The majority of the discussion has centered on changes in forwarding functionality – the functionality of forwarding packets between interconnection ports of networking devices. With OpenFlow (which is not SDN, but is what triggered a lot of the SDN discussion) the intelligence making the forwarding decisions, which lies in the control plane, has moved out of the forwarding platforms that connect the external systems into the network and into the controllers. Here we have decoupled OpenFlow switches and controllers.

At the recent SAP TechEd conference in Las Vegas the theme from end-users was the same. From C-level executives and directors to everyday technology professionals, we heard the following concerns voiced again and again:

• Quality of experience is a huge issue when it comes to managing the latency of my organization’s SAP applications.
• I need to guarantee business continuity at all times.
• I need to ensure my SAP Applications are secure.

To be sure, the major challenge derives from the fact that SAP applications serve as mission critical infrastructure for the mainstream business processes that most end users touch throughout their day. SAP applications are designed to provide advanced business functionality to help organizations efficiently meet their business goals. Any SAP deployment counts on network and server infrastructure performance and availability as well as the ability to protect the deployment from malicious network and application attacks. In addition, SAP deployment is also dependent upon the ability to scale and support multiple applications and types of users, and all of this while being cost effective as well.

The devastation wrought by superstorm Sandy is a stark reminder of just how fragile our environment is versus the power of nature. In just a couple of days, a single storm disrupted the lives of so many people and paralyzed a large number of businesses even days after it passed. In the wake of the storm, one of the questions on my mind is, how can we help businesses remain functional after such a massive hit regardless of their size?

Working for an Application Delivery Controller company, I’m no stranger to disaster recovery. Most often, disaster recovery is initiated by large enterprises that invest big money to build entire backup datacenters with the ability to automatically provide all online services in case their main datacenters become unavailable. A reality faced by many businesses in and around New York after the storm.