CloudWAN

This is an excellent point - and many enterprises are slow to discover this. And all the clever CDN/ADN functionality that the Cloud App providers leverage is often broken by legacy WANs taking the traffic half way around the world over MPLS

Many ERP, CRM, BI, PM applications are now SaaS based - these apps are now outside the firewall.

"taking the traffic half way around the world over MPLS" LOL geek humor

An interesting point is, conventional MPLS will no longer help in cloud/SaaS use cases. This will hit MPLS adoption.

So MPLS is dying?

this "outside the firewall" piece scares a lot of CIOs because it's so much harder to know who to blame when things go wrong. Old world was easy - network issue = telco problem. Not so easy anymore...!

Perhaps not dying but at a fork in the road marked 'Evolve or die'

MPLS today is fairly mainstream. But as cloud and hybrid WANs become more ubiquitous, I believe adoption rates of MPLS will decline.

love it! interesting trend to stay on top of

I can now go all National Equirer and print that MPLS is the new SONET

If Symantec can herald the demise of anti-virus then making MPLS the new SONET isn't really a stretch

This is one of the few times that I think broader industry efforts like @opendaylight will prevail and drive adoption

I can tell you from first hand experience that Cisco has a fire under their butts to jump on this. They need to figure out the best way to do so.

The ties/reliance on specific hardware will constrain adoption, especially in the mid-market

Much as we've seen with cloud app platforms, APIs will rule, determining the winners and losers

@ajcochenour you mean people who have invested in WAN hardware don't want to move to the cloud?

Not so much, requiring specific hardware/software combos to unlock ACI-like functionality, versus leveraging standard-based protocols/APIs, will tend to constrain adoption. VXLAN versus et. al. for example

I think those orgs with a lot of commodity WAN hardware want/need a standards-based path forward to #CloudWAN

Management of this increasingly complex hardware is tricky - the telcos are not moving quickly enough to do this well. Do-it-yourself orchestration and management of hardware using vendors like @GlueNetworks is an interesting opportunity

Great point. Seems like an opportunities for telcos.

Or challengers that can carve out opportunities alongside the "legacy" telco space. Those traditional 3-5 year contracts become relegated to supporting whatever is left of the internal network, still important but shrinking

Thanks Ciaran. @GlueNetworks is definitely on the bleeding edge of #SDNWAN

Cisco needs to break away from their tried (or tired) methods if they want to grow. My access layer hardware isn't going away, but to excel in the #CloudWAN Cisco will need to change it's stripes.

Thanks Colin, great feedback

Do you think @cisco is moving fast enough?

Does Cisco ever move fast enough?

I don't know if Cisco even thinks it's moving fast enough. Companies that size have trouble being nimble, but they'll need to hit the sweet spot between going to fast and getting it wrong, being late to the party, and getting their porridge just right.

Thanks Colin. What solutions are you using now for Cloud WAN connectivity and security, if any?

We're just getting our head in the clouds, so at this point we're still kind of old fashioned. We are looking at Active Network Defense as a comprehensive solution for our walk in the clouds.

Colin I think this is probably normal. The marketing always proceeds the actual customers

Perhaps I understated it a little. We are using half a dozen cloud services and migrating to Office 365.

@colindaniel That's cool! Office 365 is a good use case for some #CloudWAN vendors. More than 1 solution out there, you should look out for private MPLS grade middle mile and optimization.

@akamai and @riverbed have a partnership on Office 365 cloud delivery

Complexity, complexity, complexity. Additional security revenues are of course attractive but there's not MPLS-equivalent for WAN/Internet security

Security solutions cater to enterprise (read: no multi-tenancy) and so carriers are left with DIY or nothing typically

interesting, thank you

That's a big area of focus for @HopliteInfo - delivering multi-tenant network security solutions that support ISPs and carriers actual needs

Thanks @ajcochenour . Yes your technology is interesting. Happy to have another exciting MT company in the mix!

#CloudWAN and Internet security shouldn't always require add'l hardware, commodity network components tend to have a GREAT deal of security value, it just requires context and orchestration

Technology moves much faster than Service Providers can respond.

One of the keys to success with carrier security services will be delivering solution over-the-top of existing infrastructure, not by adding boxes

Service Provider mindset has always been to be REACTIVE rather than PROACTIVE

Yes, the box-adding mentality is finally starting to go away

Security, in my opinion, needs to be an integral part of the solution. Not a value add, to nickel and dime customers for.

100% agreed, our networks should be distributed defense fabrics, not a collection of disparate boxes handling security asynchronously

Change scares people. It will be interesting to see how people respond to this inevitably change

Certainly, instrumentation, monitoring and policy control are absolute requirements

It's interesting to mention that the network itself can be moved to the cloud, in addition to hardware appliances. e.g. @aryakanetworks

This is a point that needs further discussion. Perhaps I'm just dense, but I've yet to understand how a cloud provider is going to connect directly to my ~10,000 devices to provide service without any network hardware on the ground.

LOL a bit of an overpromise is it?

@colindaniel Depends on the underlying network infrastructure and the data centers hosting the software stack to enable on boarding the #CloudWAN. Great question to ask a vendor - scalability is key.