H3C sees SDN and NFV as the answers to private cloud challenges in Hong Kong

H3C sees SDN and NFV as the answers to private cloud challenges in Hong Kong

Private Cloud-ready H3C SDN and NFV solutions allow local businesses to automate application delivery on converged, secure and open infrastructure

Hong Kong, 20 September 2016 – H3C Technologies Co., Ltd. (H3C), an innovative IT infrastructure solution provider, warns that many local firms – especially those using private or hybrid clouds – may not have fully embraced the potential of advanced technologies because their networking resources lack the scalability, agility and flexibility that a successful cloud implementation needs.

According to Joseph Lee, Product Director of H3C Hong Kong, while cloud services are already an essential tool for local companies, difficulties in allocating network and security resources have hindered the effective deployment of private clouds. This could, in turn, threaten the efficiency and growth of Hong Kong businesses.

“Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), offer a solution to this cloud challenge. They contribute to a simplified network and make multi-platforms within an enterprise network easy to manage centrally,” he said.

To meet this challenge, H3C has launched a series of SDN software and hardware solutions such as different virtual and physical switches, and the most critical component, the SDN controller – Virtual Converged Framework (VCF) Controller.

The technology promises to extend the efficiencies of cloud computing to new heights through on-demand provisioning of every network service including bandwidth allocation, routing, firewall (FW) /intrusion prevention system (IPS), and antivirus. Advantages include:

· Real separation between tenants – This offers security protection between tenants. Take organizations with subsidiaries for example. One tenant is a subsidiary with own resources and security protection from the central (HQ) resource pool. It is a real shared infrastructure and resource pool.

· IP overlapping – IP reuse means each tenant can use the same IP addressing range. One use case for enterprises is for firms that have a “production network” and a “development network.” IP overlapping allows them to use the same IP addressing for both networks, and it can help them to switch from the development platform to the production platform as soon as the app is ready for deployment.

· Tenant-based and on-demand provision of FW/IPS/LB resources – Each tenant can have their own firewall rule set. This simplifies operations, and enhances security.

· Scale out – Compared with hardware based firewalls, IPS and load balancers (LB), expanding resources to increase performance is simple and cost-effective. The FW/IPS/LB resources, followed by virtual machine (VM) motion, automatically simplify operations, and break through the hardware and hypervisor based firewall binding.

· Service chain – This supports the FW/IPS/LB in a chain configuration for one-by-one service allocation. The result is minimized traffic flow back and forth between the source VM and destination VM, which greatly simplifies operations.

· Open standard and interface – H3C offers a native plug-in for integration with OpenStack based cloud platforms and a Restful API for integration with third-party cloud and management platforms.

Lee believes the issue requires urgent attention. According to the Hong Kong Government Census and Statistics Department, in 2015 an estimated 159,268 establishments were already using cloud computing services, representing 49.1% of the business sector[1].

The cloud sector is also growing rapidly. According to from IDC, the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) SDN market, consisting of spending in the enterprise and cloud service provider segments, will grow from US$6.2 million in 2013 to over US$1 billion by 2018[2].

“SDN and NFV are critical components for private clouds and implementing genuine cloud networking infrastructures. H3C is helping businesses in Hong Kong – especially in the public sector, institutes of higher education, service providers and large enterprises – to establish efficient and effective private clouds with our comprehensive end-to-end SDN and NFV solutions,” Lee said.

[1] Census and Statistics Department Hong Kong Special Administrative Region “Report on the Survey on Information Technology Usage and Penetration in the Business Sector for 2015”, March 2016

[2] IDC “Software-Defined Networking (SDN) Will Unlock Billion Dollar Market in Asia Pacific by 2018: IDC”, February 11, 2015