Leading Lights 2016 Finalists: Most Innovative SDN Deployment Strategy (Network/Data Center Operator)

Flexibility, customer control and cost savings are common themes as service providers deploy SDN on their networks.

Our six finalists for most innovative SDN deployment strategy tout the benefits of simplifying consumption models for customers, ability to locate network resources where they're most needed, reduced costs and improved vendor choice and the ability of enterprise customers to take charge of their own network capacity needs.

The Leading Lights 2016 winners and newest class of Hall of Fame inductees will be unveiled at the Leading Lights awards dinner, which will be held the evening of Monday, May 23, at the Hotel Ella in Austin, Texas. For more details, see this Leading Lights 2016 awards dinner page. The following day, the Big Communications Event 2016 opens its doors for two days of networking and learning.

Here are our six finalists, in alphabetical order:

Cato Networks
Cato Cloud provides network security-as-a-service in two layers. The Cato Cloud Network is a global network of PoPs interconnected with Tier-1 carrier links for secure, optimized, low-latency enterprise WAN. Cato Security Services are built directly into the network. The services include firewall with application control, global VPN, URL filtering and more, managed by Cato staff.

The platform is designed to allow enterprises to consume networking and network security as a service in the same way Amazon AWS provides a way to consume compute and storage as a service.

Cato Networks is rapidly deploying its global network to major business centers with a dozen PoPs already deployed across Europe, US and Asia. The company has added eight partners since its launch in February.

Equinix
Equinix Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX)'s Interconnection Oriented Architecture is designed to allow enterprises to take advantage of multiple data centers and locations to support emerging Internet of Things workflows. IOA uses a distributed SDN control plane to unify service components.

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IOA pushes workflows to the location where it makes the most sense. For example, real-time analytics is located close to end users, while batch analytics gets done in cheap wholesale data centers.

Equinix's reach, with more than 100 data centers, allows enterprises to bring applications, data and networks closest to their users, customers and business partners, while the SDN control plane unifies those distributed components.

Equinix has joined the Open Compute Project to help develop an open source ecosystem for data centers, and is collaborating with Facebook and Mesosphere through the OCP on developing interconnection stacks using virtual containers on open source software and commodity OCP hardware.

Facebook
Facebook pioneered the movement to disaggregate network hardware from software to give network operators choices in both, as an alternative to having to buy software and hardware from the same vendors. As a founder of the Open Compute Project, Facebook developed its own switch software stack, FBOSS and Wedge switch hardware, deploying them at scale within its data centers. A key strategy for Facebook is treating the networking device like a server, to make better use of the rest of Facebook's infrastructure and people, automating management, centralizing or distributing software as needed.

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Since April 2015, Facebook has deployed FBOSS and Wedge at scale internally; developed the ability to upgrade weekly with new software with no impact on production operations; followed up with six-pack, a modular/chassis switch and Wedge 100, a 100G switch; shared the hardware design of all three switches as well as FBOSS software components; and worked with partners to build ecosystems for the technologies, including Accton and Edgecore, Broadcom, Big Switch Networks and other companies.

Level 3 Communications
Level 3 Communications Inc. (NYSE: LVLT)'s SDN-based Adaptive Network Control allows customers in North America and Europe to automatically control their own capacity needs. Customers can automate network changes to free up IT staff and increase productivity, use intelligent data to predict needs and proactively manage private and public networks and take immediate action to adapt network resources to changing demands.

Level 3 Ethernet services are available in nearly 250 markets across North America and EMEA. The company's goal is to deliver a single, Ethernet platform across its global network and deploy SDN worldwide. As part of that transformation, Level 3 upgraded its infrastructure to meet Metro Ethernet 2.0 standards.

SK Telecom
SK Telecom (Nasdaq: SKM) is building a mobile network infrastructure using an IT-based infrastructure. Most IT services have already moved to the cloud, running in VMs and containers. SK Telecom sees the same shift in the network infrastructure, with mobile network infrastructures redesigned as data centers and network functions being virtualized.

SK Telecom is working with open source communities including ONOS, OpenStack, CORD, OCP and TOP. Working with ONOS, SK Telecom developed SONA, a virtual network solution for cloud. SK Telecom also proposed the M-CORD use cases, for the Mobile Central Office Re-architected as Data Center, in cooperation with major operators including AT&T and Verizon.

SK Telecom sees this architectural approach for mobile network infrastructure, which it calls "All-IT," as increasing flexibility and efficiency in service deployments and operations. In particular, the operator sees open software and hardware as allowing it to build infrastructure at lower cost than vendor solutions, leading to significant TCO reduction.

Telstra
Cloud computing and self-service enterprise provisioning drives Telstra Corp. Ltd. (ASX: TLS; NZK: TLS)'s Dynamic Network strategy.

The company's acquisition of Pacnet, completed April 2015, helped push the strategy forward by adding Pacnet's home-grown SDN platform, PEN to Telstra's portfolio. PEN allows customers to order and provision bandwidth through a portal within minutes.

PEN leverages Telstra's subsea cable system supporting 100G traffic in key segments, with more than 2,000 PoPs and 58 data centers worldwide. Telstra integrates an OTN and terrestrial network to allocate resources where demand requires.

Dynamic Networks provides an upsell opportunity for Telstra's sales teams, allowing existing bandwidth subscribers to pay monthly recurrent charges to supplement fixed bandwidth orders with dynamic networking to prepare for demand spikes.

— Mitch Wagner, , Editor, Enterprise Cloud, Light Reading.