Over the last decade, we’ve seen a huge growth in the number of data centres switching over to software based networking (SDN) in order to meet the demands of an evolving, cloud-driven market – but what difference does it make?
With a recent study claiming that an SDN market that accounted for $10.88 billion in 2015 is expected to reach $134.51 billion by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 43.2% from 2015 to 2022, we know it will play a key role in the future of business networking – but why is this so?
To answer these questions, we feel an in depth look at what SDN is and what benefits it can bring to end users and service providers is essential.
What is SDN?
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SDN cuts back on technician costs by centralising networking administration[/caption]
Software defined networking (SDN) shouldn’t be thought of as a technology per se, but a type of networking architecture that encompasses a variety of complex technologies, simplifies them and makes it much easier for the service provider or IT administrator to add greater control, mobility, scalability and resilience to their network.
Unlike the past where calls and connectivity were all a network had to handle, the infrastructure of a modern business’s communication system is much more complex and traditional networks are unable to support the shifting requirements of various real-time cloud applications.
With SDN, however, network administrators are given much more flexibility in how they control their network, and can direct traffic from a centralised location across the board, sending services wherever they are needed without worrying about how or where specific servers or devices are connected.
SDN v Traditional Networking
With traditional networking, networking functionality is typically implemented through a dedicated hardware appliance such as a router, switches, firewalls or application controller – each of which much be manually configured by an IT administrator who is responsible for ensuring each appliance is updated with the latest configuration settings.
One of the major problems that comes from managing a network in this way is that it takes a great deal of time and technological expertise to perform these tasks and making just one mistake in a network where everything is linked individually could potentially bring the whole system down to its knees.
Risky, expensive and highly limited in their capabilities, traditional networking solutions are in steady decline and now the time has come to start introducing new perspectives on how networks are managed.
With this in mind, software defined networking is rapidly becoming the go to solution for those who are having trouble overcoming the limitations of traditional networking – but what is exactly is it?
