What is Network Virtualization? – Citrix

Once implemented, network virtualization delivers higher levels of speed, automation, and administrative efficiency than achievable with only a physical network, for example a traditional hub-and-spoke WAN. These advantages translate into concrete operational benefits for enterprise businesses and for service providers, including but not limited to:

Superior network agility and application delivery: By abstracting resources away from physical network hardware, network virtualization simplifies the processes for scaling and evolving a network to meet changing needs. Keeping up with demand for virtual, cloud, and SaaS applications requires an agile network environment—one that’s dynamic and flexible in how it creates and distributes resources. Toward this goal, network virtualization reduces provisioning times from days or weeks to just minutes and also makes the network more programmable and adaptable. For example, an SD-WAN overlay provides an always-on network that dynamically steers traffic from datacenters, branches, clouds, and SaaS over multiple possible types of network transport, all from within software.

Streamlined network administration and management: Virtual networks are easier to manage than their physical counterparts. Instead of needing to manually reconfigure potentially multiple pieces of physical infrastructure in response to even a single policy or service change, network administrators can rely on automation throughout the virtual network overlays now in place. VM-based workloads can move through the network without any reconfiguration for true application mobility across environments. Likewise, new branches that are added to an SD-WAN can be automatically provisioned (a process known as zero-touch provisioning) with the correct policies and updated via a centralized administrator console—no on-site visit required.

Stronger security: Network virtualization is a key addition to datacenter security. It provides isolation between the physical network itself and the virtual network overlay, as well as between different virtual networks. Isolation helps enforce the principle of least privilege in network security, under which users and workloads only get access to the resources they require for their legitimate purposes. Plus, network virtualization allows for the aggregation and management of network security services at scale. Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator illustrates this use case, as it seamlessly connects the SD-WAN implementation to cloud-based security gateways during provisioning to protect network traffic under a zero trust security model without compromising the user experience.