Is SDN Looking for a Problem to Solve?

Software-defined networking (SDN) is the future of networking. There’s no question about it. But it seems more evolutionary than revolutionary, even though there is plenty of hype around the technology. More hype than reality, it seems.

The separation of the control plane from underlying systems will happen, and for many bleeding-edge corporations, it’s already happening. With all the hype around SDN, though, there is a chance the technology could wind up looking for a problem to solve, wrote Nathan Pearce, head of cloud and SDN marketing architecture at F5 Networks, in a recent blog post.

As Pearce wrote, it’s important to not ask what SDN is all about, but why it’s needed and being deployed. Part of the reason for this is a lack of coherency in vendor strategies.

“SDN does have a place but there is a danger of it becoming a solution in search of a problem,” Pearce wrote. “Consequently, starting an SDN conversation with the business case first can highlight whether the investment now, as an early adopter, is worth the risk.”

It’s not going to be for everybody. Not at first, anyway. After all, we’re not even a year past when a Cisco Systems global study showed that 34 percent of IT professionals surveyed said it was more likely they would see Elvis Presley, Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster before they saw an actual SDN deployment. (Or in my neck of the woods, the Ogopogo or the Muffaloose.)

It’s safe to say things have come along since then, but as more recent studies have shown, SDN’s hype outweighs the deployments. Even so, many businesses are expecting this year to be the one where SDN sees some strong growth.

Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, likened the current SDN hype to the 2001 discussions around storage virtualization that “initially sparked substantial discussion and buzz, then, unfortunately, was subsumed by various squabbles, splintered approaches and vendors attempting to seize high ground with proprietary solutions.”

There have been many technology concepts and frameworks designed to simplify common, complex IT management problems, he told The VAR Guy.

“I’m not ready to resign SDN to a similar fate,” he said. “These are different times, and the promise of open/open source technologies that play central roles in so many SDN solutions is far better understood than it was during the dot-com era.”

There still needs to be education on SDN, and partners for the most part currently are faced with two strong reactions when the technology is mentioned—a blank expression or a “thanks, but no thanks.”

Expect that to slowly change over the next few years, just as the attitude toward cloud changed. It wasn’t overnight, but instead took several months and years.