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What Is SDN? Why Business Prepare Need to for SDN Transition

After many years of slow evolution, network design has finally matured to meet the demands of virtualization and cloud computing. As businesses and network vendors seek to make networks easier to manage software-defined networking, alongside network virtualization, is increasingly becoming an attractive option for automated networking management. For managed service providers (MSPs) and IT professionals, this new disruption is both exciting and challenging. Well-equipped MSPs stand to gain from the new technological shift.

What is Software-Defined Networking(SDN)?

SDN is influencing changes in every aspect of networking. The technology uses a highly programmable and centralized model that separates the data planes and controls from the underlying infrastructure resulting in a more granular and automated network control. The centralized network management is more efficient, cost-effective, and allow organizations to modernize IT infrastructure to be able to deploy new technologies.

Understanding the SDN Transition –

SDN is poised to have a positive impact on business. Ideally, SDN is much simpler to manage than traditional networks. Through SDN, internal IT organizations can master the complex nature of their networks from a single control point with little or no network support from an external managed service provider.

Essentially, SDN can provision networks without manual configurations or be relying on hardware for decision making. This programmable capacity has become critical to preparing companies to be ready to deploy other new technologies such as big data and cloud-based applications.

That said, SDN transition can be daunting. It requires new skills set that most internal IT organizations lack. The two underlying concepts of SDN are programmability and centralized control. Unfortunately, most networking professionals lack important programming skills.

For MSPs, this challenge is more of an incentive to invest more in equipping their staff with relevant skills to be able to effectively manage IT systems. Besides, SDN allows for scalability of services across different customers, so MSPs stand to gain if they are well equipped.

Unfortunately, SDN is evolving at a relatively slow pace. Most of the enterprises with highly virtualized data centers often face deployment challenges in their quest for a rapid deployment, more automation, and more granular configurations. There are several open source orchestration tools that are available for free download. However, interoperability issues still persist.

The major problem is that SDN solves one part of the next-generation equation. The goal is to have a framework that supports virtualization.

SDN will have a huge impact on the role of a majority of networking professionals, especially networking engineers who haven’t dwelled much into newer technology. Even for virtualization-savvy pros, SDN will still present challenges because, in the processes of simplifying the interface, software-defined networking puts an additional layer on top of the already complex network.

Managing the Challenges

Despite the many technical and interoperability challenges that come with the transition, it is still possible to manage SDN deployment. As IT organizations continue to adopt different forms of cloud technology, most of the interoperability issues will be resolved.

There have been serious discussions on SDN, especially SD-WAN vs MPLS, that has been going on for a while. According to Dimension Data, Next-generation technologies such as SDN have begun to take hold despite all the challenges.

The adoption is driven by the need to have a hybrid IT environment. This is evident from the results of a survey of 1500 IT decision makers commissioned by Dimension Data but conducted by 451 Research. The survey concluded that hybrid IT architectures will become the standard way for most IT organizations.

Another factor that will drive the adoption of SDN and other next-gen technologies will most likely be the Internet of Things (IoT). Some companies that have already invested in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and SDN to manage several distributed IoT endpoints. This kind of deployment would have been difficult without SDN technologies.

Partnering with MSPs

As next-generation technologies continue to take hold, more organizations will face challenges keeping up with market dynamics. They will need to nurture in-house IT professionals or partner with a managed service provider that offers Managed SD-WAN Services.

So, there is no reason for organizations to delay SDN deployment when there is a partner that has an ecosystem that supports wide-ranging applications. For effective deployment, an enterprise needs an MSP that has demonstrated innovation in this area. Technology deployment involves taking risks, so there is always a need for managed SD-WAN provider to have measures to mitigate the risks.

With the increasing relevance of SDN, more and more MSPs are getting into space. However, the main challenge for these companies is to transition from being a hardware company to a software firm. Obviously, the transition will not occur overnight. Whether these providers will choose to resell a set of service from a cloud service provider or build it from the ground up, the amount of hardware that will be needed will decline with time.

Benefits of Software Defined Networking

SDN transition is a journey. It will take time, resource, and preparation before organizations introduce virtualization and automate it into data infrastructure. That said, the first step is to put the following benefits into context.

• Augmented Automation

Automation empowers companies to create a more consistent and predictable environment that promotes scalability. This makes it possible to manage different traffic situation.

• Centralized Networking Control

Centralized network management allows for efficient distribution of traffic. This eliminates chokepoints thus improving application performance. With a central console, an organization can manage infrastructure (storage, networks, and servers) more effectively.

• Improved Security

Virtualization may complicate management, but it gives more powers to IT administrators to control the network. Having a centralized network control system creates a central point of monitoring to distribute policy and security information through the organization.

• Reduce Expenses

Centralized network management leads to better hardware use and operational efficiency. It is also possible to extend the lifespan of existing hardware because you are relying more on the SDN controller.

Conclusion

As business operations turn more to mobile, cloud, and virtualized systems, SDN will become more relevant. Although development is still in the early stage, SDN is set to revolutionize how businesses operate going into the future. It represents a shift from older rigid WAN and LAN systems.

If you are ready to start the journey or have a question about switching to SDN, please get in touch with our specialists. ExterNetworks is a Managed Services Provider that offers cloud and networking solutions to businesses interested in transitioning to SDN and virtualization