Infonetics report found 72% of NA-based enterprises plan LAN SDN networks
A vast majority of North America-based enterprises plan to deploy live campus local area network software-defined networking products by the end of 2017, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.
The report tapped into “in-depth” surveys on the topic, finding that 72% of enterprises questioned planned the SDN deployments. The survey also found that interoperability with existing network equipment and management systems, lack of in-house SDN skills and potential network interruptions remain the largest barriers to SDN deployments.
“Expectations for software-defined networking in the campus LAN are clear,” said Cliff Grossner, research director for data center, cloud and SDN at Infonetics. “Businesses taking part in our study want SDN to provide operational cost savings by integrating with existing networks, delivering better security, simplifying management and improving application performance. And they want all this without network interruptions.”
The survey, which interviewed IT purchase decision makers, also found that campus LAN deployments is one of the biggest opportunities for third-party SDN, existing virtualization and open source vendors, but added that existing vendor partners are still “contenders.” The top SDN vendors most often cited by those interviewed were Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Juniper, Microsoft and VMware.
As for SDN needs, the survey noted top use-cases focused on automation for provisioning, wired and wireless LAN unification, “bring-your-own-device” management and improved security enforcement at network access points.
Infonetics recently reported that 79% of the 153 medium-sized and large businesses surveyed plan to deploy live SDN solutions in data centers by the end of 2017. Those deployment plans look set to favor the more-established players in the market, although Infonetics said it was surprised by the number of enterprise customers also looking at alternatives.
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