Virtual networking and removing complexity

Roger Hockaday: New applications require newer networking ideas

The trend for virtualisation and hosting of applications in datacentres had already started to deliver on doing more with less before the onset of the current recession.

Applications – voice is a perfect example – are no longer hosted by a server in every office, but more often delivered from a single, secure location, offering a simplified, single point of management and control.

Centralising servers in the datacentre improves security and removes the need for specialist IT and internet security staff to manage tens or hundreds of remote servers.

Thin client applications also remove complexity from the edge, centralising management and improving security.

If moving complexity to the core is so beneficial, why are the remote networks that deliver these applications and services mired in a 10-year-old model of distributed complexity and high-cost edges?

Change can be difficult, particularly when there are vested interests involved. When WAN bandwidth was expensive, companies would hold most of their data locally, on servers in each office.

Applications would run locally, and the router was the device that created subnets, separated offices and stopped the expensive – and often limited – wide area connection from being overused.

Shrinking WAN costs and new xDSL services have improved connectivity, and now most large organisations host data and applications centrally.

Change has come, but not to remote networking. It could be argued that networking vendors with core businesses built on the router have a stake in the status quo – or at least ensuring all new networking solutions continue to be based around a router in every office.

But the same can’t be said of the integrator. A good technology partner – one that has value to an enterprise – one that can differentiate itself and make margin from services – should be prepared to be innovative, challenge the status quo, and look for change occurring within the end user customer.

The risk is that an integrator’s service may become a commodity, and the relationship with the end user stagnate, when the end user needs advice most.

‘Doing more with less’ entails a new way of thinking about problems. It means reconsidering the old ways, that may mean over-building complex, expensive infrastructure.

The first priority needs to be the end objective – enhancing mobility, simplifying networking and connecting users to their applications. Tool selection should be determined by the end objective, not the other way around.

When a customer wants to extend its corporate network to a branch office, the old way advocated installation of a router at every remote location.

VLANs and subnets controlled and managed users in campus environments, so that model was extended to branch offices. Systems pushed by router vendors needed routers, when a router might not always have been the best choice.

Are there better tools in the toolbox? Consider virtualisation: if the benefits of application virtualisation, such as simpler management, better security and easier delivery, from a central location are proven, can’t the branch network itself be virtualised?

Virtualising the branch network effectively creates a layer 2 tunnel across any layer 3 network. This connects end users and their devices – laptops, phones or scanners directly to the datacentre without routing at the edge.

After all, most of the traffic, most of the time, comes back to the datacentre.

Virtualisation of the branch office removes the need to configure complex routers at each and every remote office – and all the associated WAN interfaces, LAN interfaces, Access Control Lists, VLANs, DHCP and DNS services, authentication services, voice services, QoS Services, wired and wireless access policies.

Virtual branch networking allows integrators to deliver more with less. It challenges tradition and allows them to differentiate not just the service they deliver, but also their value to the end user.

Those who embrace change will receive their reward. Those who try to maintain the status quo will fail.

Roger Hockaday is director of marketing at Aruba Networks