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Strategic Adjacencies & Your Modernization Roadmap: An Integrated Approach to Transformation

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Strategic Adjacencies & Roadmap: Table of Contents

 

Frequently Asked Questions - FAQs

Strategic Adjacencies & Your Network Modernization Roadmap: An Integrated Approach to Transformation

A truly modernized enterprise network doesn't operate in a vacuum. Its effectiveness and value are significantly amplified when strategically integrated with other critical IT infrastructure components like Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI), Software-Defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN), and comprehensive security architectures. For enterprises leveraging an Arista EVPN-VXLAN core, these adjacencies, expertly implemented by Intelligent Visibility (IVI), create a powerful, end-to-end modernized environment. Furthermore, navigating the modernization journey itself requires a clear, phased roadmap, expert guidance, and robust automation, often powered by frameworks like IVI's NetMagus, to address potential challenges and ensure alignment with your strategic business objectives.

Key Adjacency: Nutanix HCI Integration with Arista EVPN-VXLAN Fabric

Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) solutions, such as those from Nutanix, simplify data center infrastructure by consolidating compute, storage, and virtualization into a scalable, software-defined platform. When Nutanix HCI is deployed on a modern Arista EVPN-VXLAN network fabric, the synergies create a highly agile and robust foundation for virtualized workloads and private clouds.

Why the Synergy Matters with IVI Expertise:

  • Optimized Performance for HCI: The Arista leaf-spine architecture with EVPN-VXLAN, designed and implemented by IVI, ensures the high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity essential for demanding HCI storage traffic (e.g., Nutanix Distributed Storage Fabric - DSF) and prevalent East-West communication.
  • Seamless Scalability: As Nutanix HCI clusters scale, IVI ensures the Arista fabric seamlessly scales its capacity and connectivity.
  • Granular Security Segmentation: EVPN-VXLAN allows robust network segmentation, isolating tenants or applications. IVI integrates this with Nutanix's virtual networking (e.g., Nutanix Flow) for enhanced, layered security.
  • High Availability: Features like MLAG on Arista switches provide redundant connectivity for Nutanix nodes, engineered by IVI for mission-critical uptime.

Alignment and Partnership: Arista Networks and Nutanix are official technology alliance partners. IVI leverages these partnerships and Arista Validated Designs (AVD) to deliver proven, integrated solutions.

Key Adjacency: Optimizing the Edge with SD-WAN and SASE

Modernizing connectivity for branch offices, remote users, and cloud applications is essential to building a secure, agile enterprise network. This typically begins with SD-WAN and evolves toward a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) model that converges networking and security at the edge.

VMware SD-WAN (Velocloud):
A leading SD-WAN platform delivering dynamic path optimization (via DMPO™), application-aware routing, simplified branch deployment, and secure, direct access to cloud services—while reducing reliance on expensive MPLS circuits.

IVI’s Role in SD-WAN Integration:
Intelligent Visibility integrates VMware SD-WAN with modernized Arista EVPN-VXLAN core architectures to deliver a fully unified network fabric. This ensures a resilient underlay for SD-WAN gateways, extends segmentation policies from core to edge, and supports end-to-end modernization.

Extending to SASE with Cato Networks:
As enterprises scale their SD-WAN deployments, integrating cloud-delivered security is the natural next step. Cato Networks offers a fully converged SASE platform, combining SD-WAN, next-generation firewall (NGFW), secure web gateway (SWG), and zero trust network access (ZTNA) into a single, cloud-native service.

IVI Expertise:
Our role doesn’t end at deployment. IVI helps enterprises strategically align SD-WAN and SASE adoption with broader network modernization goals, like zero-touch automation, unified policy control, and hybrid cloud enablement. Whether it’s designing a resilient Arista fabric, integrating global edge security with Cato, or layering observability and automation via NetMagus and Aegis, IVI ensures every adjacency—from the core to the cloud edge—is planned, integrated, and optimized as part of your full modernization roadmap.

Charting Your Path: A Strategic Roadmap to Network Modernization with IVI

Embarking on an enterprise network modernization journey with Intelligent Visibility ensures a carefully planned, phased approach to maximize benefits and mitigate risks.

Overcoming Common Modernization Challenges

IVI helps you proactively address these common hurdles:

Complexity of Design & Migration: Integrating new technologies (EVPN-VXLAN, cloud, automation) is intricate.

IVI Strategy: Meticulous assessments, detailed planning using proven frameworks for migration automation, phased rollouts, pilot projects, and leveraging tools like Arista Validated Designs (AVD) where applicable.

Skills Gap & Talent Development: Modern networks demand new skillsets.

IVI Strategy: Augmenting your team with our expert engineers, providing knowledge transfer, and offering co-managed services like Aegis Performance Monitoring, Incident Response, Configuration Management, and Software Lifecycle Management.

Managing Transition & Minimizing Disruption: Business continuity is key.

IVI Strategy: Robust pre-deployment testing, leveraging technologies for incremental migration, clear communication, and leveraging NetMagus for change automation.

Security Concerns with New Architectures: Addressing misconceptions about modern security.

IVI Strategy: Education on Zero Trust/microsegmentation, rigorous implementation of robust security protocols, and comprehensive network monitoring often managed via Aegis Performance Monitoring using tools like LogicMonitor.

Cost & Budget Justification: Modernization requires upfront investment.

IVI Strategy: Developing a compelling business case with clear ROI (OpEx reductions via automation, agility, risk mitigation) and demonstrating the strategic cost of inaction.

Interoperability in Multi-Vendor Environments: Ensuring seamless operation.

IVI Strategy: Prioritizing open standards, thorough lab testing, and clear demarcation, often managed and automated using the NetMagus framework.

An IVI-Guided Phased Approach for Successful Transformation

A successful network modernization journey is typically not a "big bang" but a strategically phased process, expertly guided by Intelligent Visibility:

Assess and Strategize:

Comprehensive Audit: IVI maps existing infrastructure, identifying pain points, bottlenecks, vulnerabilities, and end-of-life hardware.
Business Alignment: We help define clear business objectives for modernization.
Strategic Roadmap: IVI develops a detailed modernization strategy and roadmap, often leveraging the NetMagus framework for planning.

Modernize the Core Data Center Fabric:

Implement a modern leaf-spine architecture using EVPN-VXLAN, designed and deployed by IVI experts.
Validate with pilot projects.

Implement Unified Observability:

Deploy advanced observability tools (e.g., Arista CloudVision, LogicMonitor, often as part of IVI’s Aegis Performance Monitoring service) early in the process.
Establish baselines and gain critical insights from day one.

Extend to Hybrid/Multi-Cloud:

Leverage solutions like Arista CloudEOS, architected by IVI, to extend consistent networking, security, and operational models.

Optimize the WAN and Edge (including SASE):

Integrate SD-WAN solutions and SASE components from partners like VMware, Zscaler, or Palo Alto Networks, guided by IVI's expertise.

Integrate Key Adjacencies:

Ensure seamless integration with HCI platforms (e.g., Nutanix) and other systems, with IVI managing network configuration and policy alignment.

Continuously Automate and Optimize:

Leverage IVI's expertise with automation tools (Arista AVD, CloudVision, Ansible, Terraform, and the NetMagus framework) for ongoing management, compliance, and service provisioning.
Embrace AIOps capabilities for proactive issue resolution.

Partnering with Intelligent Visibility for Accelerated Transformation

Given the complexities, partnering with Intelligent Visibility significantly accelerates your transformation and mitigates risks. We bring:

Deep Multi-Vendor Expertise: Specialized knowledge of Arista, Cisco, VMware, Palo Alto Networks, and more.
Proven Methodologies & Frameworks: Leveraging our track record of 100% successful project delivery to inform our strategies for automation and migration, and Aegis for managed services.
Accelerated Deployment & Reduced Risk: Avoiding common pitfalls and minimizing disruptions.
Customized, Outcome-Focused Solutions: Tailored strategies to meet your specific business needs.
Skills Augmentation & Knowledge Transfer: Empowering your internal teams.
Ongoing Optimization & Co-Managed Services: Ensuring your modernized network continuously delivers value through offerings like Aegis Performance Monitoring.

Conclusion: Building an Interconnected, Intelligent, and Evolving Ecosystem with IVI

Successfully modernizing your enterprise network means recognizing it as an interconnected ecosystem. Intelligent Visibility excels in ensuring the interoperability of best-of-breed platforms—Arista for the core, Nutanix for HCI, VMware for SD-WAN, and leading security solutions. As automation matures, IVI focuses on cross-domain orchestration—integrating systems like Arista, Nutanix, VeloCloud, and LogicMonitor via custom automation, robust APIs, and frameworks like NetMagus—to realize true operational agility and consistent security policy enforcement. By adopting a strategic, IVI-guided phased approach, enterprises can confidently build a network that is not just modern, but a dynamic, intelligent, and continuously evolving asset for lasting business success.