Author James Urquhart explores how cloud services and applications will utilize network capabilities such as routing, bandwidth management, VPN creation and configuration, network segmentation and isolation in this article presented on C Net. Urquhart states that debate in the industry about how much intelligence and architecture is needed within a single data-center environment is valid, but there are still network management elements that would allow dynamic optimization of a network for mixed workloads or traffic types.
“What is important here is that the networking industry is showing up at all, and what that means to the future of networking in cloud computing. To me, the way the network’s relevance will be defined–or at least standardized–will be through open-source efforts. And OpenStack may be the effort where the industry comes together and hammers out one or more solutions.