Turning to an agile network

The pace of business is now faster than ever, and businesses must do more to stay ahead of the competition. As businesses face mounting pressure from competitors, they need to move quicker and seek to do more with less through the use of technology.

An indispensable anchor of IT would undoubtedly be the network, which serves as the vital connecting tissue between different pools of storage and computing. A well-implemented network can go a long way towards ensuring that internal processes and customer-facing systems function seamlessly; conversely, a poor network can culminate in frequent system outages or unexplained slowdowns.

Yet reliability and performance are but one aspect of networking. Today’s fluid business reality means that agility is important. Specifically, organisations need a networking solution that lets them react rapidly to changing business realities, such as the ability to quickly scale performance during expansion phases, or to reduce it during lull periods.

Thankfully, software-defined networking (SDN) now makes it possible to rapidly provision and tweak network parameters by configuring it through an easy-to-use interface¹. Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) takes this further by allowing businesses to move away from networking hardware to tap into a host of network-centric capabilities delivered using a virtualised environment. With the ability for remote deployments and control, businesses gain from increased speed to market even as they benefit from lower manpower overheads.

Indeed, data from research firm IDC indicates that an increasingly mobile workforce, business expansion, and economic growth are driving businesses towards new network technologies such as SDN². A majority of companies (64%) across 14 markets say they are at some stage of deploying NFV, with 30% of them predicted to leverage virtual customer-premises equipment and NFV-based applications by 2019.

Through NFV, organisations can tap into software-centric capabilities offered by service providers to access advanced networking capabilities without having to purchase, deploy and manage cumbersome appliances. And while NFV can be leveraged to simplify the network, the technology is also ideal for enabling new security capabilities to increase the organisation’s security capabilities.

For example, virtual firewall capabilities can be implemented with stateful packet inspection. IPsec can be enabled for secure site-to-site communication with other branch offices, while real-time network visibility gives network administrators valuable insights into what goes on within the network.

Organisations that require higher levels of security can also tap into virtual Unified Threat Management (UTM) capabilities for advanced capabilities such as intrusion detection system (IDS) and intrusion prevention system (IPS). Advanced Layer 7 capability means inline antivirus scanning can be performed on the application layer to protect users who are browsing the Internet or downloading emails.

Moreover, URL filtering makes it easier for IT to govern applications that employees can access. For instance, Facebook may be banned due to company policy, but marketing may require it as a component of their job function. While governance at this level has traditionally been difficult, URL filtering can offer manageable and available application-level control for individual business units.

Of course, the greatest appeal of NFV would probably be the ability for businesses to configure and enable the above-mentioned capabilities through a centralised online portal. This offers a simplified way for companies to take full control of their security with the ability to enable new security services as their organisation grows.

Finally, a common challenge of managing multiple network deployments is the difficulty in understanding the traffic characteristics of each branch office location. This is crucial as most networking issues do not happen overnight but develop over an extended period. Keeping a close eye on the network may hence allow administrators to identify impending problems and pre-emptively resolve them.

On this front, a good NFV solution can offer the necessary bandwidth and traffic usage reports for a detailed understanding of the network, such as the applications running on it and average utilization. These are presented as analytics information that is accessible in real-time. Importantly, the security status of the network is also available at a glance, containing details of attempted network intrusions and other network-borne threats.

And even if nothing were to go wrong, access to relevant network insights can allow businesses to make smarter decisions with regards to future deployments or efforts to increase the efficiency of existing systems. Ultimately, the right NFV solution can help organisations simplify their networks and maintain their business momentum to focus their limited time and resources on things that matter to the bottom-line.

Singtel NFV is an award-winning³ solution that enables the above-mentioned NFV capabilities via an all-in-one Universal Customer Premise Equipment (uCPE) deployed at each office location. Customers that prefer a hardware-free solution can also consider our NFV Virtual CPE (vCPE) offering.

To learn more about how NFV can help businesses save cost and simplify IT management, click here.