NetEvents: An SDN solution to the BYOD challenge?

MIAMI –(Business Wire)–

The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon presents a serious challenge
to the CIO’s authority, but the answer is to adapt instead of resisting
it. Shehzad Merchant, VP of Technology, Extreme Networks (News – Alert) opened the
second day of the NetEvents Americas Press and Analyst Summit in Miami
with a keynote presentation on BYOD Challenges Faced by CIOs with the
Network. The morning’s session also included debates on Ethernet’s
Growing Role in the Cloud and The Mobile Cloud & Security Issues -
as well as a head-to-head challenge that saw Alcatel-Lucent (News – Alert), Cisco,
Enterasys and Extreme out-pitching each other for a Virtualisation,
Orchestration and Automation of the Datacentre proposal.

“Being in the cloud adds productivity, as people are more connected to
their applications, and it allows them to respond more quickly as they
are checking emails constantly” explained Merchant – recognizing the key
drivers to BYOD such as consumerization of IT and employees need to
remain productive anywhere. On the other hand there were the downsides –
IT cannot be sure of a user’s identity, especially with shared devices,
the management overhead of multiple devices per user, and the need for
ubiquitous access and the expectation that IT would support any device,
any time.

For Merchant, the place to control access was not just at the
application server but also on the network – grabbing user credentials
from Active Directory or LDAP servers and setting up role-based control
with automatic enforcement across the same VLAN with no need for
separate traffic flows. “This looks like a use case fo SDN,” he said.
“You can take the intelligence and centralize policy using the network
OS.”

The second session saw Casey Quillan, Senior Analyst with Dell’ (News – Alert)Oro
Group, playing the role of a CIO with problems – multiple datacentres,
loads of applications, server sprawl, high energy and space utilization,
low application performance, and consequent high capex and opex. “So I
want to virtualise to cut costs and make it easier to manage,” he said.

Turning to the four big names pitching for his project he asked: “Is it
more or less secure when a server becomes a VM What about security
between VMs What happens if the host server goes down What are the
implications for my IT team What can I virtualize And what about
storage – how will that change ”

Rotem Salomonovitch, Director, IP Strategy Alcatel-Lucent, and Carlos
Rodríguez, responsible for Cisco’s (News – Alert) LATAM Data Centre, both advised a
move to the cloud. The former challenged Merchant’s statements about
static networks, claiming that SPs had been providing dynamic networks
for years: “Service Providers can offer SLA-backed offerings as they own
the network and the datacenter – so that end to end control provides a
better experience.” Rodríguez agreed that today’s networks are aware of
virtualization and understand the workloads: “We can allow the CIO to
provide datacenter as a service. This leads to increased operational
excellence through agility, efficiency and simplicity, and increased
cloud-readiness.”

For Ram Appalaraju (News – Alert), VP of Technology and Product Marketing, Enterasys
Networks, the answer was a structured virtualization approach addressing
mobility: “We digitally fingerprint every user on the network, and give
them appropriate priority and access.” He said this approach creates
happier bosses and fewer trouble tickets. Speaking for Extreme, Merchant
emphasized the importance of an Open fabric network with a unified
operating system: “We also provide a single network OS across all our
portfolio, and work closely with OpenFlow and OpenStack.”

How should the CIO prioritize for virtualization- servers, storage or
applications The Cisco response was not to prioritize but to virtualize
end to end: “This is based on our customer experience that
virtualization is application-based. Do it case by case, depending on
which applications are the pain points.”

Who came out on top The verdict was that none of the four had a
complete solution, and the panel of analysts opted for a best of breed
approach – with Enterasys a strong component. For the rest of the story…
you can download transcripts, PPT’s and photos of all sessions at this
URL: http://www.netevents.org/events/binaries/Americas2012/NetEvents-Miami-Download-Materials-Urls.pdf