Defining SDN futures

Logicalis Group has announced an initiative to explore the immediate and future impacts Software Defined Networks (SDN) will have on enterprise customers, service providers and selected industry vertical segments.

The initiative brings together 100 service and technical specialists, drawn from Logicalis Group’s 2300 professionals in 24 countries, to form an international multi-disciplined SDN team with the expertise and insight required to explore, analyse, and report on the business, technology and operational benefits and challenges of SDN’s growing maturity.

The team’s remit is to explore SDN’s potential to transform service provisioning, initially across three specific areas - Service Provider Networks, Cloud Solutions and Services, Government Communications Networks. It will assess and explain long term, tangible benefits and likely adoption challenges to ensure Logicalis customers internationally get consistent, practical and relevant advice as to SDN’s real world impact as the technology continues to mature. The first in a series of reports will be published in January 2014.

Chris Barnard, Associate Vice President at IDC, commented: “Software Defined Networks herald the beginning of a new model of IT service provisioning, transforming the time-frame of deploying new services from days or hours to now minutes and then seconds. SDN is clearly in its early stages, but its long term impacts are already starting to emerge in service providers that build and operate large networks and cloud environments, and also in the organisations that develop applications where the network is the critical component of service success or failure. SDN will influence and impact the total network eco-system and Logicalis is right to be investing time and effort in exploring how its influence will affect its customers.”
SDN is the next evolution in programmable data networks aimed at improving the provisioning, control and, most importantly, abstraction of network services from the underlying complexity of the physical network infrastructure. Promoted by a number of major data centre, communications network and application software vendors as a key transformation technology in the data centre, and in service provider and enterprise communications networks, SDN offers streamlined provisioning and programmability of resources, allowing them to be directed with more efficiency, agility and with more precision than has previously been available in traditional network dependent environments.

Chris Gabriel, CTO at Logicalis Group, commented: “When our technical and service delivery teams scan the horizon for technologies with the greatest potential impact on enterprise IT departments and a range of service providers, SDN now comes at the top of our list. Why? We think SDN has the potential to be more than simply a new way of controlling network resources. It can be a game changer, enabling service providers to develop a new range of service offerings, and allowing government and enterprise IT departments to think and act more like service providers to their own internal customers.

“SDN could create a step change in service provisioning but, as with all emerging technologies, where the market hype precedes real solutions delivery, our role and commitment to our customers is to explore and explain the long-term tangible benefits and adoption challenges, and translate the potential into a definable reality that our customers can derive value from.”

Tim Wadey, Managed Services Director at Logicalis UK, commented: "Control and security are two critical facets in government communications networking that have taken priority ahead of service agility and service flexibility. Government agencies are at the forefront of a new digital generation of both employees and citizens who think 'digitally first' and SDN could address many of the challenges faced by agencies that need to keep all resources under control, but, apply them effectively and more quickly to new digital services. Logicalis UK is applying progressive thinking to how we can allow government to govern in the most effective way possible, whilst matching digital need with fast and collaborative digital delivery."