(upbeat digital music) >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris, and welcome to another, theCUBE Conversation. This week, we're in our Palo Alto studios, with Saurabh Sandhir. Saurabh is the Vice President of Product Management at Nuage Networks, which is a Nokia company. >> That's right. >> Saurabh, thank you very much for being here today. >> Thank you, Peter. Happy to be here. >> So, tell us a little bit about Let's start off. Tell us a little bit about Nuage Network. It's a new company out of a big company. What's the focus, how is Nokia helping? >> So, Nuage, well, while it's new but it's not quite new, we have been in the market for four years, and the way Nuage started was it was part of Alcatel-Lucent earlier, and now a part of Nokia, we are really the SDN BU or the SDN arm of Nokia. What we are focused on from the beginning is building a platform for secure, automated, connectivity for out data centers as well as WAN. And we have built that platform and successfully introduced it in many enterprises and service providers. So the unique aspect of Nuage is while in terms of innovation, while in terms of global market, we work as a start-up. While we have the service and support that's offered by Nokia as a mother ship so I have the unique, best in both worlds combination of a start-up as well as a large company. >> Nokia is still regarded as one of the finest brands in enterprise networking in the world. So, you said SD-WAN, software defined, wide area networking. >> Correct. It's a term that a lot of people have heard something about, but what are some of the high level benefits, number one, and then number two, why right now? >> Right. If you look at how enterprise connectivity services were offered down the ages, it was, you had to get some kind of a VPN access, whether it was an MPLS or a VPLS access, you got a dedicated leased line, you got a specific device, and that's how you would connect your enterprise branches to the network, and to each other. And SD-WAN, what it does, is it changes that paradigm. It provides secure automated connectivity in line with cloud principles for enterprises across the board. And in terms of why now, I think it is the combination of factors that arise from how the modern enterprise is evolving, and how there is a need to deliver, not just connectivity, but IT services over IP, whether it is access to the public cloud, whether it is access to SAS applications like Office 365, or Skype, or whether it is the fact that you want, not just pure connectivity, but you want application aware connectivity. All those trends coming together have created the demand, and the need for SD-WAN. >> So, you mentioned the cloud principles, and that has been a dominant feature of the industry. We call it the cloud experience, and the cloud experience is typically associated with abstracting and virtualizing hardware. So, in many respects what we're talking about is bringing that same class of technology to the wide area network, the circuits, the access points, everything else, by having a software defined experience that allows the business to rapidly re-configure, based on what its needs, against the access to the underlying WAN network that it has. Have I got that right? >> Absolutely correct. What SDN-WAN basically does is, if you look at a traditional branch router, it has access to a particular type of network, MPLS or VPLS, it has a data plane, it has a control plane, as the management plane by which you configure it. What SD-WAN does is takes those control and management planes, puts it in the cloud, takes the data plane and sort of makes it agnostic to the access technology. So, you run the data service, irrespective of whether you are on internet, whether you are on LTE, whether you are on MPLS, and using those principles of centralized control, centralized management, standardized x86 based devices offering CP services, and voila, you get SD-WAN. That's exactly correct. >> So, I can see what the advantages to an enterprise are-- >> Yep. >> I can reconfigure my business faster-- >> Yep >> Especially business that's more digital in nature. But, is this going to be something that the service providers are going to embrace? >> Absolutely, absolutely. While the enterprise, and the reason for services providers to embrace this, is, for the existing customer this offers an up sale opportunity, for the people who are already on their VPN services, this is an opportunity to broaden the scope from just pure connectivity, this is an opportunity for them to access customers who were, where the cost to serve was to high. Where they just could not go because they were outside of their geographic reach, or outside of their existing business modeling or business plan. >> Or, for example, you might be a mid-size business that required a more expensive circuit, or maybe not quite a more expensive circuit. The cost of setting the circuit up, servicing that customer, et cetera, might have been to great. >> Absolutely, and that's what SD-WAN sort of provides, a level playing field. In some ways, what it does, is it delinks the service, which is the VPN service from the transport, and the transport can be Internet, can be MPLS, and there you have the benefits for the service provider, for the enterprise, in terms of agility, in terms of time to service, in terms of overall cost. >> But, that's inside the nature of telecommunications oriented services. Is SD-WAN going to make it easier for service providers to perhaps start moving into more value added, data oriented services, above just the traditional communication services? >> That is the holy grail. That is really where the service providers are going and that's where enterprises want them to go, and the reason for that is, today, when you look at what an enterprise branch, or an enterprise office needs to operate, there is connectivity, but, then also there is security services, be it firewall, intrusion detection system, intrusion protection system, URL filtering, anti-virus. Take it with on top of that, there is transport optimization, WAN optimization services. There is emergence of IoT, there are wi-fi controllers. All of these services to the enterprise are being offered as a stand alone appliance, virtual or physical, and there is no centralized control. They are extremely rigid, and all of these providers lock-in. What SD-WAN does is, from a tel-co or service provider perspective, is, it also offers a platform to provide all of these services on top of SD-WAN. So, the benefit, it's a symbiotic relationship in the sense that benefits are both towards the enterprise, because they get these services and the service agility. There is resource optimization, source utilization, and cost, and from a tele-co perspective, the ability to sell beyond connectivity. That's one. >> So, if I'm your counter part at a service provider, I can now think in terms bringing up new service, with cheaper connection, lower cost, lower risk, bringing the customer on board, onboarding. At least, if not better, security, et cetera, because, I'm now using software defined approach to making all those connections, and, also, managing the service itself. >> That is correct. What it allows me to do is, in that role, is to provide on demand programmable services. So, for example, a firewall, as an enterprise I can go to a service provider portal and select which of my sites need, which of my branch sites need, firewall at what point in time. What kind of resources I want to assign to that firewall, and voila, on demand, I have it in place. And from a service provider's perspective, it's additional revenue, it's additional services. >> It's a software defined firewall, and it's much more automated, and much better organized, because it brings all the possibilities of software defined automation, which might include some machine learning, pattern recognition, et cetera, to bear on the wide area network world. >> That's correct, that's correct. >> Alright, so, we've talked a bit about security itself. What are, can you just give us one or two clear differences in how the old world handled security, and the software defined world's going to to handle security in the WAN regime. >> Right, so, the thing with security is, the security paradigm has changed massively. In the old world, which wasn't that old-- >> Peter: It's still here in many respects. >> Still here, absolutely, still here. The security was all about east west, sorry, north south protection, which means that you are protecting towards threats and traffic coming inside and going outside of data center or your branch office, but what has happened, is most of the threats today, most of the attacks today, are focused on east west traffic, which is traffic within branches, from one branch to the other, within the data center itself. That's one. The second aspect is there a multi-cloud aspect to the enterprise IT. You don't access application only on the branch itself. Your applications that run in a data center that's owned by you, private DC, you run application that in a public cloud, AWS Azure, you have access to applications that are offered as software as a service, be it Office 365, Skype, Salesforce, and so on, and that has fundamentally changed the threat surface, or the threat perimeter, that you have to deal with, and you have to now essentially deal with threats that are coming within this whole expanded branch, or enterprise, territory or perimeter. >> So, you're effectively by virtualizing all of these different elements, you're reducing the threat surface. >> Yeah, what we are doing with SD-WAN is a few things. First, and foremost, is the fact that, as you were talking about, these value added services, you can bring these up on demand. You can put a firewall at a particular branch location, for say, guest wi-fi traffic. You can be specific. >> On this point, you can bring a new service up and not have it immediately associated with a whole bunch of capital expense. >> Exactly, exactly. On demand programmable, right, that's one. The second thing is the aspect of PAN network visibility. You also have the ability to see what exactly is going on in your network, the network that's spread across the branch office, a private data center, a public cloud site, and you have full visibility and insight into who's talking to whom, and at what time. >> Peter: At scale. >> At scale. >> Very very big and very small and we know that there's a whole bunch of mid-size companies that can't afford a NOC type of capability, but, now through >> Yep SD-WAN they get some of the same benefits that the big guys get. >> Absolutely, and the threat aspect here is, using this information, you have closed loop automation, or machine learning, where, as opposed to saying all of my traffic has to go through this possible intrusion detection function, because, once in six months I might have a attack, versus, I see abnormal traffic pattern, and the system automatically optimizes that particular traffic flow to go through this particular function, and that allows it to be much more scalable, that allows for much more on demand, in terms of how we perceive security. not just as a lock that needs to remain on a door at all possible points in time, but, a function that can be instantiated when you need it. >> But, I also got to believe, and test me, I'm going to test you, you tell me if I'm right on this, that the historical conversation between a service provider and an enterprise, centered on the characteristics of the circuits that were being provided. And those circuits were often very much grounded in hardware, associated with the specific links, et cetera. And if you ended up with a security problem, you're now having a whole bunch of haggling and a very complex set of interactions. The minute you bring SD-WAN in on that, now you're talking about being able to use software in a software response, not necessarily a hardware response, to being actually able to identify, mediate, contain, et cetera, security threats on the WAN. Have I got that right? >> Correct, correct. Earlier, the conversation was really in terms of providing a circuit, providing connectivity, and what you were doing was, you were providing this connectivity over some kind of a private IP. That's where you were as a service provider, that's what the service you were offering. Now, you expand that same paradigm with security, with access to cloud, to really offer IT services on top of the IP layer, and that's the fundamental difference, that's the change. >> That break apart between the service and the transport. >> Absolutely. >> So, I kind of said the old way, and you corrected me, and said, wait a minute, this is really the way we're, SD-WAN is trying to make changes, trying to affect a new way of thinking. But there is another technology on the horizon here that actually could really accelerate this process, and that's 5G. >> Mm-hmm >> We're not going to go to far out here, but, tell us what some of the near term, how 5G and SD-WAN are likely to co-evolve, if you will. >> Right, right. They're two sides of the same coin if you ask me, and the reason is, while 5G, as with all the mobile technologies in the past, as we went from 2G, to 3G, to 4G is about speeds and feeds, and absolutely, we'll have more band width, low latency, sure, but what 5G is also about is access to applications from, that is in the cloud, or reside whether closer to the users. And in that sense, what 5G stands out to do, or sets to do, is create network slices, and provide access for applications such as, self-driving cars, such as remote surgery. All of these applications, not just need speeds and feeds, but, require dedicated access all the way from the user, onto an application that runs in the data center. And if you look at that paradigm, how SD-WAN plays in this is by providing a programmable network, on demand services, by providing on demand resource allocation. If you take SD-WAN, if you take 5G, then SD-WAN becomes a component of 5G, because if you are a user, say, conducting remote surgery, and you need access to an application that's in the data center, SD-WAN allows you to provide that overlay network, on top of existing services, and there is a certain quality of service, with a guaranteed access, that is critical to 5G. >> But, as you said, it's a fact that 5G's going to promise such greater device density-- >> Right. >> Within a network-- >> Yes. >> And in many respects, you're going to need SD-WAN to honestly take advantage of the benefits that 5G is going to provide. You may not need 5G to take advantage >> Yup, right. of the SD-WAN benefits, but, you're going to need SD-WAN if you're going to to take advantage of 5G. >> Right. >> So, that kind of suggests, that the companies that start, the service providers, and the enterprises that start, early on this SD-WAN thing, are likely to be in the best position to reap the full benefits of 5G when it shows up. Have I got that right? >> I absolutely believe so, because at the end the day, 5G is all about application-aware networking, right. A remote surgery application versus me trying to access Facebook cannot be treated the same way, and that's where SD-WAN comes in. And especially if you combine SD-WAN with some other technologies that are coming out of a company such as Nokia, then you have a end-to-end traffic engineered path that is been created all the way from the user on to the backend data center that enables all these applications-- >> Coming back to the point about security, there is one group that hopes you treat your Facebook and your surgery data the same way, and that's the bad guys. >> Absolutely, and that's what we need to protect against. >> This is a fascinating subject, and it's going to be a lot of discussion and change over the course of the next few years, as multiple of these technologies co-evolve, but, it's pretty clear that SD-WAN has potential to further accelerate many of the changes that we're seeing in enterprises today as they try to become more digital in nature. >> Sure, SD-WAN is the future and it's here and now. >> Excellent. Once again, Sandhir, I'm sorry. Once again, So, you can cut this, I blew it. Sorry, Chuck. (laughing) Once again, Saurabh Sandhir, VP Product Management, Nuage Networks, an Nokia company, thanks for joining us here in this Cube Conversation. >> Thanks, Peter Thanks for your time. (upbeat digital music)

(upbeat digital music) >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris, and welcome to another, theCUBE Conversation. This week, we're in our Palo Alto studios, with Saurabh Sandhir. Saurabh is the Vice President of Product Management at Nuage Networks, which is a Nokia company. >> That's right. >> Saurabh, thank you very much for being here today. >> Thank you, Peter. Happy to be here. >> So, tell us a little bit about Let's start off. Tell us a little bit about Nuage Network. It's a new company out of a big company. What's the focus, how is Nokia helping? >> So, Nuage, well, while it's new but it's not quite new, we have been in the market for four years, and the way Nuage started was it was part of Alcatel-Lucent earlier, and now a part of Nokia, we are really the SDN BU or the SDN arm of Nokia. What we are focused on from the beginning is building a platform for secure, automated, connectivity for out data centers as well as WAN. And we have built that platform and successfully introduced it in many enterprises and service providers. So the unique aspect of Nuage is while in terms of innovation, while in terms of global market, we work as a start-up. While we have the service and support that's offered by Nokia as a mother ship so I have the unique, best in both worlds combination of a start-up as well as a large company. >> Nokia is still regarded as one of the finest brands in enterprise networking in the world. So, you said SD-WAN, software defined, wide area networking. >> Correct. It's a term that a lot of people have heard something about, but what are some of the high level benefits, number one, and then number two, why right now? >> Right. If you look at how enterprise connectivity services were offered down the ages, it was, you had to get some kind of a VPN access, whether it was an MPLS or a VPLS access, you got a dedicated leased line, you got a specific device, and that's how you would connect your enterprise branches to the network, and to each other. And SD-WAN, what it does, is it changes that paradigm. It provides secure automated connectivity in line with cloud principles for enterprises across the board. And in terms of why now, I think it is the combination of factors that arise from how the modern enterprise is evolving, and how there is a need to deliver, not just connectivity, but IT services over IP, whether it is access to the public cloud, whether it is access to SAS applications like Office 365, or Skype, or whether it is the fact that you want, not just pure connectivity, but you want application aware connectivity. All those trends coming together have created the demand, and the need for SD-WAN. >> So, you mentioned the cloud principles, and that has been a dominant feature of the industry. We call it the cloud experience, and the cloud experience is typically associated with abstracting and virtualizing hardware. So, in many respects what we're talking about is bringing that same class of technology to the wide area network, the circuits, the access points, everything else, by having a software defined experience that allows the business to rapidly re-configure, based on what its needs, against the access to the underlying WAN network that it has. Have I got that right? >> Absolutely correct. What SDN-WAN basically does is, if you look at a traditional branch router, it has access to a particular type of network, MPLS or VPLS, it has a data plane, it has a control plane, as the management plane by which you configure it. What SD-WAN does is takes those control and management planes, puts it in the cloud, takes the data plane and sort of makes it agnostic to the access technology. So, you run the data service, irrespective of whether you are on internet, whether you are on LTE, whether you are on MPLS, and using those principles of centralized control, centralized management, standardized x86 based devices offering CP services, and voila, you get SD-WAN. That's exactly correct. >> So, I can see what the advantages to an enterprise are-- >> Yep. >> I can reconfigure my business faster-- >> Yep >> Especially business that's more digital in nature. But, is this going to be something that the service providers are going to embrace? >> Absolutely, absolutely. While the enterprise, and the reason for services providers to embrace this, is, for the existing customer this offers an up sale opportunity, for the people who are already on their VPN services, this is an opportunity to broaden the scope from just pure connectivity, this is an opportunity for them to access customers who were, where the cost to serve was to high. Where they just could not go because they were outside of their geographic reach, or outside of their existing business modeling or business plan. >> Or, for example, you might be a mid-size business that required a more expensive circuit, or maybe not quite a more expensive circuit. The cost of setting the circuit up, servicing that customer, et cetera, might have been to great. >> Absolutely, and that's what SD-WAN sort of provides, a level playing field. In some ways, what it does, is it delinks the service, which is the VPN service from the transport, and the transport can be Internet, can be MPLS, and there you have the benefits for the service provider, for the enterprise, in terms of agility, in terms of time to service, in terms of overall cost. >> But, that's inside the nature of telecommunications oriented services. Is SD-WAN going to make it easier for service providers to perhaps start moving into more value added, data oriented services, above just the traditional communication services? >> That is the holy grail. That is really where the service providers are going and that's where enterprises want them to go, and the reason for that is, today, when you look at what an enterprise branch, or an enterprise office needs to operate, there is connectivity, but, then also there is security services, be it firewall, intrusion detection system, intrusion protection system, URL filtering, anti-virus. Take it with on top of that, there is transport optimization, WAN optimization services. There is emergence of IoT, there are wi-fi controllers. All of these services to the enterprise are being offered as a stand alone appliance, virtual or physical, and there is no centralized control. They are extremely rigid, and all of these providers lock-in. What SD-WAN does is, from a tel-co or service provider perspective, is, it also offers a platform to provide all of these services on top of SD-WAN. So, the benefit, it's a symbiotic relationship in the sense that benefits are both towards the enterprise, because they get these services and the service agility. There is resource optimization, source utilization, and cost, and from a tele-co perspective, the ability to sell beyond connectivity. That's one. >> So, if I'm your counter part at a service provider, I can now think in terms bringing up new service, with cheaper connection, lower cost, lower risk, bringing the customer on board, onboarding. At least, if not better, security, et cetera, because, I'm now using software defined approach to making all those connections, and, also, managing the service itself. >> That is correct. What it allows me to do is, in that role, is to provide on demand programmable services. So, for example, a firewall, as an enterprise I can go to a service provider portal and select which of my sites need, which of my branch sites need, firewall at what point in time. What kind of resources I want to assign to that firewall, and voila, on demand, I have it in place. And from a service provider's perspective, it's additional revenue, it's additional services. >> It's a software defined firewall, and it's much more automated, and much better organized, because it brings all the possibilities of software defined automation, which might include some machine learning, pattern recognition, et cetera, to bear on the wide area network world. >> That's correct, that's correct. >> Alright, so, we've talked a bit about security itself. What are, can you just give us one or two clear differences in how the old world handled security, and the software defined world's going to to handle security in the WAN regime. >> Right, so, the thing with security is, the security paradigm has changed massively. In the old world, which wasn't that old-- >> [Peter] It's still here in many respects. >> Still here, absolutely, still here. The security was all about east west, sorry, north south protection, which means that you are protecting towards threats and traffic coming inside and going outside of data center or your branch office, but what has happened, is most of the threats today, most of the attacks today, are focused on east west traffic, which is traffic within branches, from one branch to the other, within the data center itself. That's one. The second aspect is there a multi-cloud aspect to the enterprise IT. You don't access application only on the branch itself. Your applications that run in a data center that's owned by you, private DC, you run application that in a public cloud, AWS Azure, you have access to applications that are offered as software as a service, be it Office 365, Skype, Salesforce, and so on, and that has fundamentally changed the threat surface, or the threat perimeter, that you have to deal with, and you have to now essentially deal with threats that are coming within this whole expanded branch, or enterprise, territory or perimeter. >> So, you're effectively by virtualizing all of these different elements, you're reducing the threat surface. >> Yeah, what we are doing with SD-WAN is a few things. First, and foremost, is the fact that, as you were talking about, these value added services, you can bring these up on demand. You can put a firewall at a particular branch location, for say, guest wi-fi traffic. You can be specific. >> On this point, you can bring a new service up and not have it immediately associated with a whole bunch of capital expense. >> Exactly, exactly. On demand programmable, right, that's one. The second thing is the aspect of PAN network visibility. You also have the ability to see what exactly is going on in your network, the network that's spread across the branch office, a private data center, a public cloud site, and you have full visibility and insight into who's talking to whom, and at what time. >> [Peter] At scale. >> At scale. >> Very very big and very small and we know that there's a whole bunch of mid-size companies that can't afford a NOC type of capability, but, now through >> Yep SD-WAN they get some of the same benefits that the big guys get. >> Absolutely, and the threat aspect here is, using this information, you have closed loop automation, or machine learning, where, as opposed to saying all of my traffic has to go through this possible intrusion detection function, because, once in six months I might have a attack, versus, I see abnormal traffic pattern, and the system automatically optimizes that particular traffic flow to go through this particular function, and that allows it to be much more scalable, that allows for much more on demand, in terms of how we perceive security. not just as a lock that needs to remain on a door at all possible points in time, but, a function that can be instantiated when you need it. >> But, I also got to believe, and test me, I'm going to test you, you tell me if I'm right on this, that the historical conversation between a service provider and an enterprise, centered on the characteristics of the circuits that were being provided. And those circuits were often very much grounded in hardware, associated with the specific links, et cetera. And if you ended up with a security problem, you're now having a whole bunch of haggling and a very complex set of interactions. The minute you bring SD-WAN in on that, now you're talking about being able to use software in a software response, not necessarily a hardware response, to being actually able to identify, mediate, contain, et cetera, security threats on the WAN. Have I got that right? >> Correct, correct. Earlier, the conversation was really in terms of providing a circuit, providing connectivity, and what you were doing was, you were providing this connectivity over some kind of a private IP. That's where you were as a service provider, that's what the service you were offering. Now, you expand that same paradigm with security, with access to cloud, to really offer IT services on top of the IP layer, and that's the fundamental difference, that's the change. >> That break apart between the service and the transport. >> Absolutely. >> So, I kind of said the old way, and you corrected me, and said, wait a minute, this is really the way we're, SD-WAN is trying to make changes, trying to affect a new way of thinking. But there is another technology on the horizon here that actually could really accelerate this process, and that's 5G. >> Mm-hmm >> We're not going to go to far out here, but, tell us what some of the near term, how 5G and SD-WAN are likely to co-evolve, if you will. >> Right, right. They're two sides of the same coin if you ask me, and the reason is, while 5G, as with all the mobile technologies in the past, as we went from 2G, to 3G, to 4G is about speeds and feeds, and absolutely, we'll have more band width, low latency, sure, but what 5G is also about is access to applications from, that is in the cloud, or reside whether closer to the users. And in that sense, what 5G stands out to do, or sets to do, is create network slices, and provide access for applications such as, self-driving cars, such as remote surgery. All of these applications, not just need speeds and feeds, but, require dedicated access all the way from the user, onto an application that runs in the data center. And if you look at that paradigm, how SD-WAN plays in this is by providing a programmable network, on demand services, by providing on demand resource allocation. If you take SD-WAN, if you take 5G, then SD-WAN becomes a component of 5G, because if you are a user, say, conducting remote surgery, and you need access to an application that's in the data center, SD-WAN allows you to provide that overlay network, on top of existing services, and there is a certain quality of service, with a guaranteed access, that is critical to 5G. >> But, as you said, it's a fact that 5G's going to promise such greater device density-- >> Right. >> Within a network-- >> Yes. >> And in many respects, you're going to need SD-WAN to honestly take advantage of the benefits that 5G is going to provide. You may not need 5G to take advantage >> Yup, right. of the SD-WAN benefits, but, you're going to need SD-WAN if you're going to to take advantage of 5G. >> Right. >> So, that kind of suggests, that the companies that start, the service providers, and the enterprises that start, early on this SD-WAN thing, are likely to be in the best position to reap the full benefits of 5G when it shows up. Have I got that right? >> I absolutely believe so, because at the end the day, 5G is all about application-aware networking, right. A remote surgery application versus me trying to access Facebook cannot be treated the same way, and that's where SD-WAN comes in. And especially if you combine SD-WAN with some other technologies that are coming out of a company such as Nokia, then you have a end-to-end traffic engineered path that is been created all the way from the user on to the backend data center that enables all these applications-- >> Coming back to the point about security, there is one group that hopes you treat your Facebook and your surgery data the same way, and that's the bad guys. >> Absolutely, and that's what we need to protect against. >> This is a fascinating subject, and it's going to be a lot of discussion and change over the course of the next few years, as multiple of these technologies co-evolve, but, it's pretty clear that SD-WAN has potential to further accelerate many of the changes that we're seeing in enterprises today as they try to become more digital in nature. >> Sure, SD-WAN is the future and it's here and now. >> Excellent. Once again, Sandhir, I'm sorry. Once again, So, you can cut this, I blew it. Sorry, Chuck. (laughing) Once again, Saurabh Sandhir, VP Product Management, Nuage Networks, an Nokia company, thanks for joining us here in this Cube Conversation. >> Thanks, Peter Thanks for your time. (upbeat digital music)