Network integrators get Sydney masterclass in SDN

More than a dozen partners attended Avnet's recent NetworkPath workshop in Sydney, focused on opportunities with HP's software-defined networking (SDN) technology.

The distributor's enablement program, aimed at "high-growth HP partners", focused on the vendor's open standards-based SDN solutions. It was part of the Avnet SolutionsPath program.

One attendee, Neil Ramsay, technical manager of Sydney-based Ktec Solutions, told CRN he was already talking to customers about using SDN technology to do more with less.

"A software-defined network is a method of offering one pane of glass to manage and configure your networks," said Ramsay.

"If a customer has moved the team that does the graphic design from floor two to floor six, the network guy has to put in extra capacity. [With SDN], instead of having to go to eight different switches and the core switch, he draws a line on a screen and the software goes out and does the provisioning. It is automated, where before you had to manually go and touch each switch manually, which could take up to four hours. Now it takes three minutes," said Ramsay.

He said customers are under pressure not to increase the size of their IT teams, so even if the time required to provision network resources "dropped from four hours to half an hour, you can do more with your existing people without putting on more staff".

"You can keep 10 staff and manage twice or three times the size of establishments without increasing your overhead," said Ramsay.

He expected SDN would progressively grow based on refresh cycles. "At the moment, the barrier is cost. You have to fully move out all your equipment and reprovision.

"But that will happen. At customers, there are five-year cycles for provisioning and they will eventually move it out and replace with new stuff that is standards-compliant."

Ramsay was particularly impressed with the workshop, saying it avoided "fluff and magic mirrors".

"The slides we got in 15 minutes covered the nitty gritty, without the magic mirrors."

He also said: “[I have] been in the industry since 1977 and this was the best event thus far." 

At the workshop, Avnet northern region sales manager Winston Wong demonstrated resources, such as dedicated business development managers and HP solution architects skilled in SDN.

Darren Adams, vice president and general manager for Avnet Technology Solutions, ANZ, said: "We are highly focused on training partners’ salespeople to increase their selling skills, enabling them to compete in new growth markets with minimal investment to their own business."

HP claims to have 30 million Open-Flow ports in its customer base, and that "the HP VAN SDN Controller is one the most downloaded SDN controllers in the market".

Another attendee, Brad Farrant, national sales manager of Perth-based Vizstone, also anticipated. He expected it to be a few years before SDN hits the mainstream. "It should be on everyone's strategy, [but] I don't think the momentum is there yet."

He added that it would remain just one tool to improve network efficiency.

"There are other ways to skin a cat and I don't think the play is to just introduce SDN, unless there is a business case around it. There are other technologies out there and other ways to increase productivity using existing infrastructure," he added, pointing at WAN acceleration as one example.