WAN Governance

Evidence on behalf of unified [VPN + Cloud] networking (2/3): witnesses’ deposition

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The branch office situation may be considered from two main viewpoints: the network and the applications. Let's start from the latter:

• First of all, applications are not equal for the business. Some of them must absolutely work perfectly well, in any circumstances: this is generally the case of the business transactional applications (ERP…) and applications related to customers relationship. Some others may just be "good enough": while the delivery of an email with a delay of a few seconds will likely not rise problems, a customer waiting too long at the department store cashier desk or when organizing his next holidays trip at the travel agency, will not only impact the enterprise efficiency but also the customer satisfaction.
• Then, enterprise's network is falling prey of cannibals: studies (e.g. OVUM) show that in many cases +50% of the traffic is of recreational nature (Facebook, YouTube…) while only 15% are dedicated to business critical applications (we found 9% in our own study). I believe this trend will confirm with the ever increasing richness of contents (digital photos came from 2, then 5 and now 15 Mpixels) and the arrival of the famous Y generation in enterprise.

From the network point of view, let's just do the two following considerations:

• The connection(s) between branch offices and the [VPN + Cloud] network(s) is shared between all users and all applications, whether recreational or business oriented, either hosted in the enterprise datacenter or in the (private or public) Cloud. This common resource must then be properly controlled and allocated.
• Multi-homed branches (e.g. one access to an MPLS private network and another one to the Internet, or two accesses to the Internet) may benefit from a very efficient and particularly robust configuration (network load-sharing). In this case, VPN-hosted as well as Cloud-hosted application servers can be reached from each access, with an intelligent per-flow selection of the access ensuring the best performance and availability for the service, anytime.

To complete the description, we can add the highly dynamic nature of the traffic that varies with the very immediate users' activity. Traffic may be estimated 'on average' (e.g. at peak time) but cannot be predicted in real time: while traffic jam can be predicted according to time in the day, it is still impossible to forecast whether a car will suddenly appear right-hand at the near crossroad in the next few seconds. It is then necessary to ally medium-term planning with real-time driving.

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Evidence on behalf of unified [VPN + Cloud] networking (1/3): setting the scene

As Cloud computing and Anything-as-a-Service (AaaS) are clearly on the rise, I would like to defend the need of a unified [VPN + Cloud] networking approach for enterprises. Let me first express a few initial considerations:

1. The « Cloud » is not really new: for the last 20 years, enterprises have connected their central application servers to remote terminals through private (virtual) networks (leased line, Frame relay and now MPLS…).
2. VPNs are not close to disappear: they host the enterprises' specialized business applications and protect their confidential data. They more and more interconnect employees through interactive applications like wiki, forum, voice, tele-presence and enterprise video. Unless enterprises want to send their staff in the sky (which will likely create some justified emotion) all these flows will remain on the VPN.
3. "Cloud computing" as well as "AaaS" are certainly major IT evolutions with true benefits and long term existence. It follows in the Datacenter consolidation's wake that started a few years ago, completed by the power of server virtualization: Cloud computing, it is something like "virtual datacenter consolidation".

When the enterprise decides to deploy application in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) mode, or to deploy Virtual Datacenters to host its business applications, it has to handle 2 clouds: the plain old private cloud (VPN) and the new 'virtually private cloud'.

As applications concentrate on a few central locations, these clouds (or more precisely communications across them) are more and more crucial to users who do not care about technical considerations. For them, it is straightforward: there is 1 Information System and 1 Network. As the vast majority of collaborators are using the Information System remotely, they need the guarantee of good application performance over the network(s), anywhere, anytime.

Finally it has to be noticed that the cost of WAN is now very low compared to the cost of applications: the price for a VPN access to a small branch office with 10 users of 10 applications is similar to the license price for 1 application and 1 user (e.g. Salesforce or GoogleApps): not really worthy to take a risk here! When buying a family car, even if we decide for a low price model, who would build savings on the quality of the safety belts?

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(PS: I'm not sure if you like clouds, but you should like this mist…)

 

J.S. Bach’s cancrizan canons and interwoven governance

Beyond being a sensitive and prolific musician, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was an exceptional engineer. Some of his engineering masterpieces are the "crab canons" or "canon cancrizans", part of the enigmatic "Musical Offering" he wrote in 1746 for Frederick the Great.

A crab canon is the musical equivalent of a palindrome (no melon, no lemon): a single score is played in the normal forward direction and simultaneously in the backward way, giving the appearance of two voices that are supposed to harmoniously combine together. More complex configurations are also possible, for example combining retrogression with inversion, and so on.

Like Bach's canons, complex organizations and processes are shaped by bidirectional forces: Top-Down and Bottom-Up, and the fact is that WAN Governance makes no exception to the rule. On the one hand, a clear Top-Down approach is mandatory to obtain IT alignment to the global enterprise business and organization: goals and expectations are to be clearly specified, although not in all tiny details:

• What are the business critical applications?
• What are the financial priorities (Opex vs Capex, maximize or optimize …)?
• What are the company knowledge and human resources management policy?
• What are the stakeholders and corresponding WAN governance steering rules?
• …

On the other hand (should we say on the other way?), Bottom-Up behavior guarantees a realistic approach sticking to the field: operation teams can think, propose and decide within their competency scope - they are the experts, after all:

• What are the most appropriate tools to support the WAN Governance processes?
• What are the day-to-day tasks to be achieved, and how?
• What are the best manners to interact with other organizations (IT and application specialists, technology vendors, Telcos, Hosting companies…)?
• What are the options that must be considered to support significant changes in application delivery?
• …

A perfect combination of both approaches, where Top-Down and Bottom-Up are perfectly interwoven without useless overlap will provide an efficient, smooth and motivating WAN Governance activity, just like the two Bach's voices perfectly combined in a single canon build a musical universe that flies us to Heavens.

Illustration: Young Johann Sebastian Bach. 1715 – by J. E. Rentsch, the Elder.

Would you be curious about the link between Bach's cancrizans and Moebius strip, just take three minutes looking at this (also available on http://strangepaths.com/canon-1-a-2/2009/01/18/en/):