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Businesses Do Not Understand SDN

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

Software Defined Network (SDN) is being called "the future of networking" for its ability to deliver greater efficiency and automation, however, research from British cloud and network provider, Exponential-e, has revealed that 86 percent of UK businesses do not understand SDN and 95 percent do not know what benefits it could bring to their enterprise.

“In an innovate or fail society, an agile and responsive network is central to driving competitive advantage,” explained Chris Christou, Director of Engineering at Exponential-e. “Providing a business with the ability to manage and control their network themselves enables them to support their business internally in their drive for increased revenues.”

SDN effectively allows organizations to reconfigure network services on-demand, according to Exponential-e. Enterprises are no longer subject to change controls, service tickets or related support and management fees. Instead they can adapt the services that network providers deliver, through a simple self-service interface.

Given the IT difficulties being faced by businesses in 2016, Exponential-e suggests that more organizations need to take advantage of SDN to eliminate the bottleneck of human intervention and provide a central system to manage the services required, and monitor the associated activity. In total, nearly a third (32 percent) of survey respondents are battling escalating software and hardware costs, 21 percent admitted that there is a lack of internal control over the network and 17 percent said that infrastructure was unable to cope with growth.

“SDN increases efficiency and supports the flexibility demanded by fast moving organizations that are tasked with responding to unexpected outages and breaks in service. Using the database as a master A-Z then it’s possible to map the optimum route to instantly reconfigure networks, reduce latency and meet peaks or troughs in demand,” concluded Christou. “SDN effectively removes the impenetrable barrier between a customer and network provider, providing a more flexible and agile way to manage network configurations.”

Exponential-e surveyed 100 UK business and IT leaders online from the January 5-9, 2016.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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Businesses Do Not Understand SDN

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

Software Defined Network (SDN) is being called "the future of networking" for its ability to deliver greater efficiency and automation, however, research from British cloud and network provider, Exponential-e, has revealed that 86 percent of UK businesses do not understand SDN and 95 percent do not know what benefits it could bring to their enterprise.

“In an innovate or fail society, an agile and responsive network is central to driving competitive advantage,” explained Chris Christou, Director of Engineering at Exponential-e. “Providing a business with the ability to manage and control their network themselves enables them to support their business internally in their drive for increased revenues.”

SDN effectively allows organizations to reconfigure network services on-demand, according to Exponential-e. Enterprises are no longer subject to change controls, service tickets or related support and management fees. Instead they can adapt the services that network providers deliver, through a simple self-service interface.

Given the IT difficulties being faced by businesses in 2016, Exponential-e suggests that more organizations need to take advantage of SDN to eliminate the bottleneck of human intervention and provide a central system to manage the services required, and monitor the associated activity. In total, nearly a third (32 percent) of survey respondents are battling escalating software and hardware costs, 21 percent admitted that there is a lack of internal control over the network and 17 percent said that infrastructure was unable to cope with growth.

“SDN increases efficiency and supports the flexibility demanded by fast moving organizations that are tasked with responding to unexpected outages and breaks in service. Using the database as a master A-Z then it’s possible to map the optimum route to instantly reconfigure networks, reduce latency and meet peaks or troughs in demand,” concluded Christou. “SDN effectively removes the impenetrable barrier between a customer and network provider, providing a more flexible and agile way to manage network configurations.”

Exponential-e surveyed 100 UK business and IT leaders online from the January 5-9, 2016.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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AI is becoming the operating system of the enterprise. It acts as an invisible coordination layer that understands intent, connects systems, and executes work across complex SaaS environments. Previously, employees had to click through multiple systems — CRM, ERP, support tools, collaboration platforms — to complete a single task. Now, instead of navigating each application manually, they can simply state what they need to accomplish ...

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

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Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

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Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...