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SDN Market Expected to Experience Strong Growth

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

SDN is not expected to truly catch on in 2016, according to some experts on APMdigest's 2016 predictions list, however a recent International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast says: the worldwide software-defined networking (SDN) market — comprising physical network infrastructure, virtualization/control software, SDN applications (including network and security services), and professional services — will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53.9% from 2014 to 2020 and will be worth nearly $12.5 billion in 2020.

IDC says software-defined networking continues to gain market traction as an innovative architectural model capable of enabling automated provisioning, network virtualization, and network programmability for datacenters at cloud-providers and enterprise networks. Although SDN initially found favor in hyperscale datacenters and at large-scale cloud service providers, it is winning adoption in a growing number of enterprise datacenters across a broad range of vertical markets.

While the physical network, encompassing datacenter switches, will still account for the largest single segment of the SDN market in 2020, per the IDC research, the fastest growth will be found in the two software categories – the virtualization/control layer and SDN applications – which together will be worth approximately $5.9 billion. IDC expects the virtualization/control layer software market to reach $2.4 billion in 2020, with a CAGR of nearly 64% during the forecast period. SDN applications – including Layer 4-7 network and security services and analytics – are forecast to achieve a CAGR of 66% through 2020, when they will account for revenue of more than $3.5 billion.

"Cloud computing and the 3rd Platform have driven the need for SDN, which will represent a market worth more than $12.5 billion in 2020. Not surprisingly, the value of SDN will accrue increasingly to network-virtualization software and to SDN applications, including virtualized network and security services. Large enterprises are now realizing the value of SDN in the datacenter, but ultimately, they will also recognize its applicability across the WAN to branch offices and to the campus network," said Rohit Mehra, VP, Network Infrastructure at IDC.

“While networking hardware will continue to hold a prominent place in network infrastructure, SDN is indicative of a long-term value migration from hardware to software in the networking industry. For vendors, this will portend a shift to software- and service-based business models, and for enterprise customers, it will mean a move toward a more collaborative approach to IT and a more business-oriented understanding of how the network enables application delivery," said Brad Casemore, Director of Research for Datacenter Networking at IDC.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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SDN Market Expected to Experience Strong Growth

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

SDN is not expected to truly catch on in 2016, according to some experts on APMdigest's 2016 predictions list, however a recent International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast says: the worldwide software-defined networking (SDN) market — comprising physical network infrastructure, virtualization/control software, SDN applications (including network and security services), and professional services — will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53.9% from 2014 to 2020 and will be worth nearly $12.5 billion in 2020.

IDC says software-defined networking continues to gain market traction as an innovative architectural model capable of enabling automated provisioning, network virtualization, and network programmability for datacenters at cloud-providers and enterprise networks. Although SDN initially found favor in hyperscale datacenters and at large-scale cloud service providers, it is winning adoption in a growing number of enterprise datacenters across a broad range of vertical markets.

While the physical network, encompassing datacenter switches, will still account for the largest single segment of the SDN market in 2020, per the IDC research, the fastest growth will be found in the two software categories – the virtualization/control layer and SDN applications – which together will be worth approximately $5.9 billion. IDC expects the virtualization/control layer software market to reach $2.4 billion in 2020, with a CAGR of nearly 64% during the forecast period. SDN applications – including Layer 4-7 network and security services and analytics – are forecast to achieve a CAGR of 66% through 2020, when they will account for revenue of more than $3.5 billion.

"Cloud computing and the 3rd Platform have driven the need for SDN, which will represent a market worth more than $12.5 billion in 2020. Not surprisingly, the value of SDN will accrue increasingly to network-virtualization software and to SDN applications, including virtualized network and security services. Large enterprises are now realizing the value of SDN in the datacenter, but ultimately, they will also recognize its applicability across the WAN to branch offices and to the campus network," said Rohit Mehra, VP, Network Infrastructure at IDC.

“While networking hardware will continue to hold a prominent place in network infrastructure, SDN is indicative of a long-term value migration from hardware to software in the networking industry. For vendors, this will portend a shift to software- and service-based business models, and for enterprise customers, it will mean a move toward a more collaborative approach to IT and a more business-oriented understanding of how the network enables application delivery," said Brad Casemore, Director of Research for Datacenter Networking at IDC.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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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 ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

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 ...

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New Relic surveyed IT and engineering leaders from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to understand what's working — and where challenges persist with their observability practices. The findings reveal how M&E organizations are navigating rising platform complexity, audience expectations, and AI-driven change. Below are five takeaways that stand out ...

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...