Software-defined networking (SDN) will help application developers provide context for all the data their services generate and consume, according to Juniper Networks product management lead Jennifer Lin.<\/p>\n
SDN involves the abstraction of the network\u2019s brains, as it were, from its hardware. This is analogous in some ways to server virtualization, in that it makes it much easier to build smarter systems on top of commodity hardware. Juniper\u2019s take<\/a> on this sees the network as four layers, namely forwarding, control, services and management \u2014 in Juniper\u2019s vision, everything but the forwarding layer should be centralized.<\/p>\n Lin, who joined Juniper through the company\u2019s acquisition of SDN specialist Contrail Systems<\/a>, said at GigaOM\u2019s Structure:Data<\/a> conference in New York on Wednesday that federating the control function and eliminating \u201cmanual error-prone processes\u201d would help the big data because:<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a huge opportunity here to reposition the role of the network as a curator of big data and make sure that role is easily exposed through abstractions of the network. The role of the network is interesting because the network is the only thing that\u2019s globally pervasive and \u2026 uniquely knows a lot of the contextual information that is required to drive insights back into the system.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Lin argued that this \u201crich context\u201d would enable new types of business models such as collaborative data exchanges, without anyone needing to worry about the technology architectures involved. \u201cThe role of the network is changing quite heavily and the pace of innovation for hyperconnected data is really astonishing,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n