| | JULY 20169CIOReviewmaking its forwarding and routing decisions (as opposed to distributed device configurations running the show).That project led to the launch of the Open Networking Lab, a non-profit entity supported by industry that is actively promoting SDN as the means to boost Cloud innovation.A traditional network is typically set up using hardware-based networking devices such as switches and routers. While new protocols have certainly made networking more efficient over the years, the basic design and implementation of such networking devices has not changed fundamentally over the past 20-25 years. Each device typically has its own data plane (responsible for forwarding traffic), control plane (responsible for controlling traffic), and management plane (responsible for managing the device). This means that each component has to be configured individually, with all the implications thereof on network management and flexibility.SDN virtualizes and thus decouples the control and management functional-ity from the device and centralizes that functionality as a purely software-based service. That simplifies the network hardware, making it more cost effective and also creating a single plane for con-figuring, controlling, and managing the whole network. Therefore, if you want to deploy new services you do not need to reconfigure individual components. You simply define policies that are automati-cally pushed to components. It basically eradicates the "stovepipe" approach in deploying IT services, whereby each de-ployment has to work through a series of manual, error-prone, and often bureau-cratic processes.SDN within the enterprise is especially relevant for large companies that have their own network and datacenter, supporting a complex and, most importantly, dynamic business operation. These companies frequently need to deploy new resources and applications, but it is a time consuming and cumbersome process, especially from a governance perspective.For example, BT is currently working with a large international customer that had three separate environments in its data center for production, development, and testing. These environments were separated to reduce the risk that development and testing could infringe on the production environment. Also, the deployment of new applications typically took weeks, undergoing several steps before these could be securely integrated in the network. Governance issues and the allocation of engineers to each of these steps created unavoidable delays.With SDN, the entire infrastructure, including servers, storage, and networking can be seen and managed as a single integrated entity. New applications and their required resources can now be rolled out in minutes.A migration to SDN does require new infrastructure since network components will need to be replaced with SDN-enabled technology. During the migration you will need to run two systems concurrently. This setup allows for smooth migration from an existing network environment to the SDN enabled Virtual Private Cloud.As a whole, SDN allows you to utilize your IT infrastructure more effectively when compared to a classic hardware-defined architecture. Moreover, you can now model your IT infrastructure to suit your changing business needs, and do so without having to change your un-derlying network infrastructure. That improves your business agility, and at the same time reduces your total cost of ownership. Finally SDN allows for the seamless integration of services like fire-walling, load-balancing, and the ability to automate and orchestrate end-to-end deployment of applications. With SDN, the entire infrastructure, including servers, storage, and networking can be seen and managed as a single integrated entity
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