We are entering the era of the “third platform”, which also has distinct hallmarks in terms of innovation: Cloud, Mobility, Social, and Big Data are all a part of it. Gartner (News - Alert) calls these elements the “Nexus of Forces” and advocates the need for enterprises to become digital businesses in order to survive this next wave of disruption.
In the last three years, cloud spending has increased to $65 billion worldwide. We’ve gone from connecting places and people to connecting things: billions and, eventually trillions, of things. The one thing about these things is that they love to generate and consume data. The challenge is that all of the data takes a lot of work to manage—it has to be stored, moved and analyzed before it becomes truly valuable information.
The speed of innovation of cloud service providers such as Amazon and Google (News - Alert), in combination with the low cost of delivery, is creating a relevance gap for IT departments and traditional service providers. Every day, users go around these entities to buy IT services and applications directly from the cloud. User expectations for self-service, immediate delivery, and a faster pace of innovation are rising by the day. But, for many companies in the Middle East, the IT department struggles to keep pace. The network architecture is outdated, because it was never designed to meet these needs, and 70 percent of the IT budget is spent on maintaining the old infrastructure.
These legacy IP networks, referred to as “old IP,” have served incredibly well for the last 20 years. The resiliency of these networks is a testimony to IP’s elegance. Nobody is suggesting that we toss it out, but staying the course is not an option. A dramatic change is needed. The good news is that an advanced but evolutionary networking architecture is here—the New IP.
The New IP
What is the New IP? It’s the old IP networks reimagined for a modern world and designed to meet the needs of Cloud, Mobile, Social, and Big Data. The New IP is a new way to architect an IP network, and it includes both hardware and software, to provide profound business and technology benefits.
The old IP is based on closed systems in which innovation cycles are constrained by custom hardware, while the provisioning of network resources is a complex and labor-intensive task. Interoperation is limited, vendors are at the center of the ecosystem, costs are high, and innovation is slow.
In contrast, the New IP is based on open source and open standards that extend beyond proprietary adherence to industry standards. The New IP gives IT the choice to use COTS-based or workload-specific commodity hardware. Provisioning network resources is automated and can be done in a self-service model. Open APIs are the key to interoperability, the customer is at the center of the ecosystem, CapEx and OpEx costs are reduced, and innovation happens at the speed of business.
There are four essential attributes to the New IP:
Open with a purpose
Innovation-centric and software-enabled
Ecosystem driven (with users at the center)
On your terms
There are some surprising implications for enterprises that choose to build networks on these new IP attributes:
The data center is everywhere... and anywhere
You’re able to move faster and be more efficient than your competition
Your users are at the center of the New IP ecosystem
Gartner predicts that over the next 20 years, every business, regardless of industry, will become a digital business. The implications of this shift to the underlying network infrastructure, and the teams that provide and support them, are profound.
If enterprises in the Middle East are to stay ahead of the curve and survive the next wave of disruption, it is imperative that they make investments in the New IP.
About the Author: Mr. Sakhnini is a networking industry veteran with over 21 years of experience in various senior technical management roles including his last position as director, systems engineering, MEMA at Brocade (News - Alert).