INSIGHT: How the channel can get businesses on-track for Software-Define​d IT

Growing network connections and the steadily rising influx of data have put greater demands on organisations’ network infrastructures.

Many enterprises are now preparing for network modernisation, driven by the need to be more agile, responsive, competitive and cost effective.

Over the last 10 years, the way we interact with data has evolved beyond anyone’s expectation. Billions of connected devices are overloading global networks with requests every second, and users demand always-on, instantaneous access to applications and services.

Virtualisation and cloud models are scaling applications at a pace to meet demand but require greater network agility and performance, as well as reduced operational cost and complexity.

All of these factors are placing pressure on an infrastructure that, frankly, was never architected for these growing demands. The 3rd platform and how cloud, mobile and big data operates and how the network responds to these demands requires a new way of thinking.

To truly modernise, organisations must holistically move to the New IP – a user-driven, software-centric, virtualised infrastructure based on open standards and offering low operational expenditure (OpEx).

Many customers believe that a software-based approach (Software Defined Networking, SDN) will deliver the automation that they need to fit the new business challenges.

SDN is more than just hype or beta technology right now. It is well established in production environments and is being shipped regularly to customers around the globe. SDN is redefining the networking landscape and therefore a necessary part of any future business model.

The channel’s greatest opportunity

The channel definitely does understand that the future lies with the provision of software-defined ‘everything’ and you can see the likes of Intel, VMware and Brocade discussing how infrastructure, storage and networking solutions can provide a complimentary solution for enterprise of all size.

Partners need to understand and prioritise whether they want to build a specialist capability or choose to partner with a specialist in these key areas.

In the channel today we are seeing a growth in ecosystem partnerships to deliver these end-to-end capabilities for the customer. Our belief is that it is important that partners choose what they are good at and stick to it, and if they need a specialist addition then find those specialists to partner with.

This is for two reasons – the speed and the cost of retaining and broadening skills is difficult. The old saying of ‘get niche or get big’ is becoming even more important.

From a commercial perspective it is becoming even more apparent that customers are seeking out a unique depth of skill for those partners that have an aptitude and understanding of applications.

It really is all about that at the moment and with unique insights comes the ability to charge more and your rate card will be healthy for some time to come.

Deepen your skill set

This changing shift to a world of software-defined everything has introduced the need for a deepening of the skill set partners bring to the table. We are now in a space where we are moving from implementation to architectural design and integration capabilities. The shift is no longer putting an appliance into a rack and plugging in the cables.

We need experts to discuss the strategic possibilities of the network – the impacts, rules and managing data. The 3rd platform will introduce agility and greater programmability.

The deeper the networking skills our partners can bring to the table will have a direct impact on their value to customers and will lead to differentiation and lead to higher professional services rates.

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Some are already on their way, but to truly know if they are headed in the right direction, a five-point checklist can be used for assessment:

Standards: Proprietary or open?

The New IP is fuelled by open-sourced initiatives such as OpenDaylight and OpenStack, designed to support Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and cloud adoption.

Legacy networks continue to be more expensive and cumbersome with age, but the cost-savings potential of open standards in networking is widely known.

A survey commissioned by the consortium behind the OpenDaylight Project, found many agreed that open-source software represents greater choice, interoperability and lower costs. Selecting vendors that follow open standards brings an added advantage: spurring innovation.

Therefore, one of the first things IT leaders should consider while undertaking network modernisation, is whether the network will be open-sourced and multi-vendor.

The future of networking hardware is in software

The network is in many ways the last frontier for IT infrastructure innovation. Designed to work with virtualised environments, technologies such as SDN and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) enable organisations to more efficiently utilise the benefits of Cloud and mobile technologies.

SDN helps make networks manageable for IT administrators through automation and programmability, and can be automatically reconfigured to address increasing traffic flows and other network changes.

Accelerated Ethernet fabric-based hardware that delivers high utilisation, performance and resiliency will continue to play a dominant role for years to come in the IP network.

Therefore, organisations should ensure the selected hardware will enable them to move to SDN as they transition to the New IP, and develop the transition plan to an SDN environment.

IT Spending: On upfront costs and maintenance, or innovation?

The majority of organisations’ IT budgets are often tied up in supporting legacy infrastructure, with not much left for innovation. However, the New IP revolutionises IT spending, replacing high CapEx and OpEx spend with utility-based costs determined by the user, not the vendor.

“As-a-service” models eliminate the need to invest in hardware upfront and allow organisations to align IT infrastructure capacity and network demand.

The scalability and flexibility lets them increase or decrease the network capacity they pay for as needs change. This lets them better manage and balance CapEx and OpEx spend.

Hence, the New IP-based network infrastructure brings a long-term lifespan compared to the planned obsolescence of a legacy network, which can help direct IT spending to innovation instead of maintenance. As organisations shift IT infrastructure to the New IP, they can reduce costs while increasing network capabilities.

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Shifting control to the organisation

History has illustrated that when a vendor gains control, the customer loses control of their CapEx, Opex and innovation. There is only one source for products, solutions, architecture and technology, and the vendor is free to dictate all those on behalf of the organisation.

Vendors gain control through vendor lock-in and proprietary technologies. That was the age of mainframes, when computing was monolithic. It is not just hardware supplied by a single vendor, but also the Operating System, applications, storage, memory and even cabling.

The cost of computing fell and pace of innovation rose dramatically during the client-server period as computing becomes “disaggregated” and companies were free to buy PCs or servers, software and applications from any vendor.

Yet today, networking is still very much vendor lock-in as innovation has not progressed much beyond some new protocols and bigger, higher-density boxes over the last two decades.

There may be hundreds of Requests for Comments (RFCs) and IEEE standards to ensure interoperability, but overwhelming complexity drives organisations to source from a single vendor.

Companies and businesses should regain control from vendors with the New IP platform bringing potential with technologies like SDN and NFV. Networking software components should be able to run on any hardware, and support open-sourced, open APIs and open standards.

Is There a Place for Networking Hardware?

As long as virtual machines need to run on physical servers--which need physical connectivity--networking hardware will certainly still be needed. In fact, the physical underlay plays a critical role, as the best of network virtualisation will fail if the physical network breaks.

However, in the face of network virtualisation, the physical network must exhibit higher reliability, greater automation in the network device itself, be able to respond to automation tools and SDN solutions, and provide greater intelligence to the software layer on top.

Gartner recently developed a report positioning Ethernet fabrics as the solution to the challenges of data centre physical networks.

Ethernet Fabrics form the foundation for a virtualised data centre but not all fabrics are created equal, so it pays to evaluate if they have the features needed to work and integrate with network virtualisation technologies.

In the end, it’s all about customer intent.

The biggest challenges we face today is acknowledging the importance of understanding a customer’s intent to adopt these platforms.

It’s very easy to spend a lot of time in this education phase, as we are in the adoption cycle and we need to work very closely to clarify any misconceptions and unrealistic expectations. We find the biggest thing is setting the right steps of a journey to achieve the end goal.

Moving to the SDN approach is not a rip and replace, it is an integration play. Customers will find some of their existing network and equipment will stay and that’s fine.

Our goal is to work with partners and vendor suppliers to fine tune this path. We don’t believe that any one has all the answers and at this point it is critical to re-address plans for future network.

By Paul Barge, Channel Manager A/NZ, Brocade