According to Infonetics Research, a technology market research firm, 79 percent of medium and large businesses in North America are planning to have software-defined networking (SDN) in live production in data centers by 2017. The survey that was participated by 153 enterprises in these segment found that 65 percent of survey respondents are currently conducting data center SDN lab trials this year.
Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., Research Director for Data Center, Cloud & SDN, Infonetics Research
We asked enterprises from which vendors they plan to source data center SDN hardware and software for the physical network, network OS, controller, orchestration software, applications, and virtual network overlays. Many will turn to incumbent network vendors, of course, but a big 'a-ha' moment for us was seeing how many plan to look to non-incumbent network vendors, including third-party SDN vendors, open source vendors, existing virtualization vendors and others. As SDN in the enterprise data center grows legs in 2015, thought leadership in this nascent market will give way to market share leaders with measurable revenue. Now is the time for existing and new vendors to grab market share. Respondents are moving from lab trials in 2015 to production trials in 2016 and to live production in 2017.