NaaS: The Cloud-Based Approach to Network Management

Networks keep gaining complexity as more mobile and IoT devices, remote access capabilities, and cloud services are added. For IT and network managers, this means a lot more drudge work to operate the whole environment. This rising effort has driven demand for network-as-a-service (NaaS), which effectively shifts network infrastructure to the cloud and makes it a decomposable set of services rather than an owned infrastructure.

The thinking is that since enterprises are accustomed to consuming store-and-compute IT services from cloud hyperscalers, they will similarly look to service providers for network services provided via NaaS. But NaaS is a complex concept on its own. To help, we describe here what it is, how it works, and what the key use cases and benefits are.

What is NaaS?

The term NaaS describes a business model, not a specific technology. It can mean moving some network management functions to the cloud, or it can mean a fully cloud-based virtual network. It can provide a VPN, an SD-WAN, or any other Internet-based architecture. Important parts of the network, including entire subnets, may reside on premises.

Features that are commonly available include:

• Network management
• The connection of local networks into a WAN
• Dynamic or static routing
• Network security
• Monitoring
• DoS protection
• VPN tunneling
• Bandwidth on demand (BoD)
• Network function virtualization (NFV)

In many NaaS configurations, the cloud service provides a gateway from the local network to the Internet, and all Internet traffic goes through the gateway. This gives cloud-based security and management tools full control over network traffic.

Why is NaaS Important?

When customers have a problem to solve, it’s an opportunity for providers. This is the basis for well-known models such as SaaS and IaaS. An “as a service” package uses economies of scale to deliver services at an attractive price while saving the customer the complications of installing and maintaining their own. They make access more flexible and can scale up when needs increase.

Network services not only are a business opportunity in themselves for telecom companies, but also encourage customers to increase their use of the provider’s basic services.

Providers need to meet a high level of expectations to win customers over to NaaS. Network owners will be naturally cautious about handing over any control. The provider has to get high marks on all the important aspects of service.

Availability and reliability need to be very high. Service agreements need to guarantee an uptime level, and the service needs to live up to the promise. Performance has to be good, both in speed and quality of service. The service needs to be cost-effective. Customers looking at NaaS don’t necessarily expect huge cost reductions, but they expect better network operation without paying significantly more. Security must be impeccable.

A provider that develops a good reputation on these points will find a ready and growing market.

Examples of Key NaaS Services

The services grouped under NaaS cover a broad range. A service provider may offer some or all of them, separately or in packages.

The services grouped under NaaS cover a broad range. A service provider may offer some or all of them, separately or in packages.

Cloud-based VPN

Companies have traditionally hosted their own VPNs for secure remote access. Employees in remote locations can access internal network resources securely. The alternative to hosting the VPN in the cloud is becoming more popular, especially for small businesses. It reduces the need for hardware and maintenance, as well as making it more convenient to connect multiple locations and incorporate cloud (SaaS or IaaS) services.

Client devices can access the VPN regardless of whether they subscribe to the provider’s telecommunication service. A good VPN service uses one of the standard tunneling protocols and makes software available for all major mobile and desktop operating systems.

SDN and SD-WAN

SDN (software-defined networking) and SD-WAN (software-defined WAN) are related but distinct concepts. SDN is a technology which separates management and configuration of a network from the routing of data. An SD-WAN is a wide-area network which builds on SDN technology and allows centralized management. Either way, centralizing network management by putting it into software is a natural fit for the cloud.

The network controller is the hub of an SDN architecture and can be its weakest link. It needs to manage all locations of the network. A cloud-based network controller is less susceptible to hardware failures, and it can scale up as the network grows.

The controller has to be especially secure, since compromising it would compromise the whole network. A cloud-based network controller that maintains the highest security standards is a strong selling point.

Network Slicing

The combination of NaaS and virtual machines leads to a cloud-based network where nothing is on a dedicated piece of hardware. Everything is virtual: the servers, the firewall, even the routers and switches. Combining this with infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and customers can create servers, configure them into networks, and tear them down at will.

This approach combines detailed, low-level control of the network with any desired amount of scalability. Adding a network, either permanently or for transient use, is just a matter of configuring it with an application.

Slicing allows customization of a network for a specific purpose. IoT sensors, VoIP phones, and database servers all need different network characteristics for optimal performance. A virtual network slice can be optimized for any set of requirements. One might serve IoT sensors, another one smartphones, another one VoIP. The network characteristics are defined in software, so networks can be spawned and optimized as necessary.

Security

Cloud-based security management is popular, largely because threats are constantly appearing and security measures need to keep up with them. These services can be offered separately as Security as a Service (SecaaS) or as a component of NaaS. Security is a necessary part of any network service, but it stands out most clearly in cloud-based firewalls and NGFWs.

Other security features that can be part of NaaS are DDoS protection and network monitoring. Cloud services are more resistant to DDoS attacks than the typical on-premises network since they have extra resources on call. Monitoring software can be constantly updated with the latest threat signatures.

Bandwidth On Demand

Adjustable network capacity with bandwidth on demand (BoD) can help a network to ride out surges in usage without performance degradation. Organizations and locations with extreme fluctuations in demand can benefit the most. For instance, a weather reporting organization will need much more bandwidth than usual when a severe storm is coming.

One approach to BoD is to schedule extra bandwidth in advance, on a regular schedule or for a planned event. When customers schedule it, they expect that they will get it reliably and not experience slowdowns. The other approach is to request extra bandwidth when the need arises. In this case, it may not always be available, but it should be available most of the time.

NaaS Operational Benefits

NaaS can offer considerable benefits, operational efficiencies, and business agility, which derive from three key components:

Functional elements virtualization: Functional elements are virtualized under NaaS and hosted on a standardized blade-server farm. This step facilitates a uniform operational approach across multiple elements, giving better consistency and repeatability, and also promoting integration simplicity.

Active service catalog creation: An active service catalog represents all of the functional elements that have been virtualized and identifies how they map to both the services that rely on those elements and the customers who consume those services. The catalog defines the policies through which they can interact.

Process automation: The active service catalog and the virtualized elements allow automation of operational processes. This combination eventually benefits OpEx, while increases business agility and customer satisfaction. To analyze the advantages of NaaS, research turned to the enhanced telecommunications operations map (eTOM) process framework to identify the operations and infrastructure processes impacted.

By comparing the future-state processes under NaaS to current-state processes, and identifying the differences in time and resources consumed under each scenario, it is possible to measure the real benefits NaaS can offer to a service provider’s top and bottom lines.

Want a closer look at how Symphonica delivers NaaS? Book a meeting today.