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Hardware: Software-Defined Network (SDN) Technology Threatens Hardware Giants
Software-defined networks (SDN) are networks created by software that abstracts and controls basic networking hardware components. It’s similar in philosophy to how virtualized servers can be abstracted with software from the component physical machines. SDN is expected to make networks more easily configurable and adaptable to the data flow and capacities which they control.
An advantage of SDN is that complex networks can be built out of simple network hardware — eliminating the need for expensive routers and switches from companies like Cisco. SDN is basically a layer that acts like a virtual software switch or router that is smart enough to be able to do much of the job which is typically embedded inside of today’s physical network devices. This also means that an entire network can be configured using the single SDN software interface rather than having to individually manage and program networking functionality into each network device.
SDN is “designed for virtual, dynamic and flexible networking that allows organizations to more easily modify, control and manage today’s physical and virtual networks.”
Rajeev Nagar, group program manager on the Microsoft Azure project talked with InformationWeek about the applications of SDN technology, saying that “scale changes everything. When you’re provisioning and de-provisioning thousands of networks a day, it’s impossible to do that all manually, making automation essential.”
The Ethernet switch market is currently brings in $22-billion a year, and according to IDC, Cisco controls about 60 percent of it. Meanwhile, the SDN market is expected by IDC to clock in at around $2 billion in 2016. The SDN Central report finds that the SDN-enabled network market will rise from just 2 percent in 2013 to nearly 40 percent by 2018, which SDN Central estimates at that time will be worth $1.2 billion.
John Chambers of Cisco has dismissed SDN as a challenge to their business. Chambers said that “History is littered with companies big and small, upstarts and established, that bet against Cisco and failed. We’re already onto our next challenge beyond SDN.”
But in a survey sponsored by Cisco themselves, the results found that 47 percent of IT managers are evaluating SDN solutions.
