The Software-Defined Networking (SDN) market will surpass the NZ$1.35 billion mark by 2018 in Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) alone, according to the latest technology assessment from International Data Corporation (IDC).
Findings claim that the APEJ SDN market, consisting of spending from the enterprise and cloud service provider segments, will grow from $8.33 million in 2013 to over $1.35 billion by 2018.
Businesses are more closely correlated today with technology than ever and this will be a strong contributing factor to driving growth in the SDN market because of the benefits it brings to the table, says Surjyadeb Goswami, Research Manager, APEJ Enterprise Networking at IDC .
"End-users recognise the benefits of SDN, but are not jumping on the bandwagon aggressively, mainly as migration from a legacy platform to SDN is not straight forward," Goswami says.
Goswami explains that with IT buyers under the impression that the standards are still evolving, non-risk takers are deciding against investing in SDN in a big way - however this is only a temporary obstacle as the benefits are too important to ignore.
As a result, IDC believes ICT evolutions, such as storage and server virtualisation will also naturally lead to the need for the networks to be virtualized and more efficiently controlled.
That will lead to SDN becoming a game changer, providing key building blocks for delivering next generation network infrastructure to enterprise and hybrid, private, and public cloud services.
"Software-defined networking is a means to a desired goal, rather than an end or solution in its own," Goswami adds.
"It is essentially an architectural model that can help to better align network infrastructure with the needs of application workloads through the delivery of automated provisioning; programmatic network management; application-oriented, network wide visibility; and smooth integration with cloud orchestration platforms."
In addition, programmability enables external control and automation that allow for highly scalable, flexible networks that readily adapt to changing business needs.
SDN has emerged as a focal point for innovation and change in networking as the industry combats with multiple challenges faced in their datacenter network, be it for the cloud service providers or the enterprises.
Goswami says the emergence of SDN is on the back of factors that are driving the need for a network that is more flexible, agile, automated, simple, and seamless.
