Software-Defined Networking frees network administrators from constant tinkering with individual boxes. It allows admins to view and program the network from a central software consul. This new agility could elevate the network and its admins to a higher business and operational function, according to Joshua Dobies (pictured, left), vice president of product marketing at Riverbed Technology Inc.

Dobies joined Vivek Ganti (pictured, right), technical marketing leader at Riverbed, for a live demonstration of Riverbed’s SteelConnect Software-Defined Wide Area Network) with cloud connectivity at SiliconANGLE Media’s Palo Alto studio in California.

“The power of this is what you’re not doing,” Dobies told John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

What are some of the things admins are not doing with SD-WAN? Provisioning appliances and working out kinks in IP addresses and subnetworks are a few that Dobies named. Subtracting these tasks has a couple of important implications. For one, it saves loads of time; second, it allows admins to focus on setting policies for finer aspects of the network, he added.

Networking by design

SD-WAN makes an entire organization’s network visible and programmable through a central console. Dobies and Ganti demonstrated the SteelConnect SD-WAN console by first erecting a new networking site for an imaginary retail company in just a few minutes.

“There’s a lot of automation and orchestration happening in the back-end,” Ganti said.

In the past, those automated tasks might have been the responsibility of the admin. SteelConnect creates an uplink port and Virtual Local Area Network. The admin can optionally create additional uplinks and VLANs. The pointer on the map representing the new site is what’s called a “shadow appliance.”

“SteelConnect lets me deploy sites and the entire network from ground up before I deploy the first piece of hardware,” Ganti said. Once the network design is worked out, users can ship appliances to sites. No manual configuration of appliances is needed.

“With the design first, you don’t have to do any staging. And when you deploy, the connectivity’s going to happen for you automatically,” Dobies said. Once the appliance connects to the internet, it automatically contacts core services in the cloud and downloads its configuration.

SteelConnect’s SD-WAN with cloud connectivity features integrate with the Amazon Web Services Inc.’s cloud and Microsoft Corp.’s Azure cloud. The SteelConnect manager accesses the AWS marketplace so that repeated logins to AWS are not necessary. All AWS Virtual Private Clouds across all regions are visible on the SteelConnect console.

Application-defined networking

The ability to make changes to points along a global network with a just few clicks can change network admins’ roles within organizations. It can also give the network itself new utility within an organization. Information technology admins and business people may find that a visible, programmable network can fundamentally alter operations for the better, according to Dobies.

Segmenting and directing lanes of network traffic based on business priority is one such advantage SD-WAN offers. Some companies may offload video to the public internet via Multiprotocol Label Switching. Trusted software as a service business applications might also flow directly to the internet, as well. Riverbed SteelConnect has integrated with cloud-based security provider Zscaler Inc. to protect data sent directly to the internet.

“The ease with which we can deploy these rules across our entire organization or go as granular to a single user is a very powerful concept,” Ganti added.

In the case of individual users, companies can program the network to reduce latency for trusted individuals. “If you have some developers that are working on an app, and they’re using infrastructure as a service as part of their work, they can do that from whichever remote office they’re sitting at,” Dobies explained.

The data those developers send does not need to be back-hauled to the data center before going out to the cloud. “This is application-defined networking in action,” he concluded.

To watch the complete video interview, visit the event page (registration required). (* Disclosure: Riverbed Technology Inc. sponsored this segment on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Riverbed Technology nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE