Blog by Nuage Networks CEO, Sunil Khandekar, as posted on SDNCentral.
Recently Nuage Networks in collaboration with SDNCentral launched a set of fun and interesting videos explaining the problems that todays move to the cloud was amassing on the existing data center and wide area networks. We chose a unique format to deliver this informative message. We wanted to break through some of the hype fog that had been clouding the future vision of networking and explain the real world benefits that SDN stands to deliver for the fast emerging, highly agile, responsive and self-service model of cloud computing.
The consumption model of where, when and how we want our information has significantly altered the world we live in. Be it consumer applications or enterprise applications, the insatiable need to always be connected and to always have information at our fingertips regardless of where in the world we are has driven a massive investment behind the scenes in this thing we call the cloud. Behind the scenes, the compute and network have to work in lock step to allow applications to be deployed rapidly on to the cloud, without sacrificing speed and security with full control and visibility across all the workloads in both private and public clouds.
The problem is that the network has fallen behind while compute has marched forward. It does not allow for rapid deployment of applications on to the cloud. No virtualization, no namespace isolation, and no automation in provisioning makes even a freshly built-out DC network seem antiquated.
SDN when correctly implemented will deliver a highly automated connectivity model needed to network the cloud. In doing so, it will also breathe new life into those existing networks. SDN is not about a rip and replace of the network infrastructure we use today – It’s about changing the dynamic of why the network is there and what its purpose is. It is about making it dead simple to deploy applications rapidly on to the cloud with full conformance, security and access policies intact.
SDN provides a fresh approach to networking and a shift from the network being the product, to application delivery being the product. SDN enables this through the abstraction of the network complexity away from the application and the automation of the network paths to allow applications to be deployed simply and rapidly. Check out my earlier blog on why SDN’s focus ultimately should be all about the applications.
At Nuage Networks we are firmly in the camp of making better use of the investments enterprises and service providers alike have made in their networks. Our network virtualization solution has been developed to drive the abstraction and automation benefits of SDN without the need to replace your existing data center network equipment or to fundamentally alter its network architecture.
The same applies to the wide area connections that link the data center to the enterprise private networks or the public Internet. The best path to enable the benefits of SDN for the WAN connections is to speak their language, hence we provide a full set of both SDN (OpenFlow, VXLAN) and IP/MPLS interworking options to seamlessly connect the hypervisor in the data center to the network that connects the application end users.
SDN is emerging as a powerful framework to network the cloud and has been designed to scale at cloud speed and as you have read, Nuage Networks can deliver the power of SDN without the forklift of your existing network hardware.
We hope you have enjoyed our video series as much as we enjoyed making them. If you are curious about how we are collaborating with our enterprise and cloud provider customers to deploy SDN in their infrastructure to help them provide true business agility with massive operational simplification, please visit us at www.nuagenetworks.net.
Check out the Nuage Networks video series and see how they remove obstacles that stifle the cloud in traditional networks. You can view the full series by visiting the Nuage Networks SDNCentral video page.