Software Defined Network (SDN) is being labelled as the future of networking for its ability to deliver greater efficiency and automation. However, research from British cloud and network provider, Exponential-e, has revealed that 86 per cent of businesses do not understand SDN and 95 per cent do not know what benefits it could bring to their enterprise.
“In an innovate or fail society, an agile and responsive network is central to driving competitive advantage,” explained Chris Christou, Director of Engineering at Exponential-e. “Providing a business with the ability to manage and control their Network themselves enables them to support their business internally in their drive for increased revenues.”
SDN effectively allows organisations to reconfigure network services on-demand. Enterprises are no longer subject to change controls, service tickets or related support and management fees. Instead they can adapt the services that network providers deliver, through a simple self-service interface.
Given the IT difficulties being faced by businesses in 2016, more organisations need to take advantage of SDN to eliminate the bottleneck of human intervention and provide a central system to manage the services required, and monitor the associated activity. In total, nearly a third (32 per cent) of respondents are battling escalating software and hardware costs, 21 per cent admitted that there is a lack of internal control over the network and 17 per cent said that infrastructure was unable to cope with growth.
“SDN increases efficiency and supports the flexibility demanded by fast moving organisations that are tasked with responding to unexpected outages and breaks in service. Using the database as a master A-Z then it’s possible to map the optimum route to instantly reconfigure networks, reduce latency and meet peaks or troughs in demand,” concluded Christou. “SDN effectively removes the impenetrable barrier between a customer and network provider, providing a more flexible and agile way to manage network configurations.”
