IBM today announced Network Innovation Centers in Nice, France, and Dallas, where IBM clients can work with software-defined networking (SDN) and automation technologies from multiple providers on simulations of their network environments and typical workloads.

“The network is the long pole in the tent as you virtualize hybrid data centers and need to do things like interconnect internal resources” with applications running on multiple cloud providers such as Amazon, IBM/Softlayer and [Microsoft] Azure,” said Rick Qualman, IBM vice-president of network an communications services. The increasingly complex environment, with hybrid data centers on the back end and a mobile workforce and clientele on the front end, requires a flexible, automated network that can respond faster to rapid changes in demand.

IBM is working with technologies from multiple partners including Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., Citrix Systems, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc., Riverbed Technology, Inc and VMware, Inc. in multiple combinations both to optimize its own internal and Softlayer networks, which together are among the largest on earth, and to help clients find the best solutions to managing their network resources.

For example, Qualman said, one pattern that IBM demonstrates is using Juniper’s Contrail Open SDN with VMware’s vCloud NFV Platform using IBM Cloud Orchestrator to provide overall management. IBM is developing several similar SDN patterns using technologies from different vendors. Customers can bring images of workloads to run in these patterns on networks that simulate their network architectures. Over time IBM plans to build up more patterns and add more partners to the ecosystem, with IBM Cloud Orchestrator as the “orchestrator of orchestrators,” Qualman said.

SDN offers potential for greater network agility, operational efficiencies and resource utilization, Qualman said. For example, resources from one area can be reallocated virtually to another as workloads shift. IBM notes that it can shift virtual resources to Beijing during the day there, when it is night in New York. This enables the network to maintain optimal performance as demand levels shift around the world with the sun while saving on network infrastructure.

Clients can access the capabilities of the two centers on-site or remotely and can bridge the capabilities of the two centers simultaneously to create custom-designed solutions. The IBM Network Innovation Centers are operated by IBM GTS Networking Services, which designs, builds and runs enterprise networking solutions for business innovation.

Photo courtesy IBM