IDC: SDN Set for Enterprise Boom

Software-defined networking (SDN) is set to begin a period of explosive growth in the next two years, culminating in a near-90 percent spike to more than $8 billion by 2018 from $960 million in 2014, according to a new report from researcher IDC.

IDC’s SDN forecast spans the enterprise and cloud service provider markets for data center networking and includes in-use physical network infrastructure, controller and network-virtualization software, SDN network and security services and related applications and SDN-related professional services.

Basically, SDN turns networking routers and switches into software. The researcher defined the SDN architecture as enabling automated provisioning, network virtualization and network programmability to data center and enterprise networks.

While IDC concedes that enterprises are “largely still testing the waters to see what benefits will accrue from SDN,” the researcher believes it is the business market that will drive its adoption in the next several years.

“The 2014 through 2016 period will be a significant launch point for SDN in the enterprise, with significant growth opportunities for both enterprise-focused SDN infrastructure and cloud service providers,” said Brad Casemore, IDC Datacenter Networks research director.

Which vendor will take SDN’s center stage as the market matures? It’s far too soon to tell but the competition certainly has moved from the back burner to the front with Cisco Systems (CSCO) and VMware (VMW) the biggest names but others, including Big Switch, Brocade (BRCD), Dell, Extreme Networks (EXTR), Flextronics, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Huawei, Juniper Networks (JNPR), Oracle (ORCL) and others fleshing out their SDN portfolios.

In recent SDN developments, HP in April announced a new, cloud-managed SDN-enabled wired and wireless solution to boost network speed and simplify management at the Interop Las Vegas show.

And, the Linux Foundation’s OpenDaylight project to build an open source SDN platform added Extreme Networks, Flextronics and Oracle to its member list, which has grown to 39 companies and 195 developers collaborating to help build an open source SDN platform.

Nearly one-third of participants in The VAR Guy’s SDN poll of readers in March pegged 2014 as the year of SDN.