There were a lot of great interviews at #ONS2014, but the award for most insightful goes to Dave Ward, CTO of Engineering & Chief Architect at Cisco. Meeting with theCUBE hosts John Furrier and Stu Miniman, Ward discussed the software-defined networking (SDN) space, which is extremely exciting right now as the world seeks out modern data center architecture for agility and economic growth. The panel unanimously agreed that products and deployments are emerging for the modern data center, with software still at the center of the value proposition.

Software-Defined Networking + programmatic interfaces

Ward explained, “SDN is just a pillar of the networking architecture, network function virtualization is a pillar of that architecture, so is cloud, these are all the buzz words as long as we’re going through the litany of all of them. The thing is, to build out a solution or a deployment all of those pillars have to come together. Being one who’s helped bring OpenFlow out of gates 104 out of Stanford, I’m extremely happy that programmatic interfaces are here now for networking.”

 
There has been a long history of programmatic interfaces: OpenFlow, CORBA, GSMPs, etc. All of those have helped catalyze what is happening now with SDN. And we’re starting to see ‘real things,’ too.
 

“SDN is here now, we’re beyond the hype. We are seeing products, we are seeing people deploy this. We’re deploying with customers. In fact, we’re deploying with dozens and dozens of customer our SDN solution. Even a big player like Cisco has fundamentally turned how they think about programmatic interfaces,” said Ward.

 
Innovation is happening up and down the stack, not only around the technology though. There are now new services and service offerings that can be deployed. Because of the jump in technology, new markets are being created that weren’t fathomable 10 years ago.

According to Ward, the core competencies are still driving the acceleration: faster service delivery, and easier to operate networks. “SDN is not just limited to the data center. It is a piece that allows programmatic interfaces not only physical kit, virtual kit, that’s really really key. Being able to tie together what’s going on in the data center to whats going on in the network and link customer to what they want out of the network really really quickly,” said Ward.

Cisco is in a unique position of strength as software-defined reformats the physical and digital web. How exactly does Cisco define Open Networking? With a large number of protocols, the open piece is SDO (Standard Development Organizations). Open means a lot of things to Ward and Cisco. Open means open standards, open means open source, and open means open interoperability between a large number of vendors.

Furrier posed a great question about architectural decisions by Cisco and how Ward and his team factor in the force from the top (paid) and the open (bottom). Ward was extremely matter-of-fact in responding, “When building out this equipment it’s always in the customers mind, what are they trying to solve?”

The industry is throwing a wrench into the cog that is big players like Cisco. Virtualizing as much as the portfolio as possible: security, mobility, video, collaboration, VoIP and being able to orchestrate across all of it. Ward admitted that creating a product that combines servers, switches, storage, routing and solutions on top is a lot of work.

So with all of this change brought on by mobility and the Internet of Everything, how does Cisco deal with the change of the edge of the network? More devices equal more data which equals more opportunity…right? And what is the next step in putting product and services around that new Internet of Everything edge of the network?
 

 

APIs are cool, but it’s about the platform

Ward replied, “Bringing in the Internet of Things / Internet of Everything – getting access to those sectors there is still a lot of segmentation specialization that needs to happen. What emerges next I believe, from SDN NFV orchestration is the platform for the network. It is Network Infrastructure-as-a-Service (NIaaS). It is connecting all of these sensors and end points. Where lets not just talk about devices as data points, lets talk about human beings and notion of identity. We don’t want to be known as individual people being associated with different devices, we want to be able to have that common cross. So the perimeter now also becomes the identity of the user. Things start getting really interesting at that point.”

 
That all sounds well and great, but securing that Internet of Things is going to be a huge issue. Ward and the panel agreed that security would be a major point of inflection. To reiterate a point he made previously, Ward is hanging his hat on Network Infrastructure-as-a-Service (NIaaS) as the solution, saying, “We’re driving towards a platform to be able to understand the data that’s being produced, the state of the device of itself or what its monitoring and then producing it into information so somebody can make a response.”

Orchestration and automation are two key areas for Cisco. When asked by Furrier to project out the products that are the “meat on the bone with Cisco from a product perspective,” Ward highlighted two:

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• Cloudbased DVR system
• Virtualized network functions / programmatic interfaces to the network

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And what about the enterprise?  Ward says to focus on linking people to the activities they want to do. Take a notion of the workload and the policy associated with it (security, load balancing, etc.) in the Enterprise and examine how the user is attached to it.
 

Ward continued, “Not just wire up my workload in the way I want it where I want it, but also have it meet the quality of experience I need and link me to it based on my identity and the attributes associated to me.”

 
Quality of experience cannot be lost in the Internet of Everything or anything software-defined.

Cisco seems very adamant about building its existing developer community, too. To quote Ward, “Never leave your community behind.” Today’s developer wants the tools, and then wants you to ‘get out of the way’. So Cisco is rebuilding its community to have a DevOps model. “We had to fundamentally change our strategy to using open source as an industry defacto standard,” said Ward. It is currently in Beta but will launch to the public soon. Developers are the new IT professionals.
 

Moving up the stack to the Lunar landing

 
Network Infrastructure-as-a-Service and working up the stack means getting into those other stacks that Cisco currently isn’t in. Ward describes NIaaS as being automated, fast, agile, and easy to use, working its way into all of those other stacks. It would be no small feat either.
 

Getting networking information and being able to modify the desired quality of experience security and other attributes from a SaaS layer, from the application running a business layer. That’s landing on the moon in the history of the Internet,” said Ward with a smile.

 
A milestone to be sure, but that “Lunar landing” isn’t going to get rid of privacy demands. There is still going to be private data centers. The public cloud tends to be volume-load based. The private cloud is relational-based.

Interestingly enough, Ward believes a provider cloud is going to emerge. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. “A number of clouds are going to emerge, not everything is going to the mega data center,” said Ward. Cycle completion time gives opportunity for all clouds: public, private, and provider.

Big Data and Big Data analytics will be defined by turnkey solutions that can offer guaranteed capacity products. Locally –> where do I aggregate, how far do I aggregate? Open source and Big Data solutions are still really early. None of these ‘pieces’ are complete yet.

• Future expectations

 
What has Ward excited? The pace of change is faster than a speeding bullet, and the opportunities are outstanding while markets have changed. Ward ended with, “This is the revolution around Ops, targeted at the IT professional, targeted at service delivery.” The most recent time 6-10 billion devices were introduced to the world comprised an era called “The Mobile Infinity.” In the next few years another 10 billion devices will be added, and the revolution in Ops will be upon us, according to Ward.

Healthcare and financial are the first industries that will be most affected by the connected consumer. “What’s interesting specific to healthcare is that a lot of those devices are not attached,” said Ward. We’re creating an automated and sensor-based Internet of Everything.

The Internet of Things is changing the web as we know it. Ward and Cisco believe that we’re entering a revolution around Ops. Networking architecture is a platform built on a few pillars: software-defined networking, network function virtualization, cloud, mobile, and Big Data. Software-defined products and services will make up the next wave of technological innovation. Software is driving the ‘Internet’ car down the information highway, and consumers are in the passenger seat. Buckle up.