Software is Eating the Network: SDN and Devops

In 2011, Marc Andreessen made his now famous statement, "Software is Eating the World". It's most recent appetite is the networking part of the world. Similar to what has been happening in the past decade for server configuration and administration, networking is being redefined by similar abstractions. One of the biggest disruptors is Software Defined Networking. In this presentation we will explore a few of these new abstractions in terms of what they are, how they work and why you should care. We will also explore the overlap between SDN and Devops. If you are looking for a good overview on SDN, Network Virtualiztion, NFV, and White Box Switches, this is the presentation for you.

John Willis is the VP of Customer Enablement for Stateless Networks. Willis, a 30-year systems management veteran, joined Stateless Networks from Dell where he was Chief DevOps evangelist. Willis, a noted expert on agile philosophies in systems management, came to Dell as part of their Enstratius acquisition. At Enstratius, Willis was the VP of Customer Enablement responsible for product support and services for the multi-cloud management platform. During his career, he has held positions at Opscode and also founded Gulf Breeze Software, an award-winning IBM business partner specializing in deploying Tivoli technology for the enterprise. Willis has authored six IBM Redbooks for IBM on enterprise systems management and was the founder and chief architect at Chain Bridge Systems. He is also a co-author of the “Devops Cookbook” and the upcoming “Network Operations” published by O'Reilly.