Based on a new forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC), the worldwide enterprise and cloud service provider SDN market is projected to grow at a robust CAGR close to 90%, increasing from $960 million in 2014 to over $8 billion by 2018. IDC via its study, SDN Momentum Builds in Datacenter and Enterprise Networks, says that the SDN market will be driven mainly by the enterprise segment for the next few years.
The market research firm added that SDN will be gaining ground within the broader enterprise and cloud service provider markets for datacenter networking.
IDC said that the growth for SDN solutions is spurred by the growing demand for 3rd Platform technologies, particularly cloud, mobility, Big Data, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. IDC also sees significant near-term use case opportunities for SDN in both cloud service provider rollouts and enterprise deployments.
“SDN is taking center stage among innovative approaches to some of the networking challenges brought about by the rise of the 3rd Platform, particularly virtualization and cloud computing. With SDN's growing traction in the datacenter for cloud deployments, enterprise IT is beginning to see the value in potentially extending SDN to the WAN and into the campus to meet the demand for more agile approaches to network architecture, provisioning, and operations."
- Rohit Mehra, Vice President, Network Infrastructure at IDC
"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."
- Brad Casemore, Research Director, Datacenter Networks
