I’ve written lately about IT leaders embracing DevOps to accelerate their digital transformations. Faster, more secure and agile software development means faster releases and better agility for the business. As IT leaders embrace robust DevOps processes in order to support these business initiatives, NetOps functions are starting to make their way into the DevOps process. DevOps teams are seeking agile, flexible network designs to keep pace with digital business demands.
One of the ways DevOps teams are keeping pace with digital business demands is by leaning on NetOps to deliver agile, flexible network designs. As a result, NetOps teams are embracing SD WAN as a replacement to traditional network architectures. SD WAN, or software defined networking, decouples networking hardware and simplifies the management and operation of a WAN.
Why are IT leaders talking about SD-WAN, and how does SD WAN solve unique DevOps challenges?
Speed of releases: A hallmark of a good DevOps practice is the speed and agility at which releases can be pushed through the pipeline. The rise of SD WAN is eliminating inefficiencies in the development cycle. By providing a simple way to design, deploy and support networks, IT teams are finding that adopting SD WAN allows them to play an equal part in DevOps and continuous delivery pipelines. Just as DevSecOps is being integrated into the DevOps process, SD WAN allows NetOps to be included in the DevOps process, thanks to the automation inherent in an SD-WAN solution.
Improved service quality: Software features have always been part of a release, but enhanced service quality and better end user experience is now equally important. End users are more exacting than ever, and service delivery must undergo a process of continual improvement. SD WAN makes solid contributions to the goals of service quality through application and network performance improvements, increased availability and better visibility into QoS metrics.
Increased agility: SD WAN offers the power of automation and orchestration. Policies governing access, security, and performance are managed centrally and automatically pushed out to all devices and sites across the network as IT makes changes. Existing policies can be reused across applications without needing to make changes to the underlying infrastructure and manage additional configuration items. These policies can even follow users in a BYOD scenario, granting them access to applications without compromising security.
With the proliferation of DevSecOps and it’s integration into the DevOps process, NetOps is now being asked to align with DevOps as well. Traditional network architectures prove incapable of allowing for the speed and agility the business requires, SD WAN is being tapped as a solution that allows DevOps the ability to increase agility and speed throughout the release pipeline, while increasing service quality.
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Joe Capote 