The Network Infrastructure Business is about to undergo its own Fork Lift Upgrade.

The conventional enterprise marketing strategy is to introduce new technology and product features at a rate which is intended to serve as a catalyst for driving equipment upgrades.  It's a strategy vendors have come to depend on for their primary means of revenue growth.  Unanticipated changes in business priorities, however, always puts the strategy at risk and undermines even the best laid plans. Examples of recent shifts in network infrastructure resource priorities are:

•  Talking about the power of the network has been replaced by discussing the power consumption of the network.
• Protecting the enterprise network from incoming traffic used to be the focus. Today, the focus is connectivity management (i.e. Network Access Control [NAC],) data asset protection and implementing risk management using Network Behavioral Analysis solutions (NBA.) In other words, the focus has flipped; it’s about looking at what's traversing and coming out of the enterprise network.
•   Activity in the Wi-Fi market is now more about deploying location based services and perimeter firewalls.

On-going shifts in network resource priorities, while significant, are evolutionary and somewhat predictable. A bigger challenge facing network infrstructure companies is managing the impact Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and cloud-based virtual enterprises could have on the market. If the IaaS market experiences significant growth, the network infrastructure market and everything associated with managing a network will be eventually transformed into a service industry. No on-site data centers, no wired infrastructure to manage and the on-going security challenge for an enterprise to properly differentiate between desktop and mobile user access is essentially eliminated.

For companies selling into the enterprise market this could mean a dramatic change in the customer profile and that customer's business needs – since the customer is now the Iaas provider. If you're a network infrastructure vendor and wish to retain your current set of customers, then now is the time to start thinking about how IaaS can be integrated with your existing business and consider scaling back the enterprise channel sales plans.

The IaaS Market's Secret Sauce: Automated Network Provisioning

Before handing over the IT farm to a 3^rd party, if you're a CIO for an enterprise, an initial question to seek an answer to is getting a clearer picture of the IaaS benefits. The benefits derived from migrating to IaaS need be more than simply a reduction in real estate or lease expenditures and leveraging economies of scale within the service provider.

If it were the situation, then migrating to IaaS could potentially turn into nothing more than a cost transfer that provides a marginal benefit over the long run. So, when does it make sense to make the switch? The answer requires taking a closer look at the type of automated network provisioning an IaaS provider is using.

In particular, the technology driving advances in automated network service provisioning, over time, is going to become more important to an IaaS provider. Automated network service provisioning solutions ultimately will have the critical task of binding together all the services that make up a private cloud-based virtual enterprise. From the services associated with user authorization, usage accounting, and dynamic allocation of compute resources to configuring the data loss prevention (DLP) services, they will all be eventually controlled by an automated network service provisioning.

Without question, server virtualization is the foundation technology upon which the cloud-based computing business is built. Virtualization technology also receives the most fanfare when the topic of discussion is cloud based computing. Because of the critical role that automated network service provisioning has in improving operational efficiency it deserves time in the limelight, too.

There are, however, two fundamental business issues that both a prospective IaaS tenant and IaaS provider need to address regarding tapping into the revenue potential and cost benefits of an IaaS business:

• How to overcome the uncertainty around the IaaS business model becoming nothing more than a cost transfer exercise for the CIO.

• How to take the cost out of change management whether it is for the IaaS provider or the tenant.

The answer is to incorporate automated business rule-driven network provisioning into the IaaS solution.

Why Business Rule-Driven Network Provisioning is King.

Business rule-driven network service provisioning enables both IaaS tenants and IaaS providers to define change requests using business terms instead of defining network element specific tasks. This simplifies the change management process by eliminating the need to define network element specific provisioning tasks. The built-in intelligence of the network provisioning tackles the network element specific details, determines the specific configuration dependencies and then securely administrates the change request.

IaaS customers will be ultimately seeking three operational benefits from IaaS:

• Equal or greater business agility when deploying new applications.

• Simplified regulatory compliance management.

• Being able to periodically optimize their enterprise workflows.

Business rule-driven automated network service provisioning can serve these needs in spades and reduces operational costs. For an IaaS provider and its customers to derive the full benefit from business rule-driven provisioning, the network provisioning software for an IaaS deployment, at a minimum, needs to:

• Be purpose-built for multi-tenant deployments.

• Include a web-based portal that enables tenants to use business rule-driven provision.

The latter is about ensuring that enterprises can continue to maintain a high degree of business agility within their IT infrastructure. The former is about the technology underpinnings of an IaaS provider’s solution and sheds light on their ability to scale the service. If the automated network provisioning software was not designed from the ground-up to be a multi-tenant platform, nor capable of supporting easily configured customer-specific portals for monitoring and provisioning, it's less likely to scale to meet the unique business needs of an IaaS provider.

As compared to the importance of server virtualization technology, which is considered “the” enabling technology for cloud computing, automated network service provisioning when business rule-driven: drives out variable costs, improves efficiency and ultimately can become the face of the business by virtue of its portal capabilities. These benefits, over time, will elevate the interest and market demand for automated network service provisioning solutions to the same level as virtualization technology has today.

If you're a CIO who is considering shifting IT services to a cloud-based virtual enterprise and want to add some thunder to the solution. Then, make sure the IaaS provider's tenant portal offers business rule-driven provisioning. Otherwise, your cloud-based virtual enterprise initiative will become grounded -- leaving you in a fog.

Let the Network Infrastructure Market Disruption Begin...

The upside of using business rule-driven provisioning is it eliminates, margin robbing, variable costs associated with change management for both the IaaS provider and its tenants. The operational benefits could, whenever a CIO does an IaaS cost benefit analysis, potentially give an IaaS provider a sustainable competitive edge by tipping the scales in favor of IaaS – further strengthening the IaaS value proposition value.

IaaS providers can also take advantage of their ability to offer new services to their customers who would otherwise have to wait until the “in-a-box” version is released. For example, the ability to offer enterprise risk management services to customers. This is why IaaS is going to stick with customers. The combination of benefits ranging from the cost advantage when using business rule-driven network provisioning, web portal convenience and the ability to offer new enterprise services to customers sooner makes the IaaS value proposition very compelling.

When CIO's begin allocating an increasing percentage of their budget to IaaS, it will change the how companies serving the network infrastructure market operate. These companies will need to restructure their sales channels, business model and marketing activities. Whereas the enterprise market product mantra today is “ease of use”, within the IaaS market it’s going to be about scalability, flexibility, accounting features and manageability. Because these are fundamental changes rather than incremental changes, significant growth within the IaaS market is going to be a catalyst for many companies in the network infrastructure market to fork lift upgrade their enterprise business plans and operations.