SD-WAN helping SDN go mainstream

Most enterprise IT management teams have looked at Software Defined Networking (SDN) in their datacenter deployments to some degree over the past couple of years. Some would have embarked on technology trials and deployed Lab environments, but few have shifted to full adoption. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which being the nature of datacenter technology refresh cycles and a hesitance to adopt new approaches in such a critical area of the business.

Enter Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN). Network carriers have been using a software defined or automated approach to network change management for quite some time and this is becoming the standard for the likes of provisioning, traffic engineering, change management and general operations. My intention is not to work through the definition of SDN or SD-WAN (a good summary of this can be found on sdxcentral), but to highlight that SDN is about more than just big datacenters and networks.

The reality is that most organisations would have been exposed to or leveraged the building blocks of SD-WAN over the past few years, whether it be multiple carrier / SP connections per site, broadband services or many other generally accepted network offerings and architectures. The promise of SDN is to deliver what companies need from a network within timeframes aligned to business requirement whilst still maintaining accepted levels in the following areas:

• Security and reliability
• Management and visibility
• Flexibility and adaptability
• Operational cost
• End user experience

In many ways, the building blocks of the modern network are (like all technology) becoming more and more commoditised and vendors are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate based on technical capability. Clients are aware of this and therefore less concerned about the technology itself and more interested in understanding how the network ecosystem as a whole can deliver on their business requirements… the promise of SDN… It doesn't mean that the choice of technology vendor is no longer important, it just means that the qualifying criteria has changed and is now more aligned to business outcomes than technical capability.

The traditional industry stalwarts and new breed startups are answering this question in some very interesting ways. Cisco (arguably the best example of an industry stalwart) has moved to a very open approach, embracing many open industry standards and initiatives that encourages interaction and interoperability - a huge shift in thinking for them. Many startups in this arena are developing with that open stance in mind and can do so easily as there is no fundamental shift in thinking required and allows them to focus in on specific niche plays within the broader ecosystem. Others are more closed and proprietary and offer comprehensive end-to-end solutions that either replaces all components or goes OTT (over the top) relying on underlying infrastructure already in place. Both these approaches, and the plethora in between, have merit and value given the context and required outcomes.

So why is SD-WAN becoming a driver for SDN as a whole? True SD-WAN delivers on an SDN approach to WAN deployments and is becoming a necessity for clients. Two primary drivers for this is mobility and cloud services, both of which are imperatives in almost all organisations today. Whether by strategic intent or pure workforce behaviour, mobility and cloud services are prolific and need to be considered by every organisation. WANs need to carry more traffic and provide access to more content sources than ever before, resulting in network architectures that look very different from the branch / DC MPLS topologies employed over the past few decades. Mobility and the explosion of personal devices dictates a different approach to network delivery and service levels and this is most evident in the access layer and WAN. The operational efficiency and assurance, flexibility and cost optimisation that can be achieved by shifting workloads and applications to cloud services is very compelling. Content management, accessibility and delivery requirements are massive and the source of this content is no longer only the trusty datacentre, but from all over the internet.

The challenge for a typical organisation in the deployment and management of a network that can accommodate all these requirements is complexity - Multiple carriers / SPs and devices to manage and monitor, traffic engineering and application performance management…. and the list goes on. Wouldn't it be great to login to a web portal and get back a dashboard of how your end users are experiencing the business applications they're using? Knowing that how it was being achieved was no longer an operational concern? Knowing that the network capacity required for tomorrow's data migration is ordered and scheduled and you had nothing to do with it? Sounds a little out of reach doesn't it?

Unfortunately this is not the reality for most organizations today, but it is not far off. Many of these offerings are technically possible and there are providers able to construct solutions that in time will deliver services in this manner. Some have successfully taken elements of this type of solution to mass market and are fundamentally changing the way their clients consume network services. The choice of partner in this journey is critical, one that will give guidance on vendors and services providers that best facilitate the desired business objectives and to bring innovative options and approaches to the table.