FEATURE: SDN
rapidly align to business applications,
driving innovation and new levels of agility.
However, in order to maximise the benefits
of SDN, the network must be built on
open standards with support for an open
ecosystem. You want to ensure that everyone
can participate: partners, customers and
developers. Proprietary solutions are a relic
of the past.
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supports both SDN and traditional
networking. A hybrid solution can
assist in ease of adoption, whereby the
SDN application can be deployed in a
multivendor environment.
In a hybrid environment, an OpenFlow-
enabled switch is deployed at the edge –
where the application is accessed – leaving
Before the advent of the app store, SDN
solutions were tested and purchased
separately. The app store has lowered the
barrier to innovation and allows you to
focus on business outcomes. Solutions are
integrated seamlessly and ready to install
with a simple download.
Mohammed Al-Moneer,
Mohammed
Regional
Director,
Regional Al-Moneer,
Director,
MENA
at
MENA
at
A10
Networks
A10 Networks
IN A HYBRID ENVIRONMENT . . . YOU
CAN SIMPLY FLIP A SWITCH TO A MODE
THAT ENABLES YOU TO GO BACK TO
TRADITIONAL NETWORKING.
The benefits of utilising an open standards
approach to SDN include:
• Freedom to use best-of-breed
technologies wherever they are required,
and not be limited to the solutions of a
single vendor
• Cost efficiencies by having and exploiting
many more choices
• Ease of adoption in a multi-vendor
environment
• Ability to leverage a broader ecosystem
and an easily accessible marketplace to
drive innovation
• An investment that protects you for the
future as technologies and standards
continue to evolve
A solution that doesn’t force you to
replace existing infrastructure
One of the first questions IT leaders ask
in the face of transformative change is
whether (and how) they can protect their
existing investments. While some network
vendors may require you to replace existing
equipment, that type of approach is not
necessary with SDN; nor is it recommended.
You want to move to SDN in an orderly and
evolutionary manner that is not disruptive.
This allows you to retain as much of your
existing infrastructure as possible.
The ideal way to evolve to SDN is through
the use of a hybrid SDN solution that
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INTELLIGENTCIO
the rest of the network intact. You can simply
flip a switch to a mode that enables you to
go back to traditional networking. This gives
you much more flexibility to fit the network
to meet your specific application and
workload requirements. You can also reduce
total cost of ownership (TCO) by extending
the lifecycle of existing equipment.
Proven solutions with real-world
use cases
While SDN is clearly the networking
architecture of the future, today’s reality is
that leading vendors are already enabling
customers in all industries to use SDN to
improve agility, simplify management and
gain a competitive business advantage.
A network partner with an
ecosystem that supports a broad
range of applications
Why wait to deploy SDN when you can
deliver measurable benefits to your business
today? One of the keys to accelerating your
deployment of SDN is to work with a network
partner that already has an ecosystem of
proven applications.
This is an area where HPE has demonstrated
innovation, by deploying the industry’s
first SDN app store, where there have been
a number of applications that have been
deployed at customer sites.
What is the outlook for the
SDN Technologies in the Middle
East?
Enterprises in certain countries in the
Middle East like the UAE are known to be
‘early technology adopters’ and no doubt
adoption of SDN technologies in these
regions will happen at the same rate as
regions such as the US and Europe.
We are at an interesting crossroads right
now, and we are seeing early innovators
taking the lead with these new hybrid
software defined and cloud infrastructures,
both across service providers and in the
enterprise space.
Even though the standards and even some
of the reference models are not quite there
yet, some of these large organisations have
an imperative to start rolling out architectures
that will take them through the next five
years, reducing costs and scaling in a much
more agile way. This is fundamental to their
business strategy for the next five years.
These pioneers are setting the benchmark
for how to deploy large infrastructure, which
tools to use, and what mistakes to avoid.
If we keep in mind that automation and
software driven design are not actually
new concepts, we would expect to see a
broad range of hybrid solutions emerging
over the next few years until the standards
settle and clear reference architectures and
patterns emerge.
Given that there are still widely diverging
views of just how far SDN (specifically) will
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