An IHS Markit survey of service providers found a slow down in the adoption of live SDN into data centers, with lab trials continuing to dominate.
The integration of software-defined networking technology into data centers is taking longer than expected as service providers continue to dither with lab trials instead of live adoption of SDN, according to a new report from IHS Markit.
The report, which is based on a survey of service providers, found two-thirds were still conducting lab trials of data center SDN, down slightly from the three-fourths cited in a 2015 survey.
“Getting to live production is taking more time than expected,” noted Cliff Grossner, senior research director and advisor for IHS Markit’s cloud and data center research practice. “This means that the most innovation-driven part of the market critical for new revenue – SDN controllers, data center orchestration and SDN applications – is still wide open. Although the leaders in the SDN service provider data center market are becoming clearer, especially for physical network equipment, we do not expect the market to solidify until live deployments ramp.”
Grossner pointed to a slow down in bare metal switching deployments, with the sector comprising the same percentage (33%) of data center Ethernet switch ports in 2016 as in 2015. There was a doubling in the percentage of bare metal switch ports in use for SDN, growing from 12% in 2015, to 24% in 2016, with a forecast of 41% by 2018.
“The majority of bare metal switches are still being deployed at large cloud service providers because skilled programmers who are adept at dealing with bare metal switching are required to ensure success,” the report noted.
As for vendor, service providers named Cisco Systems and Juniper as top SDN vendors in the space, with Cisco identified as a top three vendor by 72% of respondents and Juniper named by 39% of those surveyed. IHS Markit said Cisco continued to garner “traction with its SDN solutions, including with educational institutions providing online learning for students, CSPs deploying self-service portals and enterprises adopting hybrid cloud architectures,” while Juniper “is gaining footing with its contrail cloud and contrail networking solutions.”
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