Reinventing Enterprise Networkswith NFV and SDN Technologies

Whitepaper

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Drivers behind Network Transformations

Asia: A Fragmented Network Story

Sizing up CIO Frustrations

Reinventing Networks with NFV

Asia Ready to Jumpstart the NFV Journey

NFV & SDN – The Two Acronyms that Work Together

The Promise of a Virtualized Future – Arcstar Universal One

Today, network is the lifeline of every enterprise, as it connects and communicates across all business touch-points in an increasingly complex enterprise environment. Well-optimized network architecture is inevitably crucial to driving operational efficiency and achieving strategic business growth.

Thanks to clouds, enterprises want more sophisticated and service-rich network environments that marry Internet access with corporate WAN environments to link distributed locations and facilities. Many are also leapfrogging their wired networks by deploying wireless LANs, VoIP telephony, collaborative and resource-sharing technologies that add complexity and management costs. Some key business drivers include:

While traditional networks are robust, resilient and stable, enterprises are demanding more agility, flexibility and cost-efficiency to help them cope with the changing requirements. All of these business transformations are pushing the network forward, leading enterprises to rethink network architectures — especially those looking to take advantage of opportunities in Asia or expand their footprints in this highly fragmented region.

DRIVERS BEHIND NETWORK TRANSFORMATIONS

Globalization & Mobility Enterprise networks must be global and able to support operations and staff wherever business opportunities

arise.

Highly Distributed Business Ecosystems Today’s employees, who may be located at the head office or remotely, need quick and stable access to centralized,

hosted business applications anytime, anywhere.

Centralized Business Applications A hybrid network environment that combines MPLS and Internet-based VPNs will provide highly distributed

end-user communities with secure, reliable access.

Containing IT Costs Enterprises are grappling with implementing the best methods for better cost optimization in IT spending, while

also seeking the means to improve innovation and business results.

ASIA: A FRAGMENTED NETWORK STORY

The Asia network landscape can be daunting for enterprises looking to establish their operations and capture the booming economic opportunities.

Unlike the US and Europe, network in Asia is often crisscrossed by geo political lines. Each country has its own regulatory regime and business requirements. In some, the providers are monopolies; in others, the networking infrastructure is not open. One has to circumvent several countries, including areas that are not wired, or less developed in terms of telecom infrastructure.

In addition, large swathes of this region are not land locked, but separated by maritime areas. As such, establishing connectivity locally, especially in emerging countries, requires working with local service provider as well as connecting through submarine cables. Enterprises with branch offices in Asia are required to spend extra resources on premise equipment and staff to manage connectivity. Having different providers to manage create both hassle and risk of inconsistent service quality.

The situation is only going to get worse. With Asia becoming increasingly attractive for global industry players and the fast adoption of leading-edge technology across the region, the pressure on network infrastructure will be immense. Implementation of cloud, mobile BYOD, big data, voice and video communications requires a converged IT infrastructure – even challenging when the network is fragmented.

Source: Submarine Cable Map by NTT Communications, September 2014

SIZING UP CIO FRUSTRATIONS

From a CIO perspective, a fragmented network landscape poses tough challenges to the implementation of an efficient IT infrastructure. Biggest pain points include:

Wide area network adds complexity With increasingly distributed enterprise environment and workforce, the traditional wide area network (WAN) needs to

provide more connectivity options across a decentralized enterprise environment, amidst the growth of network and Internet traffic.

Lack of agility, flexibility and cost-efficiency Asia enterprises need to make more investment and efforts to standardize among all regional offices, driving up the

CapEx and OpEx costs. Bulky network also means enterprises are unable to scale fast enough to meet changing business needs.

Concerns over end-point security Endpoint security is becoming a critical element as corporate networks grant access to more employees and users

(e.g. customers and clients) through the Internet or multiple mobile devices. How secured is the end-user device has become a pressing question needs to be answered and addressed.

Poor application performance and end-user experience Varying network performance and end-user experience will expose enterprises to the risk of decreasing end-user

productivity and satisfaction while increasing IT costs and complexity.

Traditional approach to network development and management are not responding well to these increasing concerns. Industry is calling for innovations to transform the enterprise network, making it more programmable, automatic, intelligent and agile.

REINVENTING NETWORKS WITH NFV

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is one of the driving forces reshaping modern enterprise networks. It seeks to improve network access flexibility, security and performance, and offer enterprises a finer granular control over the networks.

Essentially, NFV is a technology for virtualizing network functions traditionally running on proprietary hardware into software. It decouples the network functions - firewall, IPS, URL filtering, or WAN optimization on a single dedicated x86 device and instantiate it as a virtual machine on a server within its infrastructure.

With NFV technology, enterprises no longer need to own and manage thousands of network devices. Network functionality – from routing and encoding to encryption and filtering – can be delivered as-a-service from a service provider’s cloud. It gives network administrators the flexibility to provision a new network function through a customer portal, as when and needed.

There are several key benefits - Chief ones include a reduction in CAPEX, since network functions are delivered and consumed like cloud service without the need for proprietary hardware; and better operational efficiency, as enterprises do not need personnel onsite or manage different maintenance contracts. A centralized customer portal, a key feature of NFV-enabled networks, simplifies the deployment and management of network functions.

With a NFV-enabled network, enterprises can enjoy flexible pricing akin to those already seen in cloud services. In addition, it reduces network infrastructure complexity, with all services standardized, and improves time-to-market for new features across all locations.

The above benefits are especially crucial in Asia where enterprises are growing their businesses through acquisitions and mergers of different networks. NFV ensures that enterprises can do this more efficiently, while allowing the IT staff to concentrate on more value-adding tasks.

History

NFV’s origin dates back to a whitepaper on software-defined networking and OpenFlow, published by an industry specifications group in October 2012. The group was part of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Since the publication, the group has defined standard terminology and use cases that offer references for vendors and operators.

Its framework has three main components: Virtualized Network Functions (VNF), Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) and Network Functions Virtualization Management and Orchestration Architectural Framework (NFV-MANO Architectural Framework).

Reinventing Networks with NFV

Conventional Private Network

Internet

Chaotic Complex Expensive Agility Scalability Cost Efficiency

Activate, deactivate andmanage via web portal

PublicInternet

Enterprise networking,security, WAN optimization

and mobility access

WAN Router

Traditional Branch OfficeSeparate Network Appliances for Each Function

Future Branch OfficeFunction Virtualized

Anti Virus

URL-Filtering

IPSAuthentication

Firewall

ApplicationAcceleration

WAN Router

ASIA READY TO JUMPSTART THE NFV JOURNEY

Asian CIOs are warming up to NFV’s promises, especially in Asia. According to a IDC global research study commissioned by NTT Communications to understand IT decision makers’ awareness and expectations on NFV, 18% of respondents from Asia are already using NFV now to address network challenges in the region. This leads Europe (12.8%) and is slightly behind those from the US (21.9%). Meanwhile, 42% noted that they plan to use NFV-enabled networks in 1 year, 30% within 2 years and 10% in more than 2 years.

The same survey noted that CIOs are turning to NFV-enabled networks to jumpstart their cloud journeys. The majority (63.5%) ranked Cloud-based SSL VPN as the top service to deploy, followed by Virtualized/Cloud VPN (55.2%), Cloud-based Secure Web Gateway (45.3%) and Cloud-based IPSEC VPN Gateway (43.2%). As cloud enablement becomes a primary business goal, the importance of NFV is only set to rise.

Managed NFV-enabled Services & Solutions Deployment Trends

Enterprise Ranking of NFV-based Services

Source: IDC Enterprise Awareness of And Expectations Toward NFV-enabled Services survey, April 2015. The survey Interviewed over 200 IT Decision Makers in US, Europe and Asia who are responsible for the selection and purchasing of the companies’ telecommunications, wide area network (WAN), and internet services.

63.5%Cloud-based

SSL VPN

55.2%Virtualized or

Cloud VPN

45.3%Cloud-based Secure Web

Gateway

43.2%Cloud-based

IPSEC VPN Gateway

42.2%Data CenterInterconnect

36.5%Virtual CPE

Branch Office Connectivity

36.5%Cloud-based Application Acceleration

Service

Plan to use in more than 2 years

Plan to use within 12-24 months

Plan to use within 1 year

Use now

Asia

10%

30%

42%

18%

Europe

5.1%

28.2%

47.4%

12.8%

Americas

8.2%

30.1%

34.2%

21.9%

NFV & SDN - THE TWO ACRONYMS THAT WORK TOGETHER

Both NFV and Software-Defined Networks (SDN) bring the key benefits of cloud – agility and flexibility – to the enterprise network. They also improve end-user experience of increasingly centralized business applications, by putting more decisions for customizations at the hands of the enterprise network administrators.

While NFV focuses on network functions and hardware, SDN emphasizes on network capacity by giving administrators more control over the path of network packets. Network flow can be automatically redirected to a different switch without the need to manually change the routing rules, as demand for more bandwidth during peak traffic arises.

The complementary SDN offers instead an innovative architectural model for enabling network virtualization and network programmability to data centers and enterprise networks. It decouples the control plane from the data forwarding plane. This creates a new layer of abstraction in networking to allow management flexibility and lower operational costs.

By enabling flexible, virtualized on-demand WAN, both NFV and SDN will transform the telecommunications landscape. Together, they represent a design paradigm shift that makes networks programmable based on open APIs, while exposing the underlying network fabric. By doing this, they offer a flexible solution to the key challenges and CIO pain points for today’s enterprises.

Internet InternetEnterprise network

Portal

SDN Platform

DifferentNetwork Functions Virtualized

within One PlatformNFV Switch

THE PROMISE OF A VIRTUALIZED FUTURE - ARCSTAR UNIVERSAL ONE

Answering calls of its customers, NTT Communications has adopted NFV & SDN technologies into Arcstar Universal One - the company's enterprise network service. The newly launched service makes the company the first provider to offer NFV-enabled networking infrastructure in over 190 countries and regions around the world, leading the transformation of WAN architecture in this region.

The new NFV-enabled cloud-based services include four cloud-based services: Application Acceleration Service, Secure Web Gateway, SSL VPN and IPSEC VPN Gateway. Together, they aim to answer key CIO painpoints, and transform branch office networking by increasing agility, flexibility, scalability and economy. More importantly, with the new Arcstar Universal One, deployment will only take minutes, not months, while change management can now be done in real-time.

Networks will continue to play a major role in tomorrow’s business infrastructure. The onset of big data analytics, the increasing use of visualization on decision-making, and the entry of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, will all place additional pressure on the networking infrastructure, especially in Asia.

For more information about Arcstar Universal One, please visit: http://www.hk.ntt.com/en/services/network/data-network/arcstar-universal-one/why-ntt.html.

Internet IntegrationWide variety of solutions, including: Secure Web Gateway IPSEC SSL

Access Options

1,000+ Local ISP and access-line partners

Gateways for SSL VPN and IPSEC VPN in 50 locations worldwide

Cloud-based Network 50 platforms distributed globally Pay-per-use payment model Real-time self-service activation Self-management

Global Coverage 190+ countries/regions Centralized procurement and operations Single billing On-site delivery Local support

High Service Quality

24/7 network monitoring and customer support Project management Network management systems SLAs

NTT Com Asia LimitedTel: (852) 3793 0288 | Fax: (852) 2521 0081Email : marketing@ntt.com.hkWebsite: www.ntt.com.hk

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