In Peter Sevcik's and Rebecca Wetzel's recent report on Flex-IT Networking: An Emerging Trend, they illustrate how the the confluence of some key technologies and capabilities will transform the way wide area networks will be built in the future.
Obviously, my interest in this area is directly related to the fact that one of the capabilities is to build a reliable private WAN out of a 'mosaic of network transport options', to create an 'Integrated Transport Network (ITN)'. This is exactly what APN technology was designed to do.
Server consolidation accelerated by server virtualization continues to be a hot trend and provides real OpEx and CapEx savings for IT departments. However, as computing resources become centralized and more distant from the end user, the bandwidth and latency demands on the enterprise WAN have increased significantly. This paper points out that that colocation facilities combined with an ITN are primed to become an integral part of your WAN design to help solve this problem.
Colocation facilities, that have traditionally been used to house Internet facing web services and for disaster recovery, will play a broader role with an ITN approach. Now they can be used to inexpensively consolidate branch services such as an email server, firewall and intrusion detection system within a geographical region close to the users without the need for an expensive private WAN connection. Connected with plentiful and cheap bandwidth they also provide an answer to the age old question of whether to back-haul your Internet traffic or not.
The resulting solution will provide the branches with both more Intranet and Internet bandwidth which is great for the users, and for the IT department it reduces costs and the number of locations that need to be managed.
So when you add it all up, cheap bandwidth allows you to move services to where they are more cost effective to manage, virtualization allows you to rent less rack space in those facilities and an ITN powered by APN technology allows all of the inexpensive network resources you can leverage to run even more reliably than the MPLS you thought you needed.
Obviously, my interest in this area is directly related to the fact that one of the capabilities is to build a reliable private WAN out of a 'mosaic of network transport options', to create an 'Integrated Transport Network (ITN)'. This is exactly what APN technology was designed to do.
Server consolidation accelerated by server virtualization continues to be a hot trend and provides real OpEx and CapEx savings for IT departments. However, as computing resources become centralized and more distant from the end user, the bandwidth and latency demands on the enterprise WAN have increased significantly. This paper points out that that colocation facilities combined with an ITN are primed to become an integral part of your WAN design to help solve this problem.
Colocation facilities, that have traditionally been used to house Internet facing web services and for disaster recovery, will play a broader role with an ITN approach. Now they can be used to inexpensively consolidate branch services such as an email server, firewall and intrusion detection system within a geographical region close to the users without the need for an expensive private WAN connection. Connected with plentiful and cheap bandwidth they also provide an answer to the age old question of whether to back-haul your Internet traffic or not.
The resulting solution will provide the branches with both more Intranet and Internet bandwidth which is great for the users, and for the IT department it reduces costs and the number of locations that need to be managed.
So when you add it all up, cheap bandwidth allows you to move services to where they are more cost effective to manage, virtualization allows you to rent less rack space in those facilities and an ITN powered by APN technology allows all of the inexpensive network resources you can leverage to run even more reliably than the MPLS you thought you needed.
As a professional who has reviewed the Talari APN technology and with no affiliation with the company, I recommend that any company with mission critical WAN links evaluate this solution. That is especially true for companies with "un-baked" disaster recovery plans or that have last mile challenges.
It may sound too good to be true, but this technology works better than advertised. And the ROI is amazing.
Posted by: primemover | February 02, 2010 at 06:19 PM