Within the networking industry, there is a growing divide between two schools of thought - companies that believe that the future of the network lies in openness and those that think a proprietary approach is the compelling way to go, said an expert.

While customers do, by and large, want openness, the tension is more complex and is between open-and-fully-interoperable and ostensibly-open-yet-proprietary, according to Curt Beckmann, chief technical officer (CTO), Brocade - EMEA.

The question of interoperability will impact how a network can be impacted and how a business will be able to function and evolve in the long-term, he said.

Vendor have recognised the preference for openness and highlighted their membership in various open communities.

The open approach is based on the belief that, in order to truly align an enterprise’s infrastructure strategy with its business requirements, customers must be free to choose the solutions that best meet their specific needs, regardless of which vendor builds them.

In order for this ‘best of breed’ approach to work, technologies must be – not just based on open standards – but genuinely interoperable, giving customers the option to bring in specific products and components as their needs evolve and change.

Meanwhile, the open-yet-proprietary approach requires organisations to stick solely to one equipment provider. With the demands placed on enterprises’ core infrastructure growing all the time and new innovations bringing major changes to the way that networks are deployed, configured and controlled, this ‘locked in’ approach is increasingly seen as dated and restrictive, rather than efficient.

The open, interoperable approach, with the flexibility and choice that it brings, makes it the best option for customers, who will have unique and complex requirements and need to be able to design and adapt their infrastructure to meet those needs.

With the industry moving towards software-defined networking (SDN), the importance of this kind of openness will only increase.

The growing complexity of today's networks, and the move to greater use of virtualisation, mean that it is simply no longer feasible to rely on a single vendor to deliver an end-to-end solution that fits every customer's requirements of service agility and scalability.

The cloud and telecommunications service need an open and modular networking platform that provides greater choice and flexibility as they move towards SDN and NFV, said Beckmann.

Organisations, however, will have an increasing ability to choose a path that works for them. And over time, with agility, flexibility and control now more important to customers than ever, true openness will win out, he added. - TradeArabia News Service