SECURE NETWORK EVOLUTION
Part 2: Network as a Service (NaaS)
About This Page
This page is developed from work of the ONUG Collaborative NaaS Project and authored and posted on the Open Network User Group Web site including reviews and contributions from Steve Wood, Cisco, Ken Patel, Verizon and members of the ONUG Collaborative NaaS Project Team – Mark Fishburn – June 2024
The ONUG Collaborative NaaS Project is exploring the business requirements, leading use cases and underlying technologies critical for the adoption of Network-as-a-Service by large enterprises.
The first iteration was presented at the ONUG Fall 2023 conference. It continues to evolve providing the context for use cases.
Complete NaaS Story PDF
NaaS is Enterprise-centric
NaaS is enterprise-centric rather than network or cloud-centric. This is the fundamental difference from other approaches such as SASE, or SSE, IP or Ethernet Services and MPLS. It’s a layered approach that is
- Agnostic to the manner and number of providers that an enterprise uses to provide the service. Large and multinational organizations might use several concurrently.
- Transparent to the underlying architectures and the location of cloud, edge and data-center-based workloads. Sensitive to Critical Infrastructure OT direct links while using the internet for IT networking.
- Independent of the automation, identity, authentication and security policies and implementation such as SASE and SSE.
- Flexible to the on-demand business requirements as organizations constantly migrate independent of underlying technologies.
The Enterprise Aspiration
NaaS brings the opportunity for enterprises of all sizes to have a simple transparent interface with the network without having to get involved with how it works knowing that it will enable their applications (wherever they are situated) to work with consistent performance and work securely. The services are available on demand via subscription without being locked in to any provider or vendor.
Implications
As stated, NaaS differs from previous network and cloud-centric architectures and offerings such as SASE and SSE is that the focus is switched to the business, performance and application dynamics of today’s organizations. This is, after all, what technology must serve. It begins and ends with the business priorities supported by the network suppliers, cloud providers and integrators – rather than business requirements that can be accommodated (or not) by the network and cloud service providers.
The Need for Network as a Service
The executive priorities of agility and responsiveness to business change have not been served by current/past network and cloud paradigms. What is missing for today’s services is virtualization and on-demand service creation. The result has been long, complex and inflexible network implementation cycles.
Lack of support for low cost, simplified, connectivity has prevented, delayed or been unresponsive to rapidly changing business conditions such as frequent reorganization, new locations or M&A situations. Further, the complexity of network solutions of applications that span multiple cloud providers and multiple locations in multiple geographies make matters worse. In fact, being drawn into onerous support of complex architectures does not serve organizations. Added to this, what amounts to a cyber war creates added business risk, impeding running a successful, profitable operation.
Collectively, these amount to a counter-productive constraint on business rather than an enabler. It goes against CIOs and IT managers goals of minimizing network complexity, costs, risk and simplifying management, provisioning, procuring and maintenance.
At a time of simple on-demand consumption, such a fixed approach to networking is an anachronism. This page covers the implementation choices reflecting the amount of delegation to providers that work for the enterprise IT departments. Security is integral, with verification rather than trust being the watchword.
NaaS Attributes and Business Impact
Based on cost and business dynamics, the following is a deeper dive into why the attributes of NaaS impact the enterprises business goals. To be somewhat flippant, it comes down to what can only be summarized as a “wake me when it’s over and leave me to run my business” attitude to networking.
Defining Network as a Service
Defining Network-as-a-Service
NaaS provides a cloud-enabled, usage-based consumption model that allows users to acquire and orchestrate a network without owning, building, or maintaining their own infrastructure. The business requirements outlined above are driving the need for agile digital platforms for delivering the wide range of cloud, networking and security services utilized by large organizations. NaaS features a number of attributes that are aligned with critical business objectives.
NaaS Offers Choices to Match Enterprise Requirements
These choices vary driven by resources, expertise and preferred supplier relationships. It seems highly likely that NaaS solutions will require several business collaborations. The following are three examples of choices for NaaS but combinations from several suppliers may need to be accommodated in different geographies or enterprise divisions:
Managed Services
A turnkey managed network to plug in client devices. Encompasses connectivity and security services as a package. Includes: customer premises equipment, third-party delivered and operated, provider delivered and operated, co-managed by customer and MSP and is dashboard/portal driven.
- Typical contracted outcomes include latency and application performance levels, availability, security and interoperability
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
A cloud-enabled platform that allows creation of custom transport service via virtualized service objects without owning, building, or maintaining their own infrastructure.
- PaaS features: On-demand service enablement via Portal or APIs, outcome-based consumption, connectivity + network services, consumption-based billing and service agility.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
An automated platform that allows creation of customer defined “bare-metal” services on another provider’s premises and/or equipment. Provisioning may be traditional or API/portal orchestrated.
- IaaS features: Racks, power, servers and network devices managed by the provider, configured by customer/clients. Lifecycle management by provider and customer managed/owned devices. IaaS may just apply to areas of operations where applications or operational technology networks have demanding real time requirements, feature legacy IoT systems or specialist security in a private data center.