Will SDN transform the networking industry?

What is SDN? 

                      SDN (Software-Defined Networking) is a technique which allows the network administrators to manage the network services through abstraction of lower level functionality. In definition we can say as ' the physical separation of the network control plane from the forwarding plane, and where a control plane controls several devices. [Data plane: the real hardware of wires, ports and electrical singals, Control plane: an embedded software that determines where the packets are sent.This software runs inside the networking gear]. It is an emerging architecture which decouples the network control and forwarding functions enabling network control to become directly programmable and the underlying structure to be abstracted for applications and network services. 

SDN 3 layers

The SDN Architecture is:

1) Directly programmable

2) Agile

3) Centrally managed

4) Programmable configured

5) Open standards based and vendor neutral 

As we know the virtualization has transformed the server and storage industry, the SDN is expected to mark the beginning of a new networking era. SDN technology has been embraced by some of the large enterprises in the world such as Google, Facebook, Amazon etc. in the network industry. IDC has predicted that worldwide enterprise SDN market is expected to grom from USD 360 million in 2013 to 3.7billion by 2016. But still there is a lot to go ahead. SDN is still in its early stages. 

So, why SDN?

                      The traditional network industry is characterized by complexity, high price, margins to the device vendor and a lack of control/flexibility to adopt to changing business requirements. As we know virtualization have helped compute and storage layer, the same way networking world is expecting too. In SDN the data plane remains in the networking gear but the control plane becomes a piece of software that can run in any virtualized server. This provides a lot more control on forwarding and shaping the traffic in a very cost effective way. But SDN still needs a lot marketing efforts to catch the of enterprises. Hopefully soon we will see this technology on run.