Uplogix customer Orange Business Services was in the news for a partnership with Cisco bringing software defined networking to LANs.
The work expands on the existing relationship providing SD-WAN technology for Orange customers through the Orange Open Labs program. The program is a global mix of physical and virtual resources for innovation and development designed to help companies explore connectivity and performance options in a safe and secure environment. To date, 80% of Orange customers have utilized the Lab for SD-WAN proof of concepts prior to roll-out.
Citing the strain of device growth, mobile apps and data expansion, Orange and Cisco hope for SD-LAN to create a centrally-managed wired and wireless network architecture that is easier to integrate, operate and run.
“For campus WiFi networks, SD-LAN addresses problematic deployment and visibility issues. It can effectively monitor services, access and usage on networks, and anticipate any essential upgrades to deal with the demands of wireless users. SD-LAN provides highly secure identity-driven access, defining the users, things and devices that can access the network. Access can be granted or revoked at a granular level such as setting up guest WiFi groups, for example.”
What is the ultimate goal? Riverbed’s Vivek Ganti has the vision most people are dreaming of that no longer distinguishes between SD-WAN and SD-LAN to just be overarching software defined networking:
Wi-Fi access points, controllers, WAN Optimization appliances, switches, routers, edge gateways (SD-WAN) are the different pieces of the puzzle that comprise the LAN and the WAN. For all these pieces to work cohesively together as a single unified network fabric, it is imperative that the concepts of the software-defined architecture extend to both the LAN and the WAN.
To be successful in the cloud and digital world, a unified platform comprising the best of both SD-LAN and SD-WAN is necessary to deliver apps, data, and services from any public, private, or hybrid cloud across any network to any end-point.
Of course, all of this software defined goo runs on some kind of hardware. Somewhere. This is often where it makes sense for customers to also deploy a hardware out-of-band solution to ensure that they can manage your virtualized devices. It’s the idea of putting all of your eggs in one basket. That’s fine, but you definitely want to take good care of that basket!
Virtual ports can be established to manage the virtual devices running on a host machine from a physical Uplogix Local Manager. Virtual ports can be used in conjunction with physical ports on the Uplogix platform. For more information on Uplogix in software defined networks and network function virtualization deployments, see the NFV Solution Guide.
