, Juniper +The new switch is the OmniSwitch 6900-Q32, a campus core and data center top-of-rack device for companies requiring a low latency scalable and programmable fabric.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise this week rolled out a new switch and software enhancements designed to simplify network operations through automation and design flexibility.Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise became independent from Alcatel-Lucent last fall. Alcatel-Lucent is being acquired by Nokia for over $16 billion, but Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is not part of the deal.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Eyes turn to Ericsson, Juniper+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The constant push to increase productivity and profit has historically led commercial enterprises to drive some of our world's most significant technology advances. It was the enterprise push for further development of desktop computer processing that changed the personal computer from a hobbyist activity to a mission-critical tool. Commercial organizations deployed fiber for dedicated computer networks while the rest of us were just getting used to DSL. And the cellphone? It began its life as tool to keep business sales teams and execs more productive.But something happened during the smartphone revolution. What made the smartphone the critical invention of the 21st century was the ease of application use. Applications became "apps," and with them came their own marketplace, or "app store."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Brocade this week unveiled a campus switch and other enhancements to better support video and wireless traffic, improve management and extend software defined networking.
The new switch is the ICX 7250. It supports up to eight 10G Ethernet ports for uplinks or stacking, and can be stacked 12-high into a virtual chassis supporting 576 Gigabit Ethernet and 96 10G ports.
Brocade says this density will enable campus networks to better support bandwidth-intensive video and wireless traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Juniper Networks and VMware have downgraded their participation in the OpenDaylight Project, an effort develop an open source SDN framework. Both are now Silver members with much lower financial and personnel commitments.Juniper was a founding, top tier Platinum member, committing $500,000 and 10 staffers to the project. VMware was a Gold member, committing $250,000 and three engineers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Do you know SDN? Do you follow NFV? What about OSS? Those are yesterday's acronyms. The new buzzword is LSO, and it's going to be huge not only for carriers and other service providers, but also for enterprise customers.Lifecycle Service Orchestration is a catchphrase that embraces the range of activities performed by a telco or other communications service provider. An LSO platform would handle everything from provisioning the customer order to controlling the delivery of the service to gathering metrics and ensuring guaranteed performance levels to remediating fault to providing usage reports to offering analytics to customers.That's a lot to unpack, but the bottom line is that LSO is going to be big. According to the Service Provider Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) Overview and Market Forecast report published by the Rayno Report in March 2015, LSO will be a $2.75 billion market by 2019 and will combine technologies found today in Operation Support Systems, Software Defined Networks, and Network Functions Virtualization.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Many people anticipated that enterprise organizations would adopt Software Defined Network (SDN) technologies later than service providers or multi-tenant data centers and cloud service providers. We are now seeing more use of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) within enterprises and some enterprises are starting SDN pilot projects. As enterprises consider how to utilize SDN technologies in their data center environments, they start to consider what new security capabilities SDN can provide. SDN switches can drop packets for flows that are not permitted by the controller. This article explores if SDN switches can behave like a traditional firewall.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.Software Defined Networking (SDN) promises faster network deployment times and increased agility. Unfortunately, early SDN architectures focused only on solving connectivity challenges at layers 2 through 4 of the OSI model and largely ignored application-centric challenges at layer 4 to layer 7. Yet, layers 4 – 7 are where many of the services reside that ensure applications are fast, highly available and secure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is transforming the network and giving network operators unprecedented network programmability, automation, and control. Network administrators are exploring it as it can help them not just optimize total cost of ownership, but do more with fewer people. However, SDN is not just about simplifying the network or cost savings; SDN enables new revenue production opportunities. Here are three ways you can look at how SDN helps monetizing.Customized deliveryWe live in the "Experience Era." The rapid consumer adoption of mobile devices, cloud services, new interfaces, and changing behaviors have transformed how customers engage and what they expect. Customers are looking for services aligned with their needs and abilities, at that moment, on that device. Companies need to deliver experiences that are customer-centric, natural, anticipatory and adaptive. And SDN enables you to do that.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Network management is a sticky issue when it comes to implementing software-defined networks and network virtualization.Lack of visibility into the underlying infrastructure has been cited by vendors and consultants as an inhibitor of SDN adoption. Traditional tools were designed for legacy networks, not the software overlay abstraction that SDN critics say shields operators from network behavior and anomalies.But with the release of more SDN controllers and applications comes the emergence of tools to manage the virtualized network. Two of the more popular SDN management tools are TAP monitoring applications and network packet brokers (NPB), which negotiate network traffic from multiple SPAN ports and manipulate it to allow more efficient use of monitoring devices like TAPs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Faced with exponential growth in wireless devices and an increasingly digital curriculum, Jeff Dietsche, Systems and Infrastructure Manager for the South Washington County Schools in Minnesota, decided his only hope was to deal with a single vendor and use SDN to streamline operations. Dietsche tells the tale to Network World Editor in Chief John Dix.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
If McLuhan was right, what we know today as "The Cloud" will be resources linked through massively and continuously variable software-designed networks using largely software-defined linking. Your compute might be in Dallas, but let's store the data in Germany where the privacy laws suit our regulatory/compliance needs.In the bad old days, huge racks filled with "datacomm" equipment and -48v racks of batteries to back them up were anchors in data communications. A big logo sat on the cabinets, claiming space for a carrier. Inside, lots of CSUs/DSUs lived, circuits and monitoring equipment running furiously, and hopefully, 24/7/365.25. The AT&T Cabinet wasn't much different than the Sprint or Verizon cabinet, and Level 3 seemed newer, at least judging by the age of the paint on the rack. Somewhere in that rack was a jack, your jack, fiber, Ethernet, SONET, ATM, and with the jack you were connected to: someplace else.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A little over two years ago, application delivery controller market leader F5 Networks acquired LineRate Systems to jump into the software defined networking (SDN) game. There are a number of SDN solution providers that operate at layer 2/3, but LineRate delivers application-layer services into a software-defined environment. These services include security, acceleration, optimization, and intelligent traffic management.Late last week, F5 unveiled the first fruits of the acquisition when it announced a fully virtualized, lightweight load balancing product. The pure software solution enables customers to extend F5's Synthesis framework to any application regardless of where or how it's deployed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After last week’s Innovation Day announcements, Juniper Networks has a range of SDN, data center fabric and data center switching products to choose from.Does it have too many? The addition of the new QFX10000 spine switch and Junos Fusion fabric may mean some product rationalization is in the works.“There is some level of complexity in product positioning,” acknowledges Juniper CEO Rami Rahim. “But if customers decide to move from one fabric or SDN to another we provide the flexibility to move with investment protection. Customers care about the attributes of the product itself. That drives their decisions more than anything else.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As Cisco and VMware run virtually neck-and-neck in the SDN market, the two continue the war of words on the mindshare battlefield. Cisco posted another blog item last month which included points critical of VMware’s NSX network virtualization platform -- Cisco believes VMware imposes restrictions on which version of Open vSwitch to use with the product and limits VTEP integration:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The digitization of information is impacting businesses faster than ever before. It seems every week a new company pops up and disrupts the status quo. Think of how fast Uber has disrupted the taxicab industry or how rapidly Airbnb is reshaping hospitality. Another good example is how Square has enabled point of sale to be offered on low-cost mobile devices instead of having to pay thousands of dollars for proprietary systems with long installation times.Business disruption used to take decades to happen. Consider how Walmart changed the face of retail over a 20-year period. This was considered fast at the time, but now think of how the companies I mentioned above seemingly changed their industry in just a few years. How is this possible? Well, businesses like Square, Airbnb, and Uber were born in the digital era, where agility is the norm. A traditional retailer using legacy systems can take months or even years to change direction.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Software and virtualization continues to evolve the data center faster than ever before. As in the case with everything in life, there's never a free lunch, and the price for this rapid evolution has been increased complexity. Historically, data center infrastructure was deployed in nice, neat silos where every application had its own servers, storage, and network resources. The obvious downside of this type of deployment model is poor resource utilization. Now we innovate in software and make everything virtual to maximize utilization, but we also drive up complexity.An argument can be made that no company has been more successful at simplifying this complexity than VCE, particularly for multi-vendor environments. Late last year, VCE was rolled into EMC's federation of companies to give it a single owner and enable it to roll out new products that address a broader set of needs than just its flagship product, VBlock.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
During the past year VMware has released a series of network virtualization certifications for network professionals to gain expertise in software defined networking, and specifically how it integrates with existing physical networking.“Some people may get this feeling that their job is in jeopardy” because of SDN, says Chris McCain, director of training and certification for networking and security at VMware. “The message is that it’s not an us vs. them though. Virtual networking still requires networking skills, it’s just a different implementation of that skill set.”+ MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: 18 Hot IT certifications +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here