fabric connect engagement propositions - jcmr technology · 2018. 8. 19. · avaya inc. –...

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Fabric Connect Engagement Propositions

Agile Networking – Proposition Brief

The Challenge

Historically, networking has been all about speeds and feeds; purchasing decisions were based on which product boasted

the best specifications for a given budget – getting the most bang for buck. This methodology was easy and straightforward.

It seemed quantitative, and was quite defendable to senior management.

However, in today’s digital age, things are changing. Businesses are realizing the strategic potential of the network, and are

becoming increasingly vocal about the network’s role in helping drive innovation and deliver revenue-enabling services.

Network convergence is a well-understood concept: the network no longer carries just data, but it also carries the voice calls,

allowing the PBX to be retired and efficiencies realized. Now, as we continue to converge more and more services onto the

“data network” – voice has become unified communication, and security/CCTV and building automation/IoT are obvious

candidates – the value of the network continues to rise. With more reward there’s also the potential for more risk.

The Business Imperative

Today, the goals of technology executives are tightly aligned with those of business leaders and corporate executives. One

of the top goals for every business leader today is to increase the level of business agility – that is, to become an

organization that can respond to new opportunities or competitive threats as quickly and effectively as possible. Those

organizations that are able to implement agile business processes will leapfrog their rivals. Companies that are slow to

capture market shifts or to respond to the competition can become irrelevant very quickly.

If the IT organization is truly going to service the business, their perspective and language must change. Business owners

are no longer asking for data sheets and comparative matrices. They are now asking questions like, “when can I roll out this

new business application?”, “why can’t we roll-out those new security cameras?”, or “what’s the delay with extending the Wi-

Fi network?”.

Too often the network has been blamed for being unable to accommodate – in a timely manner – the evolution necessary

that would allow business to grow and compete effectively. We, in the broadest sense, seem to have grown accustomed to

lengthy change cycles. With an Avaya Fabric Connect foundation however, IT can shift the work focus from mundane

maintenance to genuine value-added initiatives; applying skills to enhancing the business’s operational tempo and efficiency.

Avaya Fabric Connect technology provides the opportunity for companies to run the network at business speed.

The Solution

Avaya has created a new way of deploying and running networks, one that fundamentally transitions from traditional “cost

center” perception to that of “business enabler”, so that you can increase agility and enhance returns.

The Avaya Fabric Connect technology offers the following benefits:

No seismic changes to the network: Seismic changes are caused when significant reconfiguration of a substantial

number of network devices is involved in the change process. In a fabric scenario, these disruptive high-risk

changes are avoided, as the core of the network does not need to be touched.

Ability to make daily network updates: Fabric Connect enable real-time changes to be made because provisioning

is executed only at the edge. Leveraging Fabric Connect, the IT department can respond to business requests

immediately instead of being constrained by the 30- to 90-day wait for a change management window.



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Automation-ready: In a software-defined network (SDN), changes to the network will be coordinated and automated

through orchestration tools. The Fabric can be deployed today and serve as the foundation for a future SDN

deployment. IT operation teams can realize the benefits of simplified provisioning and then automate network

changes when SDN is deployed.

Fabric Connect can deliver such a radical shift in networking because it simplifies the network. The ability to build the core

and never be required to touch it again as a function of routine maintenance means changes can be made instantly with a

significant reduction in administrative burden and risk. However, the benefits of a fabric are more than theoretical.

The Technical Benefits

The Avaya SDN Fx™ Architecture provides significant technical benefits, characteristics that are simply not available when

using conventional networking technologies:

Edge-only provisioning that can be done in real-time. This delivers radical improvements to service agility: with no

requirement for maintenance windows, the time that a business waits to make a significant change in the network

can be dramatically reduced.

The Avaya Fabric Attach technology, an open technology that has already been adopted by Open vSwitch, delivers

an ability that facilitates the fully automatic attachment of end-points, such as embedded systems devices. This

empowers businesses to dynamically deploy services and devices in a highly virtualized world.

In 2015, Avaya commissioned Market Dynamics to independently research exactly what our Fabric Connect customer were

now experiencing. The results are genuinely eye-catching: including a 11x improvement (or 91% reduction) for

implementation time and an 7x improvement (or 85% reduction) in both configuration and troubleshooting times.

This research reinforces an earlier report that measured the impact and significance of the age-old network-versus-business

conundrum: how to make network adjustments, improvements and corrections without disrupting the business. The results

are dramatic: when network changes requiring a maintenance window have been made, IT networking professionals have

had to wait – on average – 31 days before they could make the changes necessary to the corporate network. One company

had to wait 9 months for such a maintenance opportunity to arrive.

Avaya provides 11x faster time-to-service/market. This is a direct outcome of a unique capability that Fabric Connect

delivers; Edge-only provisioning that can be done in real-time. This delivers radical improvements to service agility. With no

requirement for maintenance windows, the time that a business waits to make a significant change in the network can be

dramatically reduced. Instead of an average of about one month, changes can now typically be made the same day. Once

the decision to make a change is taken, IT can simply get on and deliver service to the Business.

Qualifying Questions

Here are some simple questions to ask, in order to test the water, to check if the opportunity is receptive to our message:

How does your organization currently handle the end-to-end change process: the time and effort that it takes to

plan, authorize, implement, and test changes in your network?

If the Business asked you to be faster and more agile in implementing new services how would you plan to

respond/address this requirement?

What are the typical causes for network issues in your organization, and how do you currently try to avoid

configuration errors/network outage caused by human failure?

How concerned is the Business about up-time and availability; do they restrict the windows that you’re allowed to

perform maintenance?



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Target Audience

It is vital to address this pitch to the appropriate people within the business, those with direct line responsibility for network

survivability:

CIO

CFO

Head of IT

IT Manager

Network Manager

Facilities Manager

Service Delivery Manager

Customer Content

The following content has been specifically created to support this proposition:

The Smart Approach to Networking for Enhanced Agility

http://www.avaya.com/usa/documents/networking_for_enhanced_agility_dn7836.pdf



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Cyber Security – Proposition Brief

The Challenge

Increasingly, commercial businesses of all shapes and size are being targeted by cyber attacks, and the threats are from

both internal and external sources. Antiquated policy and an over-reliance upon conventional perimeter defense leaves

companies ill-prepared to face digital age threats. The challenge is multi-faceted and so to must be the solution; it is crucial

that businesses build networking solutions that embed security in their core.


In an age of online alternatives, reputation is everything. Businesses that build and maintain a healthy reputation will thrive,

those that fail the security challenge, exposing their own and/or their customers’ data, face an uphill, and ultimately

expensive, fight to survive.

The impacts of a successful cyber attack are multiple:

Direct financial loss. Cyber attack victims, in the short-term, face lost business and lost revenue. Additionally, they

are often forced into implementing expensive fixes to immediately plug security vulnerabilities.

Indirect financial loss. Where the hack involves customers and third parties, businesses typically face the prospect

significant compensation and even the possibility of legal action (including class action lawsuits).

Customer abandonment. Today, very few companies enjoy the luxury of a monopoly position. Cyber attacks make

good headlines and the inevitable media coverage – normally exaggerated in the first instance – often causes a

pronounced churn of Customers seeking a more trustworthy alternative.

Government fines and restrictive actions. Most industries are subject to statutory requirements with regards to data

protection. Cyber attacks that involve the loss of Customer data can attract significant fines, and may negatively

affect future merger and acquisition plans.

De-valuation of the Brand. Past marketing investments can be completely undone overnight; once-powerful Brands

become the punchline of the inevitable jokes.

The UK’s TalkTalk is a case in point. The target of sustained attacks is feeling the impact:

It’s cost them £60m to date; that’s a combination of £15m in lost revenue and £45m in “exceptional” costs.

They have lost 30% of their pre-attack share price; this scale of loss impacts their ability to execute on business

plan and potentially makes them a takeover target.

They’ve lost 101,000 Customers since the attack.

TalkTalk has been forced to testify before a Government Committee; further spotlighting their plight and opening the

door for official sanction.

TalkTalk is just one of many high-profile victims of recent attacks:

eBay had to ask 145m users to change their passwords after hackers stole customers' names, addresses, numbers

and dates of birth.

A cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment resulted in a huge data leak, including private details of 47,000

employees and famous actors.

Hackers selectively published names from 37m Ashley Madison customers.

A database containing names, email addresses, birth dates and phone numbers of 656,723 JD Wetherspoon

customers was successfully hacked.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/02/02/talktalk-loses-101000-customers-after-hack/



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The Solution

The Avaya SDN Fx™ Architecture delivers a solution that has, at its foundation, a network virtualization technology that

naturally compartmentalizes traffic. Fabric Connect automatically partitions traffic, by community of interest, into virtual

containers and maintains this separation end-to-end across the network. Besides delivering efficient connectivity, this

capability the added advantage of effectively denying unauthorized intruders the opportunities to “node-hop” that borderless

access affords. This results in a step-change improvement for a business’ overall security posture. Fabric Connect is an

enhanced implementation of the next-generation network virtualization standard, infinitely more powerful than conventional

approaches.

Fabric Connect integrates our Enterprise-class access control solution, and seamlessly complements multi-layered threat

detection and protection technologies. The Avaya SDN Fx™ Architecture redefines responsible networking in an age when

cyber attack is an ever-present threat.


The Avaya SDN Fx™ Architecture provides significant technical benefits; characteristics that are simply not available when


Built natively as a series of isolated virtual networks that interconnect only specifically provisioned end-points,

Fabric Connect handles traffic forwarding in a fundamentally unique way. Traffic belonging to a specific application

or service is encapsulated with the appropriate header at the Edge, and remains isolated – end-to-end – from all

other traffic and opaque to intermediate network nodes. This mitigates the risk of traffic blurring between VLANs or

seeping through generic routing tables.

Being Ethernet-centric, the Fabric Connect network topology is invisible from an IP perspective; there are no

inherent hop-by-hop IP paths to trace, therefore the network topology cannot be traced using remote IP-based

hacking tools.

o TalkTalk’s attackers were only teenagers, using tools acquired from the Dark Web.

Individual end-points and complete Services are transported, fully isolated from each other, delivering a true “ships-

in-the-night” capability that we call “stealth networking”. This unique capability is very complementary to specialist

service overlay, supporting data protection for security conscious companies.

o TalkTalk’s web site was – apparently – hacked, and the borderless nature of the internal network permitted

the attackers to roam at will until they found data of sufficient value.

Deployed in concert with an Enterprise-class access control broker such as Identity Engines, Fabric Connect

leverages authentication to create a very effective policy enforcement point for both wired and wireless end-points;

no connectivity is provided without hosts first proving their bona fides. Failed or suspect hosts are always

completely isolated and can be mapped to quarantined or remediation zones.



What’s been your organization’s experience of network attacks – or worse still – breaches?

What are the main concerns that you have about threats to your network?

The “insider threat” is often described as the most dangerous/difficult to protect against, what sort of precautions

are you taking to ensure that the network is compartmentalized?

I’m assuming that your organization has a plan to address the cyber security threat, and respond to actual

attacks/breaches; who are the stakeholders driving that and how often is it reviewed/tested?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11949468/TalkTalk-phone-network-hit-by-significant-cyber-attack.html



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Defense-in-depth often quoted as best-practice, where does securing the network infrastructure sit in your

organization’s strategy?

Target Audience


survivability:

Chief Information Security Officer/Chief Security Officer

Head of IT Security

Head of Risk

Compliance Officer

Internet/Cyber Security Consultant

Network Architect

Customer Content


The Smart Approach to Networking for Enhanced Cyber Security

http://www.avaya.com/usa/documents/smart_approach_to_networking_for_enhanced_cyber_security_dn7834.pdf



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BYOD/Mobility/Unified Access – Proposition Brief

The Challenge

BYOD and Mobility is a now reality for many workplaces: Corporate IT has to develop ways to effectively balance the issues

of new-age agility versus traditional control. Wi-Fi networking has evolved from afterthought bolt-on, grudgingly added to

provide occasional access, to, for many, the first-choice connectivity option. Of course, for dedicated tablet users, it’s the

only choice. This transformation presents its own challenges in terms of authenticating users and authorizing access.

Additionally, there’s now even greater need to effectively segregate traffic throughput the network, partitioning Wireless-

based access traffic from the regular network. Agile deployment, efficient connectivity, and robust scalability complete the

wish-list.


Many businesses are seeking opportunities to differentiate themselves and gain competitive advantage. Mobilizing their

workforce is one option, making them more agile, versatile, and dynamic. For long-serving employees, Mobility offers new,

refreshing choice and enables flexibility about how they go about their jobs. However, for the Millennials that are now

entering the workforce, rampant consumerization of devices and connectivity during the last decade means they have never

known anything else.

Alternatively, some organizations know that Mobility is now an essential part of the user experience; schools, universities,

and education in general being a prime example of where it’s impossible to imagine a future without Mobility, and BYOD,

being intrinsically linked to success (or failure).

Healthcare is also increasingly reliant upon the “networkification” of a mass of monitoring appliances and diagnostic senses,

many of which can only be wirelessly attached. Conferencing, events, and public access are largely dominated by the

expectation of universal wireless access. Indeed, the Internet of Things phenomenon is completely predicated on ubiquitous

wireless connectivity; some of this will be delivered by cellular, some low-energy Bluetooth, but much will be based on Wi-Fi.

The Solution

Avaya is leading the way in creating unified access solutions that seamlessly integrate wireless with traditional access and

the greater network. Ensuring a holistic, cohesive approach to access control, leveraging the Enterprise-class authentication

and authorization capabilities of our Identity Engines product line, delivers what matters most: a high-quality experience,

independent of the access technology.

Wired-like performance is important for mobile users. Consumerization sets high expectations, and users demand the ability

to run the full range of applications anywhere, anytime. To help, fine-grained visibility and control delivers predictable

service, ensuring that the network is not crippled by unregulated bandwidth-hungry applications.

A flexible, scalable, and adaptable architecture is important, as business requirements change and the inevitable increases

in capacity demands and geographic spread must be effectively managed. A unified access solution can mean an overall

reduction in equipment requirements and costs, but only when the right choices are made. An integrated architecture helps

ensure that everything reasonably expected from a high-performance Wireless LAN is already built into the Access Points,

readily available as and when circumstances demand.






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The Avaya WLAN 9100 Series is an ‘application-first’ wireless offering. It not only delivers wired-like performance

and predictability, essential for a high quality experience, but also supports fine-grained control to help ensure

mission-critical applications come first.

Our Wireless solutions integrate next-generation application recognition and control directly at the network edge,

where it is needed most: applications can be appropriately prioritized, throttled, or even blocked, helping provide the

very best user experience.

The two-tier architecture is cost-effective, with each and every AP integrating controller-like capabilities. This

reduces overall equipment and infrastructure requirements and significantly simplifies deployments.

Avaya has invested heavily in developing a versatile range of software-programmable radios that can switch from

2.4GHz to 5GHz when needed, as the client base evolves to 5GHz. Indeed, with our software-upgradeable

technology businesses can future-proof their network, creating a clear path to 802.11ac and other wireless

technologies and avoiding the need to replace hardware.


an ability that facilitates the fully automatic attachment of end-points, including our Wireless Access Points. This





Built natively as a series of isolated virtual networks that interconnect only specifically provisioning end-points,

Fabric Connect delivers a true “ships- in-the-night” capability that we call “stealth networking”. For example, traffic

belonging to a Guest W-Fi access network is encapsulated with the appropriate header at the Edge, and remains

isolated – end-to-end – from all other traffic and opaque to intermediate network nodes.

Wireless, when done right, can be a strategic IT advantage that will enable businesses to do more than ever before. The

Avaya WLAN 9100 Series – delivered as part of the SDN Fx™ Architecture – allows organizations to take full advantage of

the applications that matter, anywhere, anytime. This enables a more agile, responsive organization and provides a higher

quality user experience. Our integrated Unified Access solutions reduces equipment requirements and costs, and it protects

investment against inevitable increases in capacity demands with an upgrade capability that is robust and simple.



How Is Mobility and Wireless viewed within your organization; is it a tactical necessity or a strategic initiative?

A consistent access control mechanism for both Wired and Wireless users is often cited as a major stumbling block

when considering a unified access solution; how does your organization address this now?

How do you currently insure the Wireless experience when considering applications such as video and streaming?

Have you already experienced having to churn a first-generation Wireless deployment; how do you plan to future-

proof and cater for increased demand?

Have you been faced with requests to urgently implement new Wireless services within the organization; how do

you currently address this?

Target Audience


survivability:

CIO



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COO

Head of IT

IT Manager

Network Manager

Customer Content


The Smart Approach to Networking for Enhanced Mobility

http://www.avaya.com/usa/documents/smart_approach_to_networking_for_enhanced_mobility_dn7846.pdf



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Internet of Things – Proposition Brief

The Challenge

Businesses are starting to experience the Internet of Things. This networking phenomenon sees all manner of

unconventional embedded-system devices simply appearing, expecting connectivity. Building automation, healthcare

systems, manufacturing, environmental monitoring, infrastructure management, transportation; the list of applications just

goes on and on. In a change from the norm, many IoT transactions involve pure machine-to-machine data transmissions,

and less so on traditional user-initiated interactions.

IoT is seen as the enabling technology for all manner of “Smart”: Smart Homes, Smart Schools, Smart Cities, Smart

Government, and Smart Grid. However, this is also important for the Enterprise: the general consumerization of technology

will also drive IoT into businesses. What’s crucial is the agility and robustness of the underlying information technology

infrastructure: The Smart School – for example – can only be successfully delivered when the network is appropriately

“smart”.


Scale is the challenge for IoT, both in terms of the huge increase in the number of connected devices and also in the amount

of data that transits the network. Individually, IoT devices do not typically generate significant amounts of data, but a huge

multiplier factor kicks in, as does the linkage between IoT and Big Data. Given that IoT represents a 24x365 requirement,

always-on availability becomes an important capability, as does an efficient, scalable, and virtualization-friendly Data Center

network.

In some cases, businesses will operate a local, self-contained IoT-enabled domain, while in others they will simply be part of

a national or even global environment. Either way, scalability and availability will be critical network attributes.

Building automation is an obvious use-case, one that has huge horizontal application, and is projected to

significantly reduce energy consumption and deliver cost and environmental savings.

Healthcare systems is an area that has application both within dedicated inpatient facilities and out the general

community, improving patient outcomes and improving resource efficiency.

Workplace Security and Public Safety are two, closely-aligned areas where IoT is expected to play a greater role,

doing away with the reliance upon human monitoring and reactive response

Manufacturing has long been a user of, indeed an early adopter of, automation technology; to date this has largely

been based on closed systems using proprietary technology.

Infrastructure management, whether it be the flow of highway traffic or the integration into the national grid of

energy generated from renewable sources, is becoming increasingly diverse and complex.

Environmental monitoring typically uses sensors to assist in the monitoring of air or water quality, atmospheric or

soil conditions, and can even include the monitoring of wildlife movements and their habitats.

Transportation, including the integration of communications, control, and information processing across various all

manner of transportation systems is another application of IoT.

The Solution

Many network virtualization technologies are based on original VLAN virtualization which severely limits the number of

individual services that can be supported. However, the Avaya Fabric Connect technology, being based on the Shortest

Path Bridging standard, supports a 24-bit header that allows it to scale up to 16 million unique services. This enables our

networking solution to be much more scalable, and deliver broader, more individualized network connectivity.



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In the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), end-point devices – often unattended devices – need to be deployed in real-

time, without the requirement for IT intervention or manual configuration, with a centralized policy engine defining and

policing device connectivity in compliance with business policy. Avaya’s award-winning Identity Engines is an ideal solution,

providing enhanced user and/or device authentication and policy control.

Because it is neither feasible nor desirable to attempt to pre-provision every possible application segment at every Edge

node, Fabric Connect empower network connectivity – VLAN, QoS, Policy, whatever is needed to deliver this service – is

dynamically extended to the Edge. Individual networking sessions may last only minutes, or hours, or perhaps days.

Regardless, the key attribute is that service is automatically provisioned – “spun- up” if you will – without manual intervention

or pre-configuration. Similarly, once the session terminates, the same-said networking configuration is now automatically

undone, removed from the Access node, and consigned to history.








an ability that facilitates the fully automatic attachment of end-points, such as embedded systems devices. This


Individual end-points and complete services are transported, fully isolated from each other, delivering a true “ships-

in-the-night” capability that we call “stealth networking”. This unique capability is very complementary to specialist

service overlay, supporting the likes of PCI for financial transactions, and data protection in the healthcare, legal,

and financial sectors.

Deployed in concert with an Enterprise-class access control broker such as Identity Engines, Fabric Connect

leverages authentication to create a very effective policy enforcement point for wired and wireless end-points; no

connectivity is provided without hosts first proving their bona fides. Failed or suspect hosts are always completely

isolated and can be mapped to quarantined or remediation zones.

Fabric Connect – uniquely – makes the traditional cocktail of protocol complexity redundant for the mainstream, and

businesses can now build a robust, reliable, scalable and virtualized architecture that is also free of complexity.



I assume that your organization is/has evaluated how it may be impacted by, or proactively leverage, IoT; how

would you describe your strategy?

Third party initiates are often how IoT is first introduced into a business. If this something that you’re seeing,

perhaps with the likes of your building automation or workplace security systems?

Perhaps your organization in partnership with others that will be involved in the delivery of, or implementation of,

SmartX solutions?

How is the rise in non-traditional and embedded systems networking devices evolving in your organization?

How would your business processes benefit from reliable, real-time access to device data from across the network,

or in your Customer base?



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Target Audience


survivability:

Chief Information Security Officer/Chief Security Officer

Head of IT Security

Facilities Manager

Building Manager

Head of Process Control

Head of Digital

CIO

Customer Content


The Smart Approach to Networking for Enhanced IoT

http://www.avaya.com/usa/documents/the_smart_approach_to_networking_for_enhanced_iot_dn7848.pdf

fabric connect engagement propositions - jcmr technology · 2018. 8. 19. · avaya inc. –...

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