SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING
By Brian Mackow-McGuire,
Senior Product Manager,
Maintel
The way data is routed and managed hadn’t
undergone any radical changes for thirty years,
until SDN came along...
www.maintel.co.uk
Software-defined networking (SDN) has gone the way of
unified comms (UC) – the term itself has evolved and is now
open to different interpretations depending on the context.
With analysts IDC forecasting that the worldwide SDN
market will be worth nearly $12.5 billion in 2020, it’s clearly
here to stay. So how has the market’s understanding of SDN
changed?
Just as a UC conversation around productivity could be
focused on the time-saving benefits of instant messaging and
presence, another audience could see the same question and
point to how active directory integration, click-to-call or video
calling can reduce time spent travelling to meetings.
Now, we have the SDN conversation evolving from
bandwidth changes and network function virtualisation,
including monitoring and management, through to smart
routing. While we’re used to seeing network capacity
increasing every couple of years, the way data is routed and
managed hadn’t undergone any radical changes for thirty
years – until SDN that is.
Beyond traditional networks
The traditional network management and routing becomes
the equivalent of using a roadmap, rather than the
smartphone navigation app of SDN. Just like a smartphone
app, SDN looks at the shortest route while considering traffic
flows and bottlenecks, identifying pinch-points and deciding
whether to avoid them. SDN will utilise backup routes, such
as the Internet, to relieve capacity by routing low priority
traffic over it. Simil