Prakash Krishnamoorthy
Country Manager, HP Networking, HP India
Though the concept of SDN is in its nascent stage and jury is still out on its implications, but it can be said with a certain degree of certainty that this developing technology has all the potential to radically change the way networking works.
SDN, (software-defined networking, is the latest acronym that is creating ripples in the tech world. Software defined networking is an emerging concept in the industry. Moving from traditional, hardware-focused networking, SDN looks at de-coupling the control and data planes in network devices and abstracting the control plane intelligence, ensuring greater flexibility and easier management.
In the cloud era, clients need a single point of control for the entire network, which enables them to deploy any application or service directly to the user within minutes - Prakash Krishnamoorthy, Country Manager, HP Networking, HP India
Mahesh Gupta, Vice President, Borderless Networks, Cisco India and SAARC, says, “Software defined networking is an emerging concept in the industry, that looks at de-coupling the control and data planes in network devices and abstracting the control plane intelligence. While the buzz around this topic began initially with the Open Network Foundation and OpenFlow, the term has broadened its applicability over the last 12 months.”
When it comes to networking SDN is certainly on IT professionals’ minds. Edgar Dias, Regional Director, India of Brocade Communications, says, “Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging concept that proposes to disaggregate traditional vertically integrated networking stacks to improve network feature velocity or customize network operation for specialized environments. This initiative has broad implications across the data, control, and management planes of the network.
Enterprise and service providers are seeking solutions to their networking challenges. They want their networks to adjust and respond dynamically, based on their business policy. They want those policies to be automated so that they can reduce the manual work and personnel cost of running their networks. They want to quickly deploy and run new applications within and on top of their networks so that they can deliver business results. And they want to do this in a way that allows them to introduce these new capabilities without disrupting their business. “This is a tall order but SDN has the promise to deliver solutions to these challenges,” says Sajan Paul, Director –Systems Engineering, Juniper Networks. “To decode and understand SDN, we must look inside net-working software.”
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Mahesh Gupta
Vice President, Borderless Networks
Cisco India and SAARC
"Customers, globally and in India are in a wait and watch mode and getting educated and familiarized with the concept of SDN"
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Bipul Parua
CTO
Knowlarity
With increasing adoption of cloud technologies SDN adoption is increasing in the technology world. For SMBs SDN adoption can be a challenge for the time as there are too many solutions and there are interoperability problems with legacy networks.
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Edgar Dias
Regional Director
India of Brocade Communications
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging concept that proposes to disaggregate traditional vertically integrated networking stacks to improve network feature velocity or customize network operation for specialized environments.
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Sajan Paul
Director –Systems Engineering
Juniper Networks
SDN is also the biggest transformation technology for the networking industry. We made our SDN strategy announcement early this year and we have already begun to deliver SDN ready products for our customers.
Globally, the SDN market is estimated to grow from $198 million in 2012 to $2.1 billion in 2017; this represents a CAGR of 60 percent from 2012 to 2017. However, Mahesh of Cisco says “There is considerable confusion around what SDN is, its monetization and market sizing.” He underscores the need of a more pragmatic view, before an accurate market sizing number can be projected. “Also, one should take into consideration both product and services revenue opportunity. On the business front, its early days, and most customers are still exploring,” says Mahesh.
The Industry Trend
SDN today is still an emerging technology; much like cloud computing was a few years ago. Sajan Paul of Juniper says, “It is also the biggest transformation technology for the networking industry. We made our SDN strategy announcement early this year and we have already begun to deliver SDN ready products for our customers.” He adds, “C ustomers have operating networks today; you can’t snap your fingers and magically transition to SDN. You need to introduce SDN capabilities into existing networks in logical steps, typically deployed one at a time. We will begin to see adoption of SDN in 2013.”
Cisco says, “Customers, globally and in India are in a wait and watch mode and getting educated and familiarized with the concept of SDN.”
The success of SDN lies in enabling innovation through an open environment in order to deliver high value, game changing applications for the customers. Edgar Dias of Brocade, says, “In India the concept is still at the nascent stage, and therefore only few IT organizations are familiar with SDN. The SMB’s are in a wait-and-watch mode while some of them are getting familiarized with the concept.”
Bipul Parua, CTO, Knowlarity, says, “With increasing adoption of cloud technologies SDN adoption is increasing in the technology world. For SMBs SDN adoption can be a challenge for the time as there are too many solutions and there are interoperability problems with legacy networks.”
As companies move to cloud and other computing environments, manual configuration of networks through command-line interface (CLI) coding has proven to be error prone, as well as time and resource intensive. SDN overlay-point products offer a centralized control plane, but fall short by not enabling automated configuration of network infrastructure or providing SDN applications to roll out new services for campus and branch networks. This incomplete approach creates complexity and unnecessary manual coding requirements.
Last year HP announced open-standards-based software-defined network (SDN) technologies to span infrastructure, control software and application layers with a "single control plane" that enables enterprises and cloud providers to simplify and maximize agility across data center, campus and branch networks
These technologies cover all layers by including an SDN controller, SDN applications, SDN services and solutions that further strengthen HP’s Virtual Application Networks strategy. “In the cloud era, clients need a single point of control for the entire network, which enables them to deploy any application or service directly to the user within minutes,” says Prakash Krishnamoorthy, Country Manager, HP Networking, HP India.
Channel’s Role
SDN is still very much in its infancy and is still evolving. It will continue to evolve over the years and enterprises must start planning for SDN today. Since SDN is a new concept, there is a need for creating awareness and training partners in solutions, technology insights and architectural design.
Edgar Dias says, “Brocade has been partnering with industry technology leaders and network operators and also working very closely with standards bodies like the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) to make this a reality.”
Brocade has built an ecosystem of partners for SDN through strategic investments, solution designs and interoperability testing. Brocade unveiled an OpenFlow lab in Japan last year designed to demonstrate Brocade and partner technologies to aid in the development of tested and validated solutions. Brocade is also a member of the Indiana Center for Network Translational Research and Education (InCNTRE), which seeks to advance development, increase knowledge, and encourage adoption of OpenFlow and other standards-based SDN technologies. Brocade has also participated in a number of industry multi-vendor demonstrations with NEC, including at the Open Networking Summit (ONS) in Santa Clara, CA in April 2012, and Interop Las Vegas in May 2012.
Sajan says, “We see a number of opportunities for all types of partners with our SDN strategy. First, in selling the systems we have today which all have roadmaps for emerging SDN protocol support. Second, in selling the Juniper built management, services and control software applications we expect to emerge as a result of our approach through the Juniper Software Advantage. Third, in the form of new professional services, migration services and assessment services in helping customers through the network migration process. Finally, in some cases partners will use the JunosV App Engine and developing their own applications for the network.
The channel will need to understand SDN and begin to explain the benefits to their customers. Partners also need to make investments themselves in the way they do business on the software side of things. The skill sets associated with operating in a SDN-enabled world are fundamentally different than today.
Our approach will enable our channel partners to use SDN to their advantage in taking products to customers that will work in a SDN world. It is also transforming the partner business model to be a software business model, and we will be shortly be announcing our first software pricing and licensing plans. This is a transformative way to how networks are sold, and there is a lot of learning to do –but it is also a huge opportunity to grow their business. There is a lot of money to be made.
Future SDN landscape
SDN is a major shift in the networking and security industries. Its impact will extend far beyond the data center and is thus actually much broader than many predict today. SDN will create new winners and losers. Sajan says, “We will see new companies successfully emerge and we’ll watch as some incumbents unsuccessfully struggle to transition. But like any major industry trend, the customer benefit is real and we’ve now reached a tipping point where the technology shift is inevitable.”
SDN applies to all networking and network services -- from the enterprise data center and campus to service provider networks. As organizations look to implement private cloud data centers, the static nature of networking presents acute challenges. Because of this pain, there is a lot of focus on using SDN to enable networks to dynamically respond to cloud orchestration systems. But SDN will apply much more broadly than that. SDN makes sense in a large campus environment. It also will help service providers as they evolve their networks to create more capability for their customers. This is particularly true for edge networks – which is the place that service providers deliver value to customers, thus generating new revenue for the service provider.
Finally…
Everyone talks about the agility and the savings benefits of SDN. SDN should not be about working around the network team, but rather giving the network team the tools they need to be as agile as their compute and storage counterparts. It’s important that SDN solutions be aligned with existing operational models – organizational structures, tools and processes. Taking a non-network-centric approach to building networks will ultimately cost a company significantly more than the implied savings.
Evaluations, purchasing, deployment, maintenance and trouble-shooting of SDN technologies should be conducted by existing people, tools and processes, which are less disruptive and costly than performing these functions by other organizations. The networking team has accumulated vast experiences that should be leveraged, not worked around. If/when the network breaks, do you want the systems teams to fix it? Would you want your network team to fix your applications when there is a software bug in an application?
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