You could argue that SDN evolved to SD-WAN, then perhaps to SDN plus SD-WAN. Now Cisco wants to evolve SD-stuff to another level, which they call “Data Center Anywhere”. In concept, this combines aspects of software-defined networking and edge computing to permit not only uniform access to central resources but also access to distributed resources. As always with Cisco, we have to look at the idea through the combined lens of marketing and positioning and of technology and strategy. And yes, I know, this is another Cisco-centric blog, but with the Cisco Barcelona event fresh in our minds we have to look at their stuff to see where they’re leading customers.
The classic notion of corporate IT is the company data center located in some major site, a bunch of super-empowered workers local to that data center, and a group of decentralized (branch-office and remote) workers located elsewhere. SDN technology targeted data center networking, especially in the era of the cloud, and SD-WAN technology targeted the decentralized worker community, particularly those in sites too thinly connected to justify traditional VPNs.
A parallel concept has emerged recently on the IT resources side. Edge computing presumes not a distribution of workers but a distribution of IT assets. So, in truth, does cloud computing, particularly hybrid and multi-cloud (which IMHO are dimensions of the same trend). The notion of “data center anywhere” is one founded on the idea that information processing and storage is usually more effective if it’s done near to a major point of consumption, if indeed consumption of information is concentrated in some small number of major places.
If you look at this from the top, you find that there are three issues to be addressed in “everywhering” the data center. One is connectivity; you have to be able to connect people not just to a central resource but to a distributed set of resources. Two is bandwidth; if information is stored and processed at the edge, then you need more bandwidth there to connect users not in that location to the information. Three is hosting; you need to be able to economically deploy and manage distributed resources when the industry has been thinking for a decade or more about “server consolidation” to eliminate those edge resources.
Cisco’s approach is based on HyperFlex 4.0, which is an extension of Cisco’s data center model to the edge. Cisco links this with HyperFlex Anywhere (branch platform) and ACI Anywhere (networks). You could argue that this combination addresses all of the issues I’ve noted in the last paragraph.
While a lot of the story is about HyperFlex, the heart of Cisco’s approach, from a platform perspective, is ACI Anywhere because it’s the platform framework that lets Cisco build not just an edge-hosting model but a distributed resource model that includes the cloud. I like the approach, but there are still a couple of soft points. One is the focus on IoT, and the other is the lack of specific support for infrastructure abstraction.
Enterprises tell me that there is indeed a desire to distribute IT assets more, but it’s not as much the IoT-centric one that Cisco touts. Less than 8% of enterprises, according to my contacts, are planning data centers around future IoT applications. The real issue in the near term is a combination of resiliency and information specialization. In both financial and healthcare, the two verticals I do the most enterprise work in, there’s a natural distributability of information arising from the “point of service” concept. There’s also a strong desire to avoid having a single problem, ranging from power to natural disaster, take out all your IT.
I think that despite Cisco’s positioning hype, they’re actually aligning their HyperFlex approach to the current market drivers, and relying on sales initiative to introduce the bandwidth and connectivity solutions that may also be needed. Thus, I think they have a viable model that supports their goals…except perhaps as the framework for tracking cloud evolution.
The real question for Cisco, its competitors, and the buyers in the space, is how this all fits into resource abstraction. A highly distributed edge-computing framework demands an application orchestration and lifecycle automation model that optimizes it. Add in the reality of hybrid cloud and you have a clear need for some infrastructure abstraction or composable infrastructure story. Cisco provides that, but it does so based on common orchestration and tools, which exposes infrastructure complexity at the operational level. That’s dangerous for a number of reasons.
First, applications should be designed for the hosting environment, which means that if you expect them to be distributed through a data-center-plus-edge-computing and hybrid cloud environment, you should design them that way and operationalize them within that assumption. If the data center is treated independently, not only of the abstraction model but also the cloud, you could design yourself into a corner.
Second, lack of an abstract resource approach to hosting risks building an optimum or even strong business case. There are too many things that have to be added on to the Cisco framework to make it resource-independent, and too many variations in what might be selected. Some pieces might even be missed, and that could erode the business case.
Third, how the Cisco approach navigates the inevitable challenge of transitional states is unclear. If you have abstract infrastructure, transitioning from a single data center to a far-flung distributed and hybrid cloud framework would be invisible, taking place inside an intent model and under the covers. If it’s not invisible, it has to be strategized and accommodated, and each step creates risks to the evolution.
I don’t think this adds up to a miss for Cisco, though. Right now, infrastructure abstraction is an outsider in terms of enterprise IT planning, and Cisco is well-known as avoiding taking a market-lead position. Why take a risk and develop markets that competitors share when you can stomp on them if the market establishes itself? As always, though, the fast-follower approach means that a determined (and strategically influential) player could derail Cisco’s plans.
Among the network equipment rivals, there’s nobody likely to step up. Juniper has often been seen as the most direct rival to Cisco, and for a time was out ahead of Cisco in terms of recognizing and exploiting market trends. They made a smart acquisition of HTBASE that might be hoped to gain some traction in the virtual-infrastructure space, but they’ve failed so far to establish even a minimal mission for it that would threaten Cisco. Not only that, their quarter was viewed as “bad” by the Street, which puts pressure on Juniper to deliver short-term gains when longer-term insight is really what’s needed.
VMware and Red Hat/IBM are the obvious candidates to advance the strategy of infrastructure independence. The advantage they have is a platform-based versus server-based approach to hosting. If you focus on hardware sales, it’s hard to talk much about hardware abstraction or you end up letting everyone’s products in on your strategy. That’s probably why Cisco doesn’t push the concept, but there’s no barrier to these other two competitors doing so.
A less obvious but perhaps more dangerous set of competitors are the cloud giants, meaning Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. The cloud is by its very nature an abstract hosting point. The cloud has also pioneered in creating abstract models of hosting that cross over into the data center, given that hybrid cloud is the enterprise strategy of choice.
The thing is, even if Cisco just sings pretty everything-everywhere songs, they’ll get a lot of prospects singing along with them. They’ll get media coverage, set the mindset of senior management, and create at least some form of competitive response. In short, they’ll help to bring about the thing they’re talking about, even if their own solution is imperfect. A marketing trial balloon sounds cynical, but it’s a smart strategy. “Run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes” used to be a marketing cliché, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a wise move, and Cisco at the least is making it.