As the hype cycle around aspects of concepts like software-defined networking continue, customers are continuing to sift through and educate themselves to determine what is real and actionable. I have had my fair share of participation in several events over the last 24 months, and have been speaking to different audiences both gaining and sharing insights in the process.
One person I spoke with recently was Dr. Jim Metzler. We seem to be crossing paths at multiple venues including Interop, the Network World SDN roadshows currently underway in a few cities in the United States, as well, as at the Open Network Summit in Santa Clara a few weeks ago.
Jim has become the messiah of sorts, on some of these emerging technologies, and is frequently consulted -- both as part of his day job at Ashton, Metzler and associates and during his role hosting various industry panels on these topics. I thought it would be good to host the host and get some of his perspectives here, as we both got together at the recently held Open Networking Summit at Santa Clara.
In this week’s episode of Engineers Unplugged, Bas Raayman from EMC and Caroline Orloff from ServiceMesh take on “what is the software defined data center and how is it like/different from the cloud”? Let’s watch and see what they conclude:
Bas Raayman, Caroline Orloff, and the First Ever Cloud Management Platform Unicorn.
Welcome to Engineers Unplugged, where technologists talk to each other the way they know best, with a whiteboard. The rules are simple:
Episodes will publish weekly (or as close to it as we can manage)
Submit ideas for episodes or volunteer to appear by Tweeting to @CommsNinja
Practice drawing unicorns
Where do you think the industry is in terms of SDDC adoption? Predictions for the future? Join the conversation online! We’ll see you live, next week at #EMCWorld.
The announcement today of OpenDaylight is big news. Industry leading companies are partnering via Open Source to serve an emerging set of market needs:
Operators: want affordable real-time orchestration and operation of integrated virtual compute, application, and network.
Application Developers: want a single simple interface to the network. Underlying details such as “router”, or “switch”, or “topology” can be a distraction they desire to abstract and simplify away.
Equipment Vendors: want a stable forum to interwork a plethora of Application interfaces with a plethora of nascent Network Device programmatic interfaces.
Back in May 2012 Mike Fratto predicted in his blog that SDN will be “Reborn in Network Management”. There is a lot of truth to his statement. The words “software defined” in “Software Defined Networking (SDN)” inspired people to rethink the overall control plane architecture of the network making the case for infrastructure software that complements software already embedded in virtual and physical devices, (e.g., the software and protocols running in and between network elements).
We are evolving our treatment of the network. What once was a discrete set of loosely coupled devices will now be interacted with as a system. To get there means the network must be represented by an overall system model. Classic network management functions become an integral part of the infrastructure software, and will spawn their own management requirements. SDN makes network management a first class citizen. Effectively we’re past the time when network management was an afterthought, or when network management was an operational silo. The coming integration of network management into the larger network software domain means infrastructure managers will not only manage and operate, but also actively contribute to the overall business proposition of the IT infrastructure. Read More »
For those who are on the learning curve on various aspects of network programmability, open networking and SDN (like we are), I’d like to invite you to the third in a series of educational webicasts on these topics. Brought under the umbrella of the Cisco Open Network Environment, this particular webcast focuses on “An introduction to onePK”, and will be broadcast on April 9th, 2013 at 9 AM PST. You can registerhere.
The Cisco Open Network Environment is all about bringing the network closer to applications. One way of doing that is by exposing network devices to applications through a rich set of APIs, that can help tap into the intelligence inherent in the hardware and ASICs as well as in the network operating systems. This is what onePK is all about – it’s a single platform kit that will span all of Cisco’s network infrastructure portfolio across Enterprise and Service Provider, exposing them to applications in a homogenous way, allowing app developers to tap into the power of the open network.
Cisco announced its Open Network Environment or Cisco ONE strategy on June 2012 and has been in execution mode since then. onePK happens to be a key proofpoint of this cross-architectural strategy.
Join me on this webcast, as I host Ayman Sayed, SVP of Cisco’s Network Operating Systems Group as the lead Cisco expert on this topic. We will also be joined by two of the development partners that are working on onePK trials including Brendon Whateley, Principal Solution Architect at Starview Inc., and Kamil Knotek, Chielf of R&D at Pramacomm Prague spol s.r.o, as well as some new demos.
If you missed the last webcast on “An Introduction to OpenFlow” with David Ward, CTO, Cisco Engineering and Chief Architect, we had a turnout from 84 countries and over 120+ questions answered by our question managers in a one-hour period. You can watch a reply of the webcast here.
