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FierceTelecom.com 16 15 M ay 2 0 13 M ay 2 0 13 FierceTelecom SDN offers new capabilities and efficiencies, but implementing SDN is complex. Implementing SDN in a data center may seem like a logical move and one that should progress quickly. By its very nature, SDN has elements that improve the internal and external functions that customers demand as they migrate to more applications-centric behaviors and products. But SDN is complex. Just because it's software doesn't mean it's plug-and-play today. "There are a lot of capabilities from a manpower and efficiency perspective that you gain with SDN" in a data center, starting with the internal side of the operation, said Rob Fewkes, director of architecture and engineering at Windstream. "SDN provides visibility and control that lets you clean out artifacts that are left over from old installations or quick changes," he said. DriViNG CUStomEr VALUE When combined with virtual network appliances or network function virtualization, SDN is the foundation of a "powerful application for serving your customers where you can instantly spin up firewalls or load balancers on available compute and redirect traffic," Fewkes said. That's the good part of an SDN and it's a part that customers in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world are coming to expect, agreed Ken Owens, cloud CTO and chief scientist for CenturyLink's Savvis business. "The main driver for us to look at SDN a year ago was that customers were expecting everything … to be immediately available like servers are," Owens explained. Not that customers were demanding SDN, he added. It's not even for sure they knew what SDN was. They just knew they had applications and needs that had passed the traditional implementation timeline. "They mostly just complain that it takes us for or five days to do a cross-connect in a data center," Owens explained. "We feel that the SDN strategy will allow us to provide that automation." mULtipLE USES EmErGE Savvis, because it's owned by CenturyLink, has a good feel for what SDN can do in the network as well as the data center and is constructing its SDN offering based on those insights. CenturyLink is typical of data center customers who range from Data Centers in line for sDn…but There's no Rush By JIM B A R t hOl d carriers to enterprises to even some smaller operations. All are evolving their models to focus more on applications services and all think software is the way to move faster because their end users want them to move faster. "We need to be building an experience," said James Feger, vice president of network strategy and development at CenturyLink. "In order to build a seamless experience, SDN gives us the ability to trigger those services." One way to trigger those services is to offer an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) package running across a customer's network. IaaS breaks down the islands between data centers so customers that want to replicate their environments between data centers, perhaps for disaster recovery, have an environment and physical layer to do it, said Fewkes, citing Windstream's own network connections as an example. "Once you extend SDN across the MPLS cloud you end up with a seamless network from the customer's premise through the data center and eventually into the cloud, which solves the major problems of migrating a VM [virtual machine] from customer premise," he said. "You have a hybrid scenario where you can burst from the customer premise into the cloud." You also create a doubt in a customer's mind about the need for a middleman to control all this functionality. Why not, a customer could posit, just grab control of the SDN and let the pieces fall where they may. "SDN is not something we would expose to customers; it's something that we would do for customers, preferably in an automated fashion based on their request," said Fewkes, whose customers generally comprise enterprises and mid- level companies who use Windstream data centers to host IT infrastructure and customer-facing e-commerce applications. While those customers might ask for more control of their network data, they're generally demanding more and better compute power to manage their load balance pool, he said. SDN doesn't, according to Fewkes, alter the definition of a data center which is to "provide cap ex relief" because the customer doesn't need to build a facility with redundant power and cooling or maintained operations personnel. "It's so you don't have to spend money on servers, gain access to a 24x7 pool of engineers," Fewkes said. "sDn provides visibility and control that lets you clean out artifacts that are left over from old installations or quick changes." rob fewkes, Director of architecture anD engineering at winDstream

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