While SDN is no spring chicken, enterprises are starting to see its value, according to a survey commissioned by Verizon.
In the survey, which was conducted by Longitude, 15% of the companies were piloting or using software-defined technologies. Over the next two years, that number jumps up to 57% with 12% expecting to have SDN deployed throughout their entire operations over the same time frame.
Furthermore, 86% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that SDN could enable more rapid deployment of new applications, services and infrastructure. Also, 9 out of 10 survey respondents (86%) agreed or strongly agreed that SDN’s greater agility and simplicity would aid them in being more innovative in their approach to new types of applications, services and business models.
On the other side of the ledger, 31% of the businesses see their SDN deployments taking place over the next 3 to 5 years.
"This indicates that those companies that are yet to consider SDN risk being left trailing in the race for business agility before they even get started," Vicki Lonker, executive director, business products, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, wrote in a company blog.
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Lonker wrote that digital disruptions, rapid globalization and increased customer demand were driving businesses models to evolve at a more rapid clip, which was putting more pressure on legacy network technologies.
Service providers have long taken advantage of SDN's ability to orchestrate networks, improve security and spin-up on demand products. For businesses, SDN could transform networks and spur increased growth.
The study found that 49% of the companies saw SDN as necessary to scale their network functionality while 44% believed it would give them a competitive edge and help them respond more quickly to opportunities.
According to the survey, another 44% said that SDN would help them deploy services more quickly. Other big benefits for SDN included: increased network security (56%), better application performance (50%) and improved network resilience (48%).
Longitude surveyed 165 senior IT leaders from large global organizations.