Pete Welcher of Chesapeake Netcraftsmen writes:
When will Software Defined Networking (SDN) reach a broad market? That time is coming. As I’ve been saying, most organizations don’t want to be in the software development business in order to automate their networks. Nor do they want software integration “science projects”. They want solutions. We’re starting to see a lot more marketing of solutions now, with less mention (perhaps) of SDN, programming, automation toolkits. Examples: Cisco ACI or APIC-Enterprise. VMware NSX.
One of the key items required in a next-generation solution is innovation. There’s a growing shortage of skilled technical people, and not just in networking. Businesses need to be able to operate their network (and servers, storage, etc.) with people they can afford to hire. So automation solutions (SDN) need to innovate and add simplicity. The ones that don’t work or are overly complex are going to fail in the long run.
This is a great overview of SD-WAN from Dr. Pete. He specifically talks about aggregating WAN links, which is something we’ve been able to do for a very long time, and contrasts it against SD-WAN, which is a totally different animal.
Read more: Hybrid WAN or SD-WAN
