The market for data center and enterprise software-defined networks (SDN) will exceed $3 billion by 2017, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.
“The important question that everyone wants answered is, ‘What’s the real market for SDN?’,” Infonetics’ directing analyst for data center and cloud Cliff Grossner, Ph.D. was quoted. “It’s still early days, but our research over the last two years confirms that SDN controllers and Ethernet switches in-use for SDN will play a role in enterprise and data center networks, growing to a $3.1 billion market by 2017.”
Data center operators, large enterprises and cloud service providers will be the first to make wide-scale use of SDN hardware and software, according to Infonetics’ market research, followed closely by enterprise LAN. “We’re already seeing significant use cases for SDN in the enterprise LAN providing security and unification of wired and wireless networks, and enabling BYOD,” Grossner commented.
Other key takeaways from the report include:
- SDN is going through a classic market adoption cycle, with many new entrants looking to gain a toe-hold, and the majority of enterprises still kicking the tires
- Vendors shipping SDN products in 2013 include Alcatel-Lucent, Big Switch, Brocade, Cisco, Cumulus, Dell, Extreme, HP, Huawei, IBM, Juniper, Midokura, NEC, Pica8, Plexxi, Plumgrid, VMware and others
- The few early deployments for SDN—Google, NTT, AT&T, Verizon, DT, BT, and China Mobile—are in large data centers of cloud service providers and large enterprises
- 10% of Ethernet switches will be in-use for SDN by 2017
- North America is where SDN got its start, and the region will claim nearly 50% SDN revenue market share through 2017
