Beatrice Piquer-Durand Marketing Director Ipanema Technologies

Your business is cloud-ready, but is your network?

A recent survey we conducted with 150 CIOs revealed that 66% of enterprises plan to move to a hybrid cloud environment within the next four years. In spite of the huge benefits delivered by the cloud in terms of cost reduction, elasticity, reactivity, flexibility and ubiquity, application performance remains one of the main barriers (39% of respondents) to further adoption. Bjarne Munch, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, Inc. confirms this point and states: “Through 2013, at least 60% of enterprises will experience slow or inconsistent application performance issues from externally hosted applications, due to improper network design." Joe Skorupa, Research Vice President, Datacenter Transformation, Gartner Inc. further adds: "Performance is a major concern as enterprises adopt SaaS-based applications. Traditional MPLS Classes of Services and router-based QoS are unable to provide the required granularity. Mechanisms that provide application specific guarantees are required to alleviate enterprises’ concerns.”

Cloud computing is unquestionably a core IT topic. As a proof point, Orange Business Services positions cloud computing as one of its main growth vectors between now and 2015. See below the joint value proposition of OBS and Ipanema to deliver Cloud-Ready Networks to enterprises.

If you are already using collaboration applications in SaaS mode or plan to do so in the future, read the interview below with Frank Lyonnet, our VP of Product Marketing, who explains what it means for your WAN and how Ipanema can help you be successful in this roll-out.

Enjoy reading!

Beatrice

	Andew McFadzen Head of Global Marketing Network Solutions Business Unit Orange Business Services

Beatrice Piquer-Durand for Ipanews: What are Cloud-Ready Networks and why are they important for enterprises?
Andrew McFadzen: Cloud computing is shaping the architecture of application delivery. Enterprises are concerned about managing their costs, and yet security, performance and reliability remain absolute necessities for an efficient business. Business applications must be accessible to users in a consistent and secure manner, with stable performance and availability anytime, anywhere. With cloud computing, delivering applications to users is becoming more complicated and the network must perform appropriately in many different and changing situations.

A Cloud-Ready Network guarantees the performance of critical applications and maintains business continuity while enterprises migrate their key applications to the cloud.

BPD: How do Orange Business Services and Ipanema enable Cloud-Ready Networks?
AMF: Our Cloud-Ready Network solution draws upon our extensive experience in application optimization and network solutions. Together we make it easy for you to access the IT resources you need and by taking an integrated approach, we can deliver business applications and XaaS with application service level agreements (SLAs). We have the optimization capabilities to guarantee the availability and performance of your network and applications, along with professional expertise to facilitate resource sharing in a secure, reliable way. Orange Business Services teams with Ipanema Technologies to offer Network Boost, an international, Cloud-Ready Network and application optimization solution that is fully integrated with the Orange Business VPN. Network Boost unifies performance across disparate networks, dynamically adapting to whatever is happening in those networks and guaranteeing constant control of critical applications.

Network Boost is available to enterprises in over 200 countries to control and guarantee application performance anytime, anywhere.

BPD: What are the business benefits of a Cloud-Ready Network?
AMF: With Network Boost, based on the Ipanema ANS platform, Orange delivers Cloud-Ready Networks that can provide real application SLAs. Regardless of your company’s size or number of worldwide locations, you gain full control and optimization of your global network and private, public or hybrid cloud. Network Boost unifies performance across disparate networks, dynamically adapting to whatever is happening in those networks and guaranteeing constant control of critical applications.

With Network Boost, enterprises:

	Gain complete visibility of both their application flows and usage on their private and/or public networks,
	Improve the performance of the applications on their private and/or public networks by defining priorities and accelerating application flows, resulting in better service for their users,
	Retain control over their information system, by means of real-time decision-making tools,
	Easily handle additional data exchanges and the deployment of new applications because their private and/or public networks can constantly adapt.

Many enterprises enforce application SLAs for their cloud-based applications thanks to their Orange and Ipanema powered Cloud-Ready Network, which delivers the productivity and savings promises of cloud projects.

BPD: Can you tell us more about your cloud computing strategy?
AMF: Leveraging its Cloud-Ready Network, Orange Business Services is launching Business VPN Galerie, the world’s first hub linking VPN customers to the world of cloud computing services via trusted network gateways. This Cloud-Ready Network solution benefits both enterprises and cloud services providers. Business VPN Galerie provides enterprises with much greater access reliability to cloud services than is possible over the Internet while addressing their primary concerns of security and performance. Cloud computing services providers benefit from Business VPN Galerie because it allows them to deliver their applications with the same outstanding customer experience but in a cloud computing mode.

	Frank Lyonnet VP Product Marketing Ipanema Technologies

Moving to Office 365, Google Apps, Salesforce or any SaaS? Here's what it means for your WAN Beatrice for Ipanews: Adopting cloud-based collaboration? OK, but what does it really mean for the WAN? Frank Lyonnet: Bandwidth requirements vary greatly for SaaS applications. Collaboration applications such as Google Apps, Microsoft BPOS/Office 365, and IBM LotusLive have more impact on network traffic than other applications. Collaboration consumes more bandwidth per user and is more likely to be extended to more workers. Moreover, the bandwidth involved with SaaS is not the only network issue. The way the application traffic flows across the WAN can also change dramatically when SaaS applications are used. Collaboration traffic no longer goes between a data center and branches but from one or several Internet gateways to the branches, competing with on-premise applications.

Deploying SaaS applications requires:

	Forecasting the new application's usage patterns,
	Understanding network resource requirements,
	Anticipating the impact on the other applications,
	Optimizing the traffic to ensure an excellent end-user experience, for SaaS applications of course, but also for all the other applications.

BPD: Why don't conventional WAN solutions work for SaaS?
FL: The adoption of SaaS requires perfect visibility into both the global traffic mix and the delivered user experience during each implementation step. SaaS also requires advanced QoS & Control tools to dynamically adjust the network resources allocated to each user of private or public applications. Finally, as you are poised to use a hybrid MPLS + Internet network architecture, you must circumvent the limitations of traditional policy-based routing which are complex and too inefficient to guarantee SaaS performance in a dynamic situation and take full advantage of the Internet as a business network.

Beyond these required capabilities, the historical approach to network management – using separate point solutions to address Application Visibility, QoS & Control, WAN Optimization and path selection for application traffic – just adds to the complexity of the project. To efficiently rollout SaaS collaboration, enterprises need a fully integrated and automated solution.

BPD: Does cloud adoption create a critical need for WAN Governance?
FL: Actually, cloud adoption adds complexity to network management. For example, SaaS collaboration applications bring many of the same issues as licensed software, but can have a larger impact because of its reliance on the WAN. By aligning the network with business and application performance objectives, WAN Governance can control this complexity.

Starting from a global point of view, WAN Governance ensures the performance and continuity of both cloud and on -premise applications at the same time while providing the flexibility and cost savings the business requires.

BPD: Does Ipanema really help enterprises make their networks cloud-ready?
FL: Of course! Cloud adoption increases the potential for application performance issues. SaaS applications - such as Google Apps, Office 365 or LotusLive for collaboration - create a de facto hybrid network and increase the competition for network resources. More cloud applications will eventually follow, which further reinforces the traffic pressure on the network.

To ensure optimal end-user experience, enterprises need a network that provides full application performance visibility and automated control of both SaaS and on-premise applications: this is the goal of Ipanema's Autonomic Networking System. The best time to prepare is prior to the first SaaS implementation so that the impact on the VPN can be mastered from the pilot phase through the full rollout. However, upgrading a VPN to a Cloud-Ready Network (CRN) can be done anytime in controlled steps.