SDN and Digitalization

Communication Service Providers deliver the network connection to communication services: voice, video, messaging, and data. Newer systems are supplanting the core switching, routing, and signaling infrastructure to enable communication service providers to operate, the orchestration, data analytics, and monetization (ODAM).

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CSPs are feeling pressure from new market realities, market demands, and new competitive pressures to something different, but what? They are feeling pressure to morph into digital system providers (DSPs). How do they do that and what difference does it make?

SDN and Digitalization – A New Standard

CSPs do provide digital services, but when they transform into DSPs, they will change the way they do business. As DSPs, they will continue to provide the usual communication connectivity services. But, besides, they will present to customers a suite of value-added services. They will partner with other companies, and they will adopt open network technologies and practices. Digital Service Provision is part of the reorganization of the service provider industry.

The idea of the digital system provider has been developing through industry peer cooperation in much the same way as the internet itself was developed. Major stakeholders get together to organize and standardize new technologies to extend their application.

SDN – An Integrated Approach

The technology was developed during a six-year research collaboration between Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. This collaboration led to the development of an integrated approach.

In 2011, most of the major brands used by networks and service providers teamed up to establish and support a new cloud-focused initiative called Software-Defined Networking (SDN). They found a non-profit organization called the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) to promote SDN as a way of customizing networks and speed innovation.

SDN is expressed in terms of a new standard, the OpenFlow Standard and through the OpenFlow interface. In 2017, the Global Network Technology Conference was held at the Great Wall Hotel in Beijing, China. This was a significant event that focused on network security, data centers in the cloud, internet infrastructure and the technologies that go along with them.

The Role of ONF

The role of the ONF (Open Networking Foundation) will be, first, to promote adoption and leading further development of the OpenFlow standard and freely licensing it to all member companies. Then, the group will begin defining global management interfaces. The OpenFlow standard is based on the use of open source software.

SDN (Software-Defined-Networking) will allow networks to evolve and improve. Over time, SDN will help systems become both more secure and more reliable. Adopting new technologies allows innovation to happen more quickly through simple software changes (less hardware change). Data centers, wide area telecommunication networks, wireless, enterprise, and even in-home networks can be more controlled to serve users’ needs. For instance, the technology would allow some routers to be powered down during off-peak hours as a way of reducing the energy load of data centers.

The ONF approach will allow networks to establish on-demand “express lanes” for time-sensitive voice and data traffic. Companies like Verizon or AT&T will be able to combine fiber optic backbones to handle short-term peaks in traffic temporarily. For data centers, SDN could make it easier to redirect traffic around problematic hardware.

Open source software has an inherent advantage: to be viewed by developers who can find and repair flaws in the applications. Recently, for instance, flaws were discovered in the Android operating system (which is partly open source–based on the open source Linux model), and these could be repaired quickly because they were free to view by many interested professionals who understand the system. As a contrast, flaws in Microsoft closed software can take weeks or months to be patched.

Intraway encourages digital transformation with a comprehensive portfolio of innovative, highly configurable and ready-to-deploy solutions. Learn more here.