Todays consumers and business professionals prefer to

use what they want, when they want. As a result, many

on-demand services have been created, from television
and movies for consumers, to software and printing
services for businesses.
Going even further, IT organizations now have access to
on-demand data center services, known as cloud computing
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). On-demand data center
capacity can be organized as a private cloud, either with
completely organization-owned facilities, or with some
hybrid combination using privately allocated resources in
cloud data centers. Alternatively, public cloud IaaS provides
an almost limitless supply of rst-come, rst-served, pay-as-
you-go computing capacity.
According to a recent Gartner survey, an increasing number
of companies are using the cloud for production computing
(19 percent) and public cloud storage services (20 percent),
resulting in an estimated $109 billion overall cloud market in
2012, growing at 20 percent
1
.
IaaS refers to server computing and storage resources
offered by a cloud service provider. Server computing is
typically offered in measured CPU and memory instances
or virtual machines, on demand, out of a pool of resources
that can rapidly expand or contract. Moving production
workloads to the cloud results in infrastructure cost savings
and increased staff and user productivity. Storage in the
cloud includes basic object storage (for les), block storage
(for databases), and emerging cloud storage services for
archival and data warehouse applications.
Since the cloud is only as good as the network that supports
it, more attention now is coming into focus on the
connectivity between data centers for both access to IaaS
services and for workload orchestration between facilities.
The cloud connectivity requirement results in an on-demand
networking capability that matches the on-demand cloud
services for compute and storage: the Network as a Service
(NaaS), a variable network connectivity service that can
dynamically adapt to off-peak and peak requirements.
The promise of bandwidth-on-demand has not yet been fully
realized due to the lack of a complete ecosystem offering.
New technology that uses software to virtualize the network
and program the network by decoupling the network control
from the topology is now becoming available. At the same
time, user requirements and interest are driving the rapid
evolution of cloud services to build a complete ecosystem
for on-demand compute, storage, AND network. Together,
these events promise to make NaaS a reality.
For example, Ciena recently commissioned a third-party
survey
2
that found that an increase in bandwidth usage was
the top challenge affecting network connectivity planning
and requirements. Bandwidth usage was a concern for at
least four out of ten organizations across all vertical
industries such as nance, media and entertainment, utilities,
and manufacturing.
The survey results showed that, to help address increases in
bandwidth usage and related costs, more than eight in ten
organizations are interested in NaaS.
Figure 1 shows the high level of interest in NaaS in each
country, especially in Germany, with 56 percent of the
respondents being very interested.
IS IT FINALLY TIME FOR
NETWORK AS A SERVICE?
Whitepaper W
Netherlands Germany France UK
20%
31%
32%
30%
47%
56%
54%
23%
62%
18%
15%
12%
Very Interested.
Somewhat Interested.
Not Interested. I prefer a constant bandwidth model.
Figure 1. Variable Network Interest per Country
1
Gartner Says Worldwide Cloud Services Market to Surpass $109 Billion in 2012, http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2163616
2
Online survey conducted by Vanson Bourne, December 2012, surveying 400 senior IT decision makers from the UK, Germany, France, and The Netherlands.
The interest in a variable network connectivity service was
also high in each business sector, as shown in Figure 2. More
than 80 percent of organizations in the nance, manufacturing,
logistics, business services, media and entertainment, and
pharmaceutical sectors were very or somewhat interested.
In addition to the potential for lower costs, these
organizations felt that the ability to tailor network services to
specic company requirements was a very important factor.
Service providers are responding by either adding network
to their cloud services or adding cloud to their network
services. Many organization mergers and acquisitions have
occurred recently, and further work is still needed for
seamless integration, partnering, and service differentiation.
Based on the survey results, these new service providers
should provide variable network connectivity for both the
cloud access and cloud backbone networks. The cloud
access network is used for workload bursting to a cloud
service provider; the cloud backbone network is a high-
performance connection between cloud data centers for
workload balancing. An intelligent, dynamic network for
cloud access and backbone would help keep costs in hand
while enabling organizations to tailor network and
workloads for peak efciency and performance.
As a result, in-house data centers can be seamlessly network
connected to collocation or managed services facilities and
to on-demand cloud data centers for a multi-site, hybrid data
center model. This model supports full mobility and
orchestration of workloads so virtual machines and storage
operate in the most efcient data center location. This Data
Center Without Walls model enables IT organizations to
minimize costs while providing improved services. NaaS with
dynamic capacity, intelligent workload orchestration, and
on-demand performance is coming soon.
Networks that change
the way you compete.
Figure 2. Variable Network Interest by Sector
48%
46%
38%
37%
33%
31%
27%
14%
27%
51%
49%
44%
44%
43%
41% 11%
11%
14%
16%
26%
18%
52% 34%
68% 5%
Finance
Manufacturing
Logistics/transport
Business and
Professional Services
Media and
Entertainment
Utilities
Pharma
Public Sector
Very Interested.
Somewhat Interested.
Not Interested. I prefer a constant bandwidth model.
Ciena may from time to time make changes to the products or specications contained herein without notice.
Copyright 2013 Ciena Corporation. All rights reserved. WP130A4 2.2013