INSIGHT
“SDN does not create a digital business but it does increase business agility and network availability.”
Peter Terry-Brown, Business Unit Director, Connectivity & Unified Communications at Vodafone
Networks – The Last
IT Wilderness?
The rapid proliferation
As more and more organisations embark on digital transformation journeys in 2019, they’ll be leveraging technology
and processes that will change their businesses. Ian Hunter travelled to Newbury to attend a Vodafone round table
discussing the role SDN will play in supporting the business transformation agenda
of cloud services and
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
applications is leading the
organisations to rethink their
traditional hardware based
approach to networking with the
shift to the cloud placing more
importance on software-dened
wide-area networking (SDWAN).
KEY SOUNDBITES:
Clearly it is hard to fully report a
lengthy round table discussion in
the space available so here’s my
top quotes and takeaways.
According to Scott Petty,
CTO at Vodafone, “is is an
exciting time. e move to the
cloud is a fundamental shift;
the control of the network needs
to shift and SD-WAN will
deliver a change from a static
to a dynamic and virtualised
network.”
Peter Terry-Brown, Business
Unit Director, Connectivity
& Unied Communications
at Vodafone, “SDN does not
create a digital business but it
does increase business agility and
network availability.”
Anne Sheehan, UK Enterprise
Director at Vodafone, “With
SDN, users can dynamically
control the network themselves.
User will get far greater insight
in to how their applications are
working. Most organisations have
a cloud rst strategy but it is only
now, with SDN, that networks
are starting to catch up and shift
from being connectivity led to
applications led.”
(L-R) Scott Petty, CTO at Vodafone, Peter Terry-Brown, Vodafone, Anne
Sheehan, Vodafone and Manoj Leelanivas – EVP & Chief Product Ocer,
Juniper Networks
WIDER PERSPECTIVE:
Zscaler, the global cloud-based
information security company,
recently wrote to me, in the
context of SDN networks,
saying that the ability to evolve
and adapt is critical to any
organisation’s survival.
“As SD-WAN facilitates this
transition (to the cloud) coste
ectively, Zscaler believes we’ll
see demand for SD-WAN climb
signicantly in 2019 as a result,
as hardware disappears from
the enterprise. As SD-WAN,
however, addresses mainly the
network aspects and not the
security part of this equation,
enterprises are well advised to
look for a modernisation of their
network design that includes
the security aspects for a lean
administration point of view.”
TAKEAWAYS:
• Legacy WANs cannot remain
the way they are.
• Service wraps are key and
SD-WAN agility with change
network dynamics.
• MPLS networks are trusted!
• It will be interesting to watch
service providers challenge
incumbent providers.
• Winners in the market will
those suppliers that rally listed
to their customers.
• All organisations face
disruption and technical
leaders need to enable their
business to move ahead.
ED SAYS…
SD-WAN enables enterprises to transition from hub-and-spoke network topology
to a direct-to-internet architecture. It simplifies how traffic is routed in the branch
and enables improved connectivity to the internet, cloud applications, and the
data centre. These improvements are increasingly important, as networks are
reconfigured to enable greater mobility in response to user demands.
Security issues for SD-WANs were discussed at the round table and it would be a
big mistake not to consider adopting SD-WAN due to security concerns.
Opengear, the network management provider makes a valid point here when
they point out that SD-WAN technology is the convergence of trusted VPN, data
compression, and traffic management technologies all wrapped in slick cloud-based
provisioning and that therefore security considerations have been a natural part of
the technology’s evolution.
46 | Comms Business Magazine | January 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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