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There are three factors that are drawing IT managers’ interest to the Network as a Service phenomenon--enhanced bandwidth, faster traffic and no latency in data transmission, as it represents an entire carrier environment that is available, on-demand, on a pay-as-you-go basis. As such, it has the potential to change everything, like the cloud changed IT forever.
Why is NaaS becoming the IT administrator’s choice?
The vendor who provides NaaS ensures that the model delivers scalable bandwidth and software-enabled intelligence, allowing customers to dynamically provision bandwidth in minutes, based on their business needs. PEN users are able to create a virtualised cross-connected environment. Sunanda Das, Managing Director, Pacnet India, says that customers are leveraging Pacnet’s Pacnet Enabled Network that catapults networking into the cloud-computing age along with the region’s most extensive coverage of data centres and subsea cable network.
Cloud computing represents a massive paradigm shift that has transformed how compute resources are consumed and utilised, and the manner in which applications are constructed and delivered. While cloud computing has been rapidly changing IT architectures around the world, the underlying network that links these services has been slow to catch up.
Sunanda Das, Managing Director, Pacnet India While cloud computing has been rapidly changing IT architectures around the world, the underlying network that links these services has been slow to catch up
Das argues that probably the most disruptive attribute of cloud computing is that organisations can turn off 1000 servers as quickly as they’ve turned them on. On the network side, organisations can’t just give the connection back--they are either stuck paying for the network connection in a prolonged contract, or have to pay a hefty early termination fine.
Today, rigid network commercial practices remain one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to tapping into the full benefits of the cloud computing model.
He recommends that it is important for the IT administrators to make the network available “as-a-service” to match the capabilities of clouds.
So, why NaaS? How does the model work?
So what is NaaS? In a nutshell, it is the cloud computing model applied to service provider networks utilising software-defined networking. NaaS allows customers to log on to a web portal, or access a programmable API and, pick the route needed on a network, pick the bandwidth required, select the quality of service parameters, and order that connection with a single click--just like they would in a cloud computing environment with the number of servers and the amount of storage.
In the NaaS environment, customers will pay for only the amount of capacity they use, and can turn that capacity off any time from the same web portal
“In the NaaS environment, customers will pay for only the amount of capacity they use, and can turn that capacity off any time from the same web portal,” says Das. According to him, this is enabled by SDN, which allows service providers to control their network logically throughout the provisioning, running, decommission process and, link that software to the business support systems for processes like billing.
Das points out that the customer will be able to use over 90 per cent of network capacity, and any wastage in the transaction is reduced by over 50 per cent.
What is the payback in using NaaS?
Understandably, the benefits of NaaS are similar to other cloud models--efficiency, flexibility, scalability, and most importantly, providing control back to the customer. The support for on-demand, pay-as-you-use capacity offers numerous benefits to any industry and an infinite amount of use cases. From software houses looking to shift massive workloads between regions in a follow-the-sun operating model and content and application providers looking to get closer to their users during peak demand, to disaster recovery solutions between two sites--NaaS allows them to use the network to maximise their operational efficiency, without a massive overhead.
With NaaS, customers not only get to turn up bandwidth, but also have complete control over the behaviour of their traffic. They can define, in a deterministic manner, the route of their traffic, which in turn sets performance attributes such as latency and jitter.
This opens up a whole new set of possibilities as it creates an application aware network. The ability to create deterministic connections means that users such as banks can now source low latency connections for their trading desks. Conversely, users can select best-effort routing to minimise costs for non-critical applications.
When all the benefits of NaaS are added, it represents an entire carrier environment that is available, on-demand, on a pay-as-you-go basis. As such, it has the potential to change everything, like the cloud changed IT forever.
According to Das, one of the customers from Media and Entertainment who has deployed NaaS, has witnessed the advantage in terms of file transfer which has really been expedited with the use of NaaS based on the SDN. “This has also amounted to huge savings in cost,” says Das.
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