How Smart Networks are Changing Corporate Networks

Transforming your business for the digital world. Digital customer. Driving deeper and richer interactions with the end customer. Digital business. Increasing business agility and innovation through the move to cloud and IoT. Digital employee. Helping employees interact and collaborate across technologies in a seamless way.

We are entering an era of digital transformation. In five years there could be more than 50 billion connected devices in the world, dramatically changing the way we live and do business. Every enterprise is working out their unique approach of adapting in this digital era and using technology in new and creative ways to transform their business. Last year in our ‘BT CIO report 2016: the digital CIO’ we interviewed more than a thousand CIOs and IT decision makers in 11 countries around the world to understand what this opportunity means for them. CIOs told us they are challenged by: New strategies and business models for increased connectivity and customer engagement (43%) Implementing a digital strategy organization wide (39%). The most disruptive technology that the CIOs cited was Cloud (58%) with the needs and expectations of the network changing: 19% of organizations have moved all apps and infrastructure to the cloud with a further 46% having moved over half of their apps and infrastructure. The technological advances in networks such as NFV, SDN and SD-WAN may seem complex but offer simplicity. Interesting statistics to note from the IDC Infobrief Sept 2016 include: will adopt SD-WAN in the next 18 months (in some form). 70% The key WAN challenges are security, delivering SaaS, and managing connectivity. In the next 12-18 months there will be an accelerated shift towards hybrid WAN. Source: IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by BT, SD-WAN Infobrief, September 2016

The drivers for connectivity in this digital era… Corporate strategies are being rewritten to benefit from digital technologies. Digital services require more economical bandwidth growth. The need for visibility into digital traffic. The move to the cloud. The need for overall network cost reduction. Dynamic services: rapid ability to deploy, turn up, expand, contract, and turn down services. Greater security – protecting digital assets and services.

Network Functions Virtualization. Software Defined Networks. What is NFV/SDN/SD-WAN. Understanding the jargon. SD- WAN NFV SDN Network Functions Virtualization. Replacing dedicated network appliances— such as routers and firewalls—with software running as a cloud service. Software Defined Networks. The network administrator can centrally control where traffic is sent rather than the application or network appliance. Software Defined WAN. This is a network which uses SDN to determine the most effective route for traffic to take.

A possible dynamic network service design. Agile Connect – SD WAN MPLS Key: Consumer grade internet 50 Cloud service nodes Business grade internet Branch/office. X86 Agile connect at all branch sites. 3rd Party cloud provider. X86 X86 Flex edge Port speed via portal.* *Where 3rd party cloud providers allow changes to port speed via APIs. Internet. Internet gateway and firewall. BT Apps Store. Applications management e.g Riverbed, InfoVista, IWAN. Security products. Wi Fi controllers. Voice session border controllers. Agile Connect. Deployed onto X86 or Cloud Service Nodes. Headquarters. IP Connect. X86 X86 X86 Business critical sites. Optional Agile Connect at all business critical sites.

Hybrid WAN - you need the right design. Hybrid Networks – it’s a question of balance. Our customers are looking to bring together the benefits of performance, security, scale and cost savings within the network. Performance and agility. The right mix of latency, bandwidth, quality of service and class of service for the data traffic and applications. The ability to secure the network boundaries when connecting to third parties and cloud providers. Security. Can I ensure my network extends and performs consistently across all my sites no matter where located in the world. Scale. I need the most economic solution to meet my needs, not over engineered, but appropriate to the application and site criticality. Cost optimum.

Our dynamic network services investment. Dynamic network services sit at the heart of our Cloud of Clouds strategy, they leverage our existing suite of global network services, whilst providing new secure and agile services for our customers these include virtualised acceleration, optimisation and security. Programmable network: API and OSS management layer. Capability development. SDN Controlled VPNs. Connect Intelligence IWAN enhancements. Launch Agile Connect to extend reach. Cloud Service Nodes. Grow our cloud services nodes to 50 key global locations. Services on demand. Bandwidth on demand. Virtual Services on demand available via Apps from BT. Agile CPE. Agile CPE delivered with Virtual CPE, our proposition for agile deployment using x86 servers. Options. Provide ‘utility based’ service payment options. Try before you buy option. Services on demand. Cloud Service Nodes (NFV-enabled). SDN-controlled VPNs. SDN-controlled VPNs. Cloud Service Nodes (NFV-enabled). Services on demand. Agile CPE and client-site NFV. Agile CPE and client-site NFV.

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