I was recently told by the IT director of a large chemical company that "with 20,000 users, 200 sites and +4G$ of revenues, why do I need a dedicated network? The Internet is already my backbone!" One of the arguments he used was that some of his most important applications, like SAP and emails were actually accessible through Internet in order to make them available for home and nomad workers.
His company actually moved forward with this idea and now all sites are connected with Internet VPNs and MPLS is used as a back-up for 30% of the premises where a poor SAP performance or availability will not be acceptable, for business as well as for psychological reasons (this approach might have been perceived as too much disruptive by some people in the company). The application traffic is managed according to hybrid network unification principles, ensuring the best of both worlds: cheap and ubiquitous Internet and business grade, predictable MPLS.
Although such a radical opinion is not yet common and MPLS having yet a lot of arguments to defend, we can see this move participate to the growing stream of hybrid IT that includes SaaS and other cloud computing approaches and which puts Internet in a very central position.
I trust that it will help us, enterprise network stakeholders - telcos, vendors and IT departments - to mature our thinking and clarify benefits, risk and overall value of enterprise networking for the business. If we all work well, alternative service architectures will rise, innovative products will grow and added-value services will flourish. If we don't, they will anyway…
Feel jilted? May be good news if lyrics are true: "…. I'm finally free - To try new ambitions - And learn new friends names …"
Illustration: "L'homme qui marche" – Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)
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