SDN: Defining a Strategic, Business-Focussed Architecture

For some years now, the network operator industry has been going through an evolutionary period of major technology developments with the creation of Cloud technologies, Software-defined Networking (SDN), Network Functions Visualisation (NFV), Big Data and Next Generation Operations Support Systems (Next Generation OSS). These key innovative technologies target at reducing complexity and controlling service delivery for the network operator, and aim to bringing greater flexibility, agility and simplicity into the network operator environments. The primary focus of these technology developments is to solve the business problems that are constraining the network operators, and to open up new revenue opportunities. Although they are not as silo-based as historic solutions, they still have the need to be architecturally integrated to create a flow through automated business-focused architecture. As network operators achieve revenue by enabling their services over a network infrastructure, the activation, control and management of the service and infrastructure is primary to the business model they operate. SDN sits between the higher-level applications/technologies and the network elements. SDN takes the generalised business logic and abstracts it into the network elements with the purpose of initialising the service on the network infrastructure. In addition, it enables the APIs from the network elements to communicate greater analytics, therefore ensuring that the higher-level applications can drive enhanced service management and control for the benefit of the customer. This is done with the aim of creating greater efficiencies in the operating model of the network operator. With SDN being the enabler technology between the network infrastructure and the higher-level service and business logic applications, SDN can therefore be identified as being the technology which unifies these other innovative technologies for the driving forward of the network operators’ business goals. Many in the industry already believe that SDN is the future of networking. The author believes that SDN can achieve much more. This is based upon work done over the last nine years that has been targeted at creating a new architectural business approach. The purpose of this book is to share information on how SDN can be used to bring together the multiple new technology developments and to suggest how a new architectural approach can be defined. Change always impacts the entire organisation; it requires investment and creates work. This book describes a strategic end-to-end approach that allows network operators to kick off their evaluation of SDN by investigating available solutions that address key problem areas within their organisation. This way, companies when they have identified the real business drivers to change, can start implementing at a small scale and evolve the technology into their environments. Through this approach lessons can be learnt, and the companies can develop their business-focused technology strategy over time, through experience. This allows for the strategic approach to be communicated throughout the organisation and for the value to be seen by the people within the organisation, therefore minimising disruption and impact to on-going day-to-day business. This book is not definitive - but has been written to highlight how the evolving technologies can be brought together under a unified and flexible architectural approach. As few companies operate the same business model or have the same targets and goals, the SDN Strategic Architecture aims to enable architects, solutions designers, developers, operations staff, product teams and engineers to identify how they can create a flexible architecture which is specific to the targets and goals of their individual company’s business plan.

近年來，網路運營商行業一直處於一個重大技術發展的演進時期，其中包括雲端技術、軟體定義網路（SDN）、網路功能虛擬化（NFV）、大數據和下一代運營支援系統（Next Generation OSS）。這些關鍵的創新技術旨在減少複雜性，控制網路運營商的服務交付，並為網路運營商環境帶來更大的靈活性、敏捷性和簡單性。這些技術發展的主要重點是解決限制網路運營商的業務問題，並開拓新的收入機會。雖然它們不像過去的解決方案那樣孤立，但仍需要在架構上進行整合，以創建一個自動化的以業務為中心的架構流程。由於網路運營商通過在網路基礎設施上提供服務來獲得收入，因此服務和基礎設施的啟動、控制和管理對於他們的業務模式至關重要。SDN位於高層應用/技術和網路元素之間。SDN將通用的業務邏輯抽象成網路元素，目的是在網路基礎設施上初始化服務。此外，它還使網路元素的API能夠傳遞更多的分析信息，從而確保高層應用能夠為客戶提供增強的服務管理和控制。這樣做的目的是在網路運營商的運營模型中創造更大的效率。由於SDN是網路基礎設施和高層服務和業務邏輯應用之間的啟用技術，因此可以將SDN識別為統一這些其他創新技術以推動網路運營商業務目標的技術。許多業內人士已經相信SDN是網路的未來。作者認為SDN可以實現更多。這是基於過去九年的工作，旨在創建一種新的架構業務方法。本書的目的是分享有關如何使用SDN將多個新技術發展結合起來，並提出如何定義一種新的架構方法的信息。變革總是影響整個組織；它需要投資並創造工作。本書描述了一種策略性的端到端方法，允許網路運營商通過調查解決其組織內的關鍵問題領域的可用解決方案來啟動對SDN的評估。這樣，當公司確定了真正的業務驅動因素時，可以從小規模開始實施並將技術演進到其環境中。通過這種方法，可以學到教訓，公司可以通過經驗發展其以業務為重點的技術戰略。這允許策略性方法在整個組織中傳達，並且價值可以被組織內的人看到，從而最大程度地減少對日常業務的干擾和影響。本書並非定論，但旨在突出展示如何在統一且靈活的架構方法下將不斷演進的技術結合起來。由於很少有公司運營相同的業務模式或擁有相同的目標和目標，SDN戰略架構旨在使架構師、解決方案設計師、開發人員、運營人員、產品團隊和工程師能夠確定如何創建一個特定於其個別公司業務計劃目標和目標的靈活架構。