Technology market research firm Infonetics Research, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), recently conducted in-depth surveys with businesses in the US and Canada about the enterprise LAN software-defined networking (SDN) market, and found that 72 percent plan to have campus LAN SDN in live production by the end of 2017.
“Expectations for software-defined networking in the campus LAN are clear," said Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., Infonetics’ research director for data center, cloud and SDN. "Businesses taking part in our study want SDN to provide operational cost savings by integrating with existing networks, delivering better security, simplifying management and improving application performance. And they want all this without network interruptions."
When asked about barriers to deploying SDN, Infonetics reports that survey respondents most often cited interoperability with existing network equipment/management systems, lack of in-house SDN skills and potential network interruptions. “Enterprises’ top use cases for LAN SDN are focused on automation for provisioning, wired and wireless LAN unification, BYOD, and improved security enforcement at the network access point,” Grossner added.
The research also finds that SDN-capable applications for the campus LAN represent one of the biggest opportunities for third-party SDN, existing virtualization and open source vendors, though existing network vendors are still contenders to provide the technology. Survey respondents most often identified Cisco, HP, Juniper, Microsoft and VMware (in alphabetical order) as the top SDN vendors.
Infonetics interviewed IT purchase-decision makers at medium and large organizations for the study, Campus LAN SDN Strategies: North American Enterprise Survey, which examines how the local area network will evolve with SDN. Businesses interviewed in North America were polled on their views about how the enterprise LAN SDN market will evolve to help vendors determine how to invest in product development and position their products in the marketplace.
The study provides insights into respondents’ plans to implement SDN, including deployment drivers and barriers, rollout plans, applications, use cases, vendors installed and under evaluation, and top-rated vendors. Learn more.