Cisco unviled “Cisco One” its position on software defined networking (SDN) at Gitex 2012 late this month. Cisco's positioning and strategy involves making the network more programmable and virtualized, which requires more than SDN technology. The company's strategy has three parts: SDN, network virtualization, and programmability via application programming interfaces (API's) which are the specifications intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other. Cisco believes that despite the current noise in the market, the adoption of SDN technologies, including OpenFlow, is still small because the technology is still in its infancy. Furthermore, SDN and OpenFlow technologies do not cover all switching functionality – only a small portion of the switch or router's overall functionality. Cisco has been actively participating in OpenFlow and SDN's development, collaborating in the leading industry groups and it will continue to support industry efforts to develop SDN technologies and related standards. Cisco One will deliver an open, programmable environment that will continue to deliver on the concept of the network-as-a-platform. In other words, making networks more application-aware, applications more network-aware, and networks more conducive to developers and application hosting. This will not be an “either/or” approach but will leverage the power of AND. This will provide the flexibility and the most tools in the tool kit. Through this approach, Cisco will aim to deliver consistency of operational experience between: physical and virtual, network and compute, intelligent ASICs and software. Cisco's continued participation at the IETF, ITU-T, ONF and other standards bodies and forums will drive standards activity. “As the market is still embryonic, we continue to share and learn from our customers and peers. Because Cisco has the largest networking customer base in the world, it is well-positioned to lead and drive this market,” it said. Cisco embraced the market transition around server virtualization, delivering innovations to customers like Cisco UCS and a broad portfolio of virtual networking technologies. They see network virtualization delivering similar benefits to IT organizations and offering similar opportunities for Cisco, because SDN and programmable networking will make it easier for customers to access the sophisticated capabilities of their Cisco infrastructure and help them to tackle emerging challenges like building large-scale public/private clouds. As part of its programmable networking strategy, Cisco will continue providing evolutionary support for numerous networking protocols, including OpenFlow, which the company sees as incremental functionality that can be layered onto existing infrastructure to provide specific networking functions. Cisco will continue talking to customers to learn their needs and plans to support industry efforts to develop SDN technologies, programmable networks, and related standards. As part of its programmable networking strategy, Cisco will continue providing evolutionary support for numerous networking protocols, including OpenFlow. Rabih Dabboussi, general manager, Cisco, UAE, said: “Even in the Middle East we are finding that definitions of SDN are still very fragmented and vendor interpretations are also equally different. The general consensus is that SDN is bigger than OpenFlow, but it is still largely perceived as a controller and agent's architecture with de-coupling of control and data plane. A lot more can be achieved quickly with programmatic access as many customers just want quicker, multi-layer programmable access. Diverse customers have different motivations when it comes to SDN based on urgency of business drivers, in-house IT expertise, and requirement to customize applications. No one size fits all.” Den Sullivan, head of Architectures & Enterprise, Emerging Markets, said: “SDN is not a battle between hardware and software. We believe customers will derive the greatest value from tightly integrating emerging software approaches with the underlying physical infrastructure. Cisco continues to be in the best position to do so. Ultimately, Cisco sees SDN as incremental capability that can be layered onto existing infrastructure to deliver specific functionality. “As Cisco introduces programmable SDN interfaces (APIs) across its portfolio of networking products, we expect our SDN interfaces to become industry standards because of our networking traction.” Cisco is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. — SG
