Classical networking approaches are no more consistent with cloud computing (see for example "the slowly evolving WAN" by Jim Metzler and Steve Taylor). The lack of innovation during the last 10 years laggards the network: static, blind, unable to control application flows and to guarantee the availability of good application performance to end users. Designed with other purposes in mind nearly 20 years ago, no wonder old-fashioned MPLS cannot match the new situation.
With cloud computing, situations are complex and change too fast for legacy and static policy based management. A cloud-ready network must learn, decide and adapt dynamically to match the increasingly dynamic users' traffic. It must take into account all the business applications (private and public cloud based, peer-to-peer voice and video) as well as the recreational ones.
A cloud-ready network must leverage Internet ubiquity and cost effectiveness and combine it with more guaranteed and value priced MPLS networks. It must also embrace mobility and new access devices (tablets, smart-phones).
One can set-up servers in an unknown datacenter from a web interface in a few minutes; why should he wait weeks and months for the network to adapt to the new situation? A cloud-ready network must couple cloud datacenter with network behavior in a flexible orchestration manner.
Enterprise's silos are vanishing. With cloud computing BUs go beyond the corporate IT organization: repressive policies don't make the job anymore. Yet IT managers need to keep a reasonable control of the situation: know what's happening, decide about strategic topics, apply the decisions and check results, manage costs. A cloud-ready network must provide CIOs with global control in a simple manner.
Far from complex, rigid and inefficient policy-based schemes, a cloud-ready network must be Objective-based. Intelligent and fast, it should learn and adapt by itself in real time, serving high level enterprise's goals. Autonomic networking has already proved its ability to solve this tricky problem in many situations.
Application visibility, QoS, control of each user's flow, hybrid networks, mobility, WAN Optimization, application acceleration…: cloud-ready networks must embrace and tightly couple all these features in an all-in-one approach.
A WAN governance model, allowing CIOs to take the right decisions at corporate level rather than to react under the pressure of daily events would be a key characteristic of cloud-ready networks.
The IT revolution has started with cloud computing: it's time for the network to wake up and meet the challenge!