Intelligent Data Centres Issue 08 | Page 20

DATA CENTRE PREDICTIONS Apstra CEO, Mansour Karam Without automation, that simple intent could spell weeks of work from a small team of engineers, not only installing and configuring but also sorting out the inevitable complications of integrating equipment from different vendors and troubleshooting human errors. But today’s most advanced IBN installations will, in just a few minutes, translate that same intent into a software blueprint containing all the configuration data across multiple vendors’ hardware, with precise wiring instructions for rapid installation. And, should any performance problems occur, the system’s intelligence would trace back to pinpoint the root cause of the problem and suggest how to repair it – updating itself and the blueprint in real time as the changes are made. Ongoing benefits of the agile IBN include reducing network outages and grey failures as well as reducing operating costs. network for specific application needs and turns the ordinary public Internet into a secure and performant enterprise-class network by enhancing it with next- As it is abstracted and virtualised, it is completely vendor, (in the Wide Area Network) service-provider and Internet agnostic. According to Philip Griffiths, NetFoundry’s Head of EMEA Partnerships: “By extending permission-less innovation to networking, we are putting programmable app connections in the hands of the practitioners. According to Apstra CEO, Mansour Karam: “With intent based analytics, network operators can quickly detect and prevent a wide range of service level violations – including security breaches, performance degradations and traffic imbalances – bringing the industry closer to the vision of a self-operating network.” Trend 5 – Application Specific Networking (ASN) ASN extends the software-defined networking principle to build virtualised network layers on top of a physical 20 Issue 08 generation zero-trust cybersecurity, while at the same time boosting ‘best effort’ Internet resilience and performance. Philip Griffiths, NetFoundry’s Head of EMEA Partnerships “We’re partnering with ISVs and developers so that they can use APIs and SDKs connect their applications in minutes regardless of where they are hosted, accessed and consumed from – essentially they get private network benefits without private network hardware, wires, complexity and costs.” ◊ www.intelligentdatacentres.com