Open Network Featured Article

A new survey from Colorado-based research firm IHS (News - Alert) has shown what many in the industry already believe to be true: deployment of Software-Defined Networking, or SDN, is primed for a major expansion in the coming 12 months.

In a recent piece, Antone Gonsalves of TechTarget.com analyzed the IHS findings:

• The number of cloud and communication service providers deploying SDN for the first time, or expanding its use, in the data center will increase from 20 percent to 60 percent in 2016.  At the same time, the adoption rate among enterprises is expected to grow from six percent to 23 percent.
• Further, while the IHS study noted that higher spending on hardware this year is expected to benefit traditional networking vendors like Cisco (News - Alert), Juniper, and even the H-P Enterprise, the growing software market is expected to also provide many more opportunities for other vendors.
• The number of service providers looking to open source technology for orchestration software, SDN applications and controllers is expected to be as high as 45 percent.
• The number of enterprises turning to virtualization vendors or third parties for SDN-related software is expected to reach 39 percent.

That is good news for those in the SDN business as companies will be spending more on SDN development to play catch-up or to get ahead.

But IHS wasn’t the only one bullish on SDN. According to Gartner (News - Alert) analyst Andrew Lerner, open source is also primed to take off if proponents can pull together the major standards initiatives into a single platform.

“Companies in a good position to bring the necessary ease of use to open source include Red Hat and Mirantis -- which are building SDN platforms around OpenStack -- and Brocade (News - Alert), which is developing SDN products,” Lerner said.

Only time will tell if these optimistic predictions can come true.