Though Software Defined Networking has been touted as a revolution for business infrastructure, the potential real-world impact has remained largely unfulfilled. What's the current state of SDN, and how far have we come from initial expectations?
Enterprise Networking Planet put the ideal of SDN in the greater context of the shift toward a software-defined data center, where management systems can balance essential functions with the need for continuous workflow for elastic production environments.
In some ways, the original version of OpenFlow prevails yet. Telecoms are still pining for bandwidth-on-demand. The reality of this compelling business driver falls far short from the ideal, hence adoption of SDN has remained lackluster over the past five years.
In a video roundtable from ECI Telecom LTD, Sudhir Modali of Pica8 Inc., Hayim Porat of ECI and Glenn Wellbrock of Verizon all discussed the past and future of SDN.
While Porat said that part of the issue has been lack of direct user demand, he also said that work needs to happen now for fully programmable networks to take effect in five years.
Modali also stated that OpenFlow helped transform SDN as a whole by moving to the optic phase later on.
This means that open source software that maximizes network bandwidth usage is going to continue to evolve, but it will take a unique blend of vision, expertise and engineering to make it practical in the short term.
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