Harley Stowell

Recession Induced Network Innovation on Its Way

Greg,

I am the CEO and founder of an early stage company in Massachusetts, LineSider Technologies and I have been following your articles and analysis regarding the direction of the IP networking with deep interest.

We have been working on tackling the cost, complexity and static constraints of IP networks through the development of virtualization software for infrastructure technologies and services. The Infobox diagram “Core Players and Requirements” I agree is a key representation of areas where technology innovation is required to deliver the promise of flexible/automated IP networks as you describe in 2.0.

As you point out, the primary technology domains that need to be managed are network, application and endpoint (which I am assuming includes network users and groups managed in AD or Radius for example). In all the domains IP address criteria are among the critical identifiers for network connectivity, routing, switching security service and There-for configuration. As you also point out managing IP address schematics is significant cost center, configuration is still manual and labor intensive driving high network TCO.

The approach we have taken is to innovate and build a policy engine that has knowledge of network systems and services running on them (routing, switching, VPN, FW, QoS, etc) , network users through LDAP and applications via VM software integration. This system allows business requirements defined at an end user level (the business) to dynamically automate configurations and adapt infrastructure automatically based on changes defined at a user and application level.

Traditional methodologies for network management are labor intensive and forces a management architecture executed from the device up to application and endpoint user level, (as you point out in the cost analysis for address management). By taking the approach of automating infrastructure from Business Policies infrastructure services are automated in response to a single policy request which remains durable in the network system. This approach not only virtualizes infrastructure but automates it delivering significant TCO reductions. Accordingly the operational cost structure of delivering cloud services becomes manageable for providers and enterprises alike.

Clearly network environments require a complex ecosystem of systems to provide quality, secure and highly available services. Most of the systems require integration to support dynamic changes and traditional management / monitoring functions. This is an arena as you also point out, where standards are critical.

I would propose that the intelligence required to move toward the dynamic, lower cost infrastructure necessary to support 2.0 and applications of “2.0″ such as Cloud Computing resides in part in the area of infrastructure virtualization.

The good news is there are small companies like ours working hard on the problem along with the leaders like Google, Cisco, F5, Microsoft, EMC and IBM etc. I could not agree more that the area of innovation and productivity gain you are focusing on here represents an extraordinary new market segment in IP networking.

Harley Stowell