FEATURE: SDN
The adoption of SDN and
Network Virtualization is starting
now with early adopters and will
become generalised between
2018 to 2020. Customers are
typically engaging in trials on
a few sites before considering
the full adoption across their
networks. By selecting the right
partner, enterprises can safely
start planning the transition to
SDN/NFV . culture of the organisation.
SDN is especially effective
for sectors like banking and
telecommunications, which have
several hundreds of locations and
complex networks.
Swapnil Gupte, Solution Architect,
Enterprise Computing Systems,
Alpha Data Companies that are early
adopters or innovators can
adopt SDN to future-proof their
IT and move to a fast IT model.
Currently Middle East companies
rolling-out change across a
network infrastructure face a
complex and time-consuming
process by configuring networks
box-by-box.
Our IT industry has been evolved
over a period of time and we
have witnessed whenever a new
technology or trend has been
introduced that the reliability
factor has been raised. In
recent years we have seen when
virtualization was conceptualised
customers used it only for
non-critical workloads, and
today virtualization is the most
preferred way for running mission
critical workloads. We strongly
believe SDN will become the de-
facto standard soon.
Mohannad Abuissa, Head of Sales
Engineering - East Region, Cisco
Middle East
SDN deployment is based on
three factors: industry segment,
complexity of the network, and
Middle East CEOs must have
ROI discussions to decide which
time is best for transitioning to
SDN and Cisco ACI (Application
Centric Infrastructure).
Waleed Badr, Regional Director –
META, Nuage Networks
from Nokia
SDN and SD-WAN is required
to help our clients to: connect
users to applications anywhere
anytime on a virtual platform;
achieve operation excellency;
conduct better business
continuity and disaster recovery
policies; and have a better
visibility, agile incident response
and self-defence network.
Ironically the above SDN business
drivers are the
same reasons
why some
clients might
fear network
virtualization.
Are there any
projects that
represent
a good
opportunity
to pilot SDN?
Mohannad Abuissa, Head of Sales Engineering - East
Region, Cisco Middle East
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Ravi Mali,
director
regional sales,
Ciena
Among others,
some of the successful
‘first applications’ we have
seen include WAN service
automation, delivery of
virtualized managed services,
and enterprise-to-cloud
services. The key is having
a well-defined application,
demonstrating success and
building upon that.
Charbel Khneisser, Regional
Presales Director, METNA at
Riverbed
The SMB market and hybrid
network customers who have
already adopted the cloud or
XaaS are the ideal candidates
for pilot SDN projects as the
return on investment for
such infrastructures is far
higher and more rapid than
for legacy migrations. That
said, Riverbed today has over
28,000 customers worldwide
who are eligible to test and
upgrade their SteelHead
devices to our Software
Defined (SD) version – many
of them have already done so.
Alexandre Gibouin
International Business
Development, Connectivity
Business Unit,
IMEAR Region, for Orange
Business Services
The most appealing use
cases consist in targeting
the branch offices connected
via a hybrid network and the
smaller sites fully connected
over the internet. For those
sites, SDN delivers the
solution to delivery-distributed
security with central
orchestration, application
defined networking as well as
integrated centrally controlled
Wifi AP. With Orange Business
Services EasyGo platform for
small sites and Universal CPE
for branch offices, our
customers can safely trial and
start the adoption of SDN into
their network.
www.intelligentcio.com