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Recently, Allyson Klein, Intel Chip Chat host, recorded the podcast with Kiran Sirupa, Director of Marketing at Anuta Networks, who examines how their software solution for network service orchestration allows enterprises to develop new services rapidly. He explains Anuta’s role in the transition to virtualized infrastructure and the progress in the industry.
2017 is an exciting year as customers are demanding new types of capabilities with ROI to the business. Kiran says virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE) and software defined WAN (SD-WAN) will be a focus and the role of automation and orchestration are critical. This year is also about performance improvement through service assurance and scalability.
To achieve these industry changes, ecosystem collaboration is necessary. Anuta is actively engaging as a member of the Intel Network Builders program and already supports 35 industry leading vendors in their platform.
Check out the podcast in the links below:
Play in new window | Download (8.55MB)
Also, following is the full transcript of the Intel® Chip Chat: Network Insights episode 96
Welcome to chip chat, networking sites, conversations exploring network transformation from interviews with industry experts.
Allyson: Welcome to chip chat networking insights, my name is Allyson Cline. Today I’m joined by Kiran Sirupa, director of marketing at Anuta networks. Welcome Kiran.
Kiran: Hi Allyson
Allyson: So Kiran, why don’t we just start with an introduction of Anuta network. I know that others from the company have been on the program before. But for those new listeners it’s always good to start with an introduction.
Kiran: At Anuta networks, we have been partners with intel network builders program. Anuta networks delivers a software solution that offers network service orchestration for multi-vendor physical and virtual infrastructure. If you look at the current market, you have large service providers as well as many enterprises. They are going through a transition. There is a tremendous pressure on enterprise IT to accelerate network services. Many new generation of employees require instant services from their infrastructure. So what this means is that the IT teams have to continuously innovate and introduce a new services all the while keeping up to the budgets that are shrinking as well. So this is where Anuta comes in, we deliver a network orchestration layer that sits on top of the currently existing infrastructure and it provides a programmable interface so that they can develop rapid services. The overall solution cuts down time to market as well as the operating expenses to manage the infrastructure.
Allyson: Where do you think the industry is in terms of that transition to virtualize networks. And where does Anuta fit in in terms of pushing this forward?
Kiran: We have seen the new products that have come into the market. The protocols and the standards are all maturing. But we still have to see the business case played out so that it will be obvious for the IT teams to adopt network virtualization. So I think that we are in the first one-third of this transformation. But we are all on the right track. All the industry players are contributing, and to help us in the transition, the public cloud providers, they are offering lot of
value in terms of automation and rapid expansion, so there is definitely motivation on the business to take up the network virtualization trend that’s going on.
Allyson: Can you tell me what’s the response has been thus far to the solutions you are delivering, and where do you think customers are demanding new types of capabilities in 2017?
Kiran: In 2016, we validated the technology. There were many service providers that had done pilots and proof of concepts. They now have a good understanding of the architecture. And now, they looking at in how do we roll out this in incremental phases. They are identifying the high value use cases, so they can show ROI to their business units. And that’s how we will see 2017 playing out. In particular, I see that Virtual CPE and software define WAN gaining lot of momentum. And there is a very good reason for that. The software defined WAN and virtual CPE, offer many benefits to the remote branch environment. Obviously they have not refreshed their equipment for a very long, long time. So their equipment is due for a refresh. And in addition, because of all the factors I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of demand on the network, especially their remote branches to introduce higher band width for these remote offices. So customers and enterprises as well as service providers, they are looking at adding additional bandwidth to the remote branch offices and SD-WAN and virtual CPE offers an excellent value proposition where you can use inexpensive broadband internet to augment the MPLS circuits. And 5G provides another exciting prospect where you will be able to load balance across MPLS broadband internet and 5G services as well. So definitely, SD-WAN and virtual CPE are gaining momentum. Again customers meets the transition at from their current legacy infrastructure to a virtualized infrastructure and automation becomes key in this arena as well. So 2017 I’m really excited about the role of orchestration for virtualization for remote branch offices.
Allyson: You talked about the opportunities in 2017, the other thing that I think a lot of folks are thinking about is how can we ratchet up the performance and performance scalability, I mean solutions. How are you addressing that in the solutions you are delivering to the market place?
Kiran: 2017 is going to be first scalability We have seen in the past year that the framework is robust, the interfaces are accurate, and there is real business benefits for the enterprises. What they are now going to do is, how can we scale it and repeat it across multiple segments. So Anuta is seriously considering the scalability challenges. The good news is that we also have many technical innovations that are helping us to scale the platform. So for example, the NCX software itself is using a distributed software architecture. Using that we can easily scale horizontally across thousands of CPE nods. Similarly, within the platform itself we are now transitioning to a micro services based architecture. The micro services architecture cuts down the overall footprint of our software. All the while we will be able to support new functionality and new requirements in a much more agile fashion. So we are taking up the devops methodology that cloud providers have successfully adopted and applying that to network services as well.
Another of the big focus is going to be on service assurance. Because it’s not just about setting up a service. But you also need to make sure that the entire service affiliated SLA is honoured. And we are able to do that using our Yang based model network. So I’m really excited about 2017 when it comes to scalability and service assurance.
Allyson: now obviously this takes a lot of industry collaboration to deliver cemented and solutions to the market place. Can you talk about how Anuta has approached this? And how has the Intel network builders program has been part of that industry collaboration?
Kiran: It takes a village to raise one person. Similarly, this is going to be eco-system plate. No one vendor can deliver end-to-end services and provide the ROI for the customer. All the while you need to support so many varieties of environment. So we have identified this much earlier, that we have to build it as a platform. This platform is going to be independent of any vendors. Right now we are building adapters for multiple vendors. We support as many as 35 different industry leading vendors for network function. We have integrated PNFs and VNFs for these vendors. And this ecosystem intel has also played a significant role for us. We have been part of intel builders for the last 2.5 years, and Intel has given us opportunities to connect with various vendors, whether it’s NFV vendors, NFVI vendors, VIM layers or physical appliances. As well as the OSS integration as well. Intel has also provided the platform to send across our message to lots of channel partners. We have done many webinars and podcasts with intel just like today which also helps with the visibility.
Allyson: When folks are listening to us online and they want to find out more about the solutions you are delivering to the marketplace, opportunities for the proof of concepts or early deployments, where would you send them, and how can they get in touch with you?
Kiran: So the first place obviously would be our website which is anutanetworks.com but you can also check us out on Intel networks builders programme. We have a profile with all the case studies as well as some of the solution base. We also have a YouTube channel. And all of them can be accessed from anutanetworks.com website.
Allyson: Thank you so much for being here today.
Kiran: Thank you Allyson.