The market for 'in-use' software defined network (SDN) Ethernet switches and controllers will exceed $1.4 billion this year, nearly doubling from last year.
This is according to IHS in its latest IHS Infonetics Data Center and Enterprise SDN Hardware and Software report, which notes network operators around the globe are moving toward software-defined networking.
IDC says the enterprise SDN market is expected to surpass the billion dollar mark in 2016. By 2018, enterprise SDN revenue is expected to comprise 23% of overall enterprise networking spend with revenues of $3.2 billion.
Cliff Grossner, research director for data centre, cloud and SDN at IHS, says new SDN use cases continue to emerge, and the first half of 2015 was no exception with the establishment of the software-defined enterprise wide area network (SD-WAN) market.
"The SD-WAN market is still small, but many start-ups and traditional WAN optimisation appliance vendors and network vendors have jumped in."
SD-WAN is an infrastructure rather than a singular product, which means its deployment can require major architectural changes, says Paul Griffiths, technical director, advanced technology group at Riverbed.
To actually evolve your IT operations these days, you need to get rid of the silos," he says, explaining SD-WAN involves integration between often-separated IT components, such as networking and applications.
On the other hand, Grossner points out the data centre and enterprise local area network SDN market will be solidified by the end of 2016 as lab trials give way to live production deployments.
He believes in 2017, SDN will move from early adopters into the hands of mainstream buyers.
The successful field trials and a few commercial deployments of SDN in the last year keep moving toward more commercial deployments, says Michael Howard, senior research director for carrier networks at IHS.
It is mostly on a limited basis as operators put one or two use cases to the test under real-world conditions in their live networks," adds Howard.
He explains carriers are starting small with their SDN deployments and focusing on only parts of their network to ensure they can get the technology to work as intended.
"We see in the results of our SDN survey that though momentum is strong, it will be many years before we see bigger parts or a whole network that is controlled by SDN."
Software-defined networking represents a huge disruption to the way businesses develop technology, says Gary Newe, technical director at F5 Networks.
It makes things faster, easier and more convenient during the process, as well as from a management and scalability point of view going forward, he adds.
There will be challenges - there always are when disruption is on the agenda - but if they can be overcome, SDN could well usher in a new era of technological development, says Newe.
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