SDxCentral
Join Log In
SD-WAN 4 5G 17 Edge 7 IoT 14 SDN 9 NFV 10 Containers 2 Cloud 15 Security 5 AI 8 Data Center Storage 1 APM/NPM 1 Open Source

Log In to SDxCentral

Log in with your email? Forgot your password?
  • Newsletters
  • eBriefs
  • Podcasts
  • Webinars
  • Videos
  • Directory
  • White Papers
  • Resources
  • Use Cases
  • Support

Join SDxCentral and get information tailored to your particular interests everyday.

Join
Sponsored:
Dell EMC 3 Citrix Riverbed

A Rogue Effort Brings SDDC to the Lowly Branch Office

Columbia Sportswear IT Communications Manager John Spiegel
Craig Matsumoto
Craig MatsumotoSeptember 1, 2016
4:19 pm MT
Email LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Reddit Hacker News

LAS VEGAS — Frustrated that branch-office gear has stagnated for 16 years, a Columbia Sportswear manager stitched together elements of cloud and software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) to create what he calls vBranch.

John Spiegel, who manages the retail chain’s global IT communications, managed to get vBranch up and running in one Columbia Sportswear store in June, as a limited-production pilot, as he told the audience at the future:net conference.

Now if he can only get his executives to buy in on it.

Spiegel’s beef is that the branch office has become a technology backwater. Hardware upgrades are controlled by the finance department; if there’s money to spare, you might get a faster router this year.

More importantly, the arrival of Wi-Fi circa 1999 was, by his reckoning, the last major networking innovation to reach the branch. In recent years, plenty of innovations have grown up around the software-defined data center (SDDC), but out at the branch office, “we still purchase dumb routers that cost $5,000,” he said.

What he wanted was an architecture built like a cloud: application-aware, automated, and built on generic, multipurpose hardware. Cheaper would be nice as well, he said.

So, Spiegel assembled a few vendors’ gear to create vBranch. VMware’s NSX handles the in-branch networking. Columbia also takes advantage of NSX’s distributed firewall, augmenting it with Palo Alto Networks’ virtual firewall.

CloudGenix came into the picture later, as Spiegel started investigating his WAN options. That company’s SD-WAN gives the branch an automated way to pick among different paths to the Internet — using the T1 line or an LTE connection, for instance.

The Real Problem

VBranch is a work in progress. After his talk, Spiegel commented that the choice of server actually seems to matter, for instance. And there’s still a question of how to connect in-store devices to the vBranch server. The idea of just using iPhones hasn’t panned out because of Wi-Fi dead spots, but Spiegel is still hoping to find a purely wireless option.

The real barrier to deploying something like vBranch, though, lies with people.

Spiegel has discussed elements of vBranch before — at VMworld in 2015, for instance. What’s different now is that he’s gotten to see what happens when something like vBranch actually comes to life.

“I thought I would be the pied piper of virtual branch, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I’ve had to fight tooth and nail to keep this project alive.” Not everyone in the company is on board with the idea, and incumbent vendors have “tried all sorts of tricks to stop this project,” he said, without elaborating.

If the idea flies, it will be less because of the technology and more because of the potential cost savings, Spiegel believes.

By his estimates, vBranch lowers capex and opex, combined, by 30 to 50 percent compared with the usual branch-office equipment. Other benefits have included vastly improved visibility into the network and the reduction of installation and recovery times by 75 percent, he said.

Related Articles

Ericsson, VMware Cozy Up With Telcos on NFV
Ericsson, VMware Cozy Up With Telcos on NFV
Cisco Pushes ACI to AWS and Azure, Embraces ‘Data Center Anywhere’ Strategy
Cisco Pushes ACI to AWS and Azure, Embraces ‘Data Center Anywhere’ Strategy
The-Top-Acquisitions-of-2018
The Top Acquisitions of 2018 in SDxCentral's World
SD-WAN-Will-Be-Fueled-By-Collaboration-Between-Cloud-Providers-and-Vendors
SD-WAN Will Be Fueled By Collaboration Between Cloud Providers and Vendors
VMware CEO Lists Top 3 Priorities for 2019: NSX, Cloud and Containers
VMware CEO Lists Top 3 Priorities for 2019: NSX, Cloud, and Containers
ONAP Casablanca Shows Up in ‘All the Gin Joints’
ONAP Casablanca Shows Up in ‘All the Gin Joints’
SDxCentral Daily News

Join your Peers! Subscribe to SDxCentral's Newsletter

Article Tags:

Breaking News Cloud CloudGenix Network Virtualization Palo Alto Networks SDN SDWAN VMware

Craig Matsumoto

About Craig Matsumoto

Craig Matsumoto is managing editor at SDxCentral.com, responsible for the site's content and for covering news. He is a "veteran" of the SDN scene, having started covering it way back in 2010, and his background in technology journalism goes back to 1994. Craig is based in Silicon Valley. He can be reached at craig@sdxcentral.com.

Subscribe to Get the Daily News!

About SDxCentral

  • Newsletters
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Work With Us
  • Editorial Team
  • Careers
  • Legal
  • Support

Engage With us

This material may not be copied, reproduced, or modified in whole or in part for any purpose except with express written permission from an authorized representative of SDxCentral, LLC. In addition to such written permission to copy, reproduce, or modify this document in whole or part, an acknowledgement of the authors of the document and all applicable portions of the copyright notice must be clearly referenced. All Rights Reserved.

© 2012-2019 SDxCentral, LLC, All Rights Reserved. SDNCentral™, the SDNCentral logo, SDxCentral™, SDxCentral logo, SDxNews™, SDxTech™, SDx™, the SDx logo, and DemoFriday™ are trademarks of SDxCentral, LLC in the U.S. and other countries.

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy