Will 2016 show SDN picking up in India?

PUNE, INDIA: In recent times, SDN has become the buzzword in the networking industry and is widely tipped to be the next game-changer. A Juniper Networks commissioned study by IDC entitled “Understanding SDN is the key to transformation”, surveyed 171 IT decision-makers from over 151 organizations across various industries, to find out more on their plans to deploy SDN in their networks.

Juniper Networks, the industry leader in network innovation, has found through a study commissioned with leading IT market research and advisory firm IDC that a majority of large enterprises in India were planning to deploy Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies as part of their network architecture by 2016.

The study reveals that most large enterprises in India plan to deploy SDN in 2016 - 63 per cent of large enterprises in India plan to deploy SDN as part of their network architecture in 2016.

It also found that 22 per cent of the respondents were “users,” defined as organizations that have deployed SDN in the pilot stage while the rest of the respondents were “intenders” who were planning to deploy SDN in the near future. Among the “intenders,” 40 per cent were planning to deploy SDN within the next year, while the other 60 per cent were aiming to deploy SDN after two years or more.

In terms of Budgets allocated, 42 per cent of intenders and 34 per cent of users do not have a specific budget assigned to the purchase of SDN solutions.

When benefits of SDN were tracked, improved network performance and efficiency emerged as the top benefit of adopting SDN. As to key concerns around SDN adoption, although 86 per cent of respondents projected that enterprise networks of the future will be a combination of SDN and traditional networks, they also cited initial concerns like difficulty in integrating SDN with already deployed or available infrastructure, security concerns, technical skill gap, total cost of ownership, and lack of management.

“SDN has the potential to transform the networking landscape. The networking architecture landscape in India is in a state of transition and the software-defined model can enable significant advantages, making it the logical solution every organization turns to for better efficiency and security," said Sajan Paul, Director (Systems Engineering) - India & SAARC, Juniper Networks

“Innovations like SDN can enable the organizations with an unmatched capacity, flexibility and scale that can act as a worthy foundation to help achieve that business value.
As per the Juniper Networks-commissioned study by IDC, India is at a critical juncture where organizations now need to move forward and start adopting innovations like SDN to be able to adapt to the rapidly changing business environment. Currently, 86 per cent of the respondents felt that enterprise networks in future will be a combination of SDN and traditional networks and 48 per cent felt that SDN can provide value if implemented well. ” added Gaurav Sharma, Research Manager, Enterprise Computing, IDC India