According to Gartner, 60 percent of the enterprises will phase out legacy WAN and network VPNs in favor of software-defined networking (SDN) or software-defined networking in a wide area (SD-WAN) by the year 2021. In this scramble to transition to SD-WAN, enterprises need a robust solution that doesn’t compromise their bottom line, a solution that can be seamlessly aligned to their existing processes.
Organizations that choose to delay the transition would be unable to use cloud-based applications, and wouldn’t have the redundant connectivity to leverage UCaaS and SaaS applications. Moreover, by discarding expensive legacy WAN connections such as MPLS, organizations can address prevailing performance-related concerns due to latency, while transforming their business outcomes with real-time operations. They would also be able to curtail ID budgets by eliminating data center upgrades.
With the rise of big data and cloud-based applications, organizations have little to gain by sticking to their old networking principles. SDN gives organizations immediate end-to-end visibility in the network data and enables their controllers to monitor traffic while deploying suitable security policies wherever necessary. Software-defined WAN is also very effective in helping organizations converge the management of network and application services into a centralized platform. This extensible platform can thereby automate the provisioning and configuration of the entire infrastructure. SD-WAN is also able to help enterprises increase resource flexibility and utilization by delivering automated on-demand app delivery, agility, and speed. Why would enterprises not want stronger security and quicker time to effectively deliver their services and accelerate their innovations?
Clearly, SDN solutions can fulfill the rising business needs of both today and tomorrow. It has now been proven that SDN is truly accelerating the enterprise world by deploying value-added services at faster connectivity speed and reducing the IT infrastructure costs. SDN technology has found effective application across industry verticals such as Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), Education, Government, Television, Healthcare, Retail, Telecom and Information Technology (IT). Most effective SDN / SD-WAN use cases have been enterprise data centers with technologies focused on providing multi-tenancy to support the business requirements around IT efficiency and agility. Also, enterprises that operate data centers are able to significantly enhance their network virtualization, courtesy SDN.
In today’s landscape, nearly every element of the IT world is being virtualized to effectively eliminate dependence on hardware, and to bring scalability to operations. Technologies such as SDN, SD-WAN, and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), have proven to be critical for enterprises in curtailing Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operating Expenses (OPEX) by decoupling the functions that historically were sold as specialized, vendor-specific bundles.
Over the last few months, an illustrious panel featuring CEOs, CIOs, VCs, analysts, and the editorial board at CIO Advisor APAC has shortlisted organizations that are at the forefront of delivering robust SDN and SD-WAN solutions. The list intended to gauge the different solution offerings in the networking sector that can help enterprises operational efficiencies.
We present to you CIO Advisor APAC’s “Top 10 SDN Solution Providers – 2019”.
