Transforming Network Infrastructure Week in Review: Datapath.io, GAO, Microsoft, Windstream

Automation, consolidation, optimization, orchestration, and transformation are all important trends in data center networking today. And that was evident in this week’s Transforming Network Infrastructure coverage.

As I reported earlier this week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recently published a report offering an update on data center consolidation and optimization efforts by the federal government. A few years ago, there was a realization that the federal government’s move to digitize content and make it available online has created the need for more and more compute, security, and storage over time. And that has led to data center sprawl and the inefficient use of power and data center resources.

So, as is happening in some areas of the private sector, the federal government has been working to consolidate its data centers and just generally optimize its IT resources by leveraging new technology. While some progress has been made on this front, it’s not all smooth sailing, and so far the cost savings have been less than expected, the GAO reported.

In other recent data center news, service provider Windstream has introduced a new service called SDNow. This new offering for data center cloud applications leverages open orchestration capabilities to accelerate the delivery of optical wavelength services and provide superior customer experiences, Windstream explains.

SDNow, which stands for software-defined network orchestrated waves, simplifies the monitoring and management of multi-vendor optical layers using the Windstream optical network as a programmable resource. The company has an agile, DevOps-style approach to automation development, which streamlines service provisioning.

“Providing SDNow services to our customers via multi-vendor service orchestration and automated provisioning truly differentiates Windstream in the marketplace,” suggests Mike Shippey, president of Windstream Wholesale. “Consumers of SDN-provisioned services will see improvement in their customer experience through the removal of human touch-points in the service fulfillment process, and improved accuracy through automated standard configurations.”

Automation and network monitoring are two of the five themes of a recent Transforming Network Infrastructure article from Tatiana Shchelkanogova, the online marketing manager at Datapath.io. This company offers services that allow organizations to send their traffic through the best possible routes to ensure users have a high-quality experience relative to their apps or/and websites.

In her article, she also mentions that optimization, scheduling regular maintenance, and traffic balancing are also key to getting the most out of data centers and networks, and providing the best possible customer experiences. And she notes an IT Priorities Survey indicating that in 2013 only 39 percent of system engineers identified network management as a top concern, but adds that by 2015 that percentage increased to 44 percent.

Transforming Network Infrastructure this week also reported on a partnership between Microsoft Accelerator and Wanda Group, a conglomerate of commercial properties, culture, internet, and finance which had 796.2 yuan in assets and operating revenue of 255 billion yuan in 2016.

This relationship has Wanda Group tapping the resources to Microsoft Accelerator to enable the next wave of digital transformation of commercial properties and the retail industry in China.