The Next Big Thing

Flexible and affordable. These two words will more than any other impact how we deliver connectivity to the air transport industry in the next few years and beyond.

Increasingly, legacy network systems are just not up to the job. Bandwidth-hungry applications running on a growing array of devices are pushing traditional networks to their limits. At peak times, performance and response times over the network can drop off dramatically, leaving end-users frustrated and applications dependent on high-speed algorithms compromised.

What is needed the flexibility to cope with very agile connectivity requirements? Instead of fighting for a share of the fixed amount of bandwidth, what if each application could request only the bandwidth required and when it is required to maintain a pre-defined level of performance? In essence, each application would have bandwidth-on-demand.

URGENCY
We strongly believe that in future networks services will be defined by performance, not by bandwidth. This is the premise behind a concept called Software Defined Networking, or SDN as it’s better known in technology circles. It’s been talked about for a few years but is now taking on greater urgency as the digital world creates an increasingly large amount of data.

Within data centres, this problem has been solved by virtualizing the server environment, which allows IT resources to be dynamically provisioned when needed.

However, while virtualization has made dynamic storage and processing of big data possible, the transportation of data to and from end-user applications remains constrained by the limitations of the network.

To solve this, SDN seeks to apply the same virtualization approach within the network. Instead of the command functions that control the movement of traffic being hard-coded into the underlying network hardware, they’re separated into a ‘logical software layer’, so that they can be independently managed through an SDN controller.

It means the logical overlay can be configured without impacting the underlying physical network, providing full programmability of the entire network from a single location.

Out goes the time-consuming need to manually change the fixed hardware, such as routers, and appliances every time a reconfiguration or modification of the network is needed.

While the market is still in its embryonic state, businesses need to understand the benefits the radical shift in network technology will bring. SDN is going to have a big impact on network design in the future. It enables network automation, which makes it more dynamic and easier to manage large amounts of data, Capacity-constrained static networks with fixed bandwidth per site will in future no longer be viable in the digital world. SDN provides a simple way to control the network so it can function more like virtualized data centres.

SDN has the potential to make significant improvements to service request response times, security, and reliability. It could also reduce costs by automating many processes that are currently done manually. The future network is about flexibility.

SITA is already poised to respond to any increase in demand. SITA is taking an airport-centric approach by delivering ‘Connectivity-as-a-Service’ that leverages its AirportHubTM infrastructure at hundreds of international airports worldwide.

Today, the SITA network covers 220 countries, 95% of all international destinations and 13,500 air transport sites. With our AirportHub™ program, even from the most remote of locations, airline staff can take advantage of the same connectivity performance as they would at their HQ.

Plug and Play
Customers will have ‘plug and play’ access to industry apps, data and systems with the following advantages:
• Seamless integration between the Internet and private networks.
• Online ordering and instant service activation.
• On-demand bandwidth supporting traffic peaks.
• On-demand value added and cloud service type security and WAN optimisation.
• Orchestration through a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). These services will be hosted on the site and will be enabled on-demand instead of through the deployment of dedicated specific hardware devices per feature.

Going Digital
Today’s rigid architecture of conventional networks is ill-suited to the dynamic computing and storage needs of virtualized data centres. SDN addresses this by introducing flexibility and agility into the network environment enabling network managers to respond quickly to changing business requirements via a centralised control console.

Everything in the world is going digital, so our network offering must go digital too.

Smarter At Every Step; Discussions that Make An Impact
The future of connectivity will be a key topic during the fourth edition of the Aviation ICT Forum themed ‘Smarter at Every Step’, taking place on 16-17 December 2016 at the Grand Hyatt in Goa. This Forum is hosted by SITA in association with industry bodies Airports Authority of India (AAI), ACI, IATA, CAPA, KPMG and all the leading Industry stakeholders to help scale success in the era of digitisation.

(The article has been originally authored by Maneesh Jaikrishna, ‎ Vice President – India and Subcontinent at SITA)