Special vs Custom vs Standard? Choosing the Building Blocks-3

Continuing from last week, let us discuss further as two how we can have standards and still a lot of innovation.

The trick is to find the right partitions. If we split the network into layers in such a way that the interfaces between these layers can be standard and the management or northbound interfaces for managing / orchestrating these individual layers are standard, we can have a lot of innovation within the layer itself.

Within a layer we can have multiple vendors compete with solutions and innovation to get us the best cost and great technology that enables ease of operation and ease of growth.

One must be very very wary of end-to-end vendors. They may propose to break these boundaries for small benefits and lock you in with proprietary interfaces between the two layers.

I will have some examples for good and bad network splits next week so stay tuned.