What we can learn from cloud computing

Software defined networking

Published June 2016

Analyst firm IDC predicts that by 2020 30% of the top firms in every business sector will not exist, as we know them today. They will be replaced by new firms, will have merged, will have not kept pace and declined, or will simply not be relevant any more to the business needs of the day.

For most, the process involves a shift in management thinking and structures that are currently steeped in traditional silo based methodology to a new and collaborative way of working that is enabled by the right mix of technology, applications, and management ethos.

Underpinning the concept of achieving a Digital Transformation is the desire to create an agile business; one that can deploy new collaborative applications very quickly and change these new applications in any direction –bigger, smaller, different locations etc. –as the business need is identified.

Current networks are not designed to meet these challenges. Typically networks are supplied as long lead-time, fixed bandwidth circuits with expensive, long-term contracts –almost the exact antithesis of what enterprises of today need.

What is required is a ‘liquid infrastructure’, a network not constrained by CPE components but more virtualised or software defined (SDN). Imagine network requirements being provisioned in minutes rather than the typical 25-30 days business has had to endure for so long.