Production SDN among service providers has grown by nearly 200 percent over the last one year, according to a survey conducted by Packet Design involving more than 60 service providers at the recent SDN/MPLS International Conference in Washington, D.C.
The survey also found that more service providers see SDN as a way to increase agility and as a top business driver.
Santa Clara, California-based Packet Design, a network performance management software company that pioneered Route Analytics technology, noted that the service provider respondents are more concerned about lack of industry standards (56% vs. only 26% in 2013) and not having adequate management visibility and control (32%; up 52% from 2013). Interestingly, the survey found that nearly 70 percent believed their network teams do NOT have the skills and experience to implement and manage SDN. Almost 100 percent of service providers said that SDN requires new management tools and that some of their existing tools will not work with SDN.
Steve Harriman, senior vice president of marketing for Packet Design
The survey shows that more service providers are moving beyond the SDN test phase but concerns persist about industry standards, tools, and staff readiness. SDN presents unique challenges that traditional management processes and tools cannot address. New SDN analytics and orchestration tools are needed to give service providers and enterprises alike visibility into whether or not the network can handle SDN application requests and how to provision them optimally without adversely impacting other services.
