Software-defined networking next big IT trend in Kingdom

Software-defined networking (SDN) is the next big IT trend, according to the analyst community and vendors alike.
Although the concept of SDN emerged a few years ago in response to the challenges of the rigidity of physical networks and manual operations, its adoption in Saudi Arabia remains gradual.
Early adopters of SDN in the country are currently investigating a wide range of applications and use cases.
These include network virtualization, large-scale data center infrastructure management, traffic engineering and WAN flow management.
IDC reports that globally SDN currently accounts for around $360 million in annual business in a $30 billion networking industry.
This is expected to grow significantly in future and the same trend holds true in the Kingdom as well.
Sufian Dweik, regional director MENA at Brocade Communications, says SDN is actually a fairly simple philosophy, but the preparation to be able to deploy SDN needs to start now.
SDN is a way of approaching the management and utilization of the network differently, enabling customers to fully utilize the power of virtualization of hardware and software effectively across the infrastructure.
Virtualization has emerged as a way of managing devices better and this is a technology that has progressed beyond the hype into the actual deployment phase.
According to Biswajeet Mahapatra, research director, at analyst firm Gartner, “Most companies today are virtualizing 20-30 percent of their hardware.”
By dividing physical devices into multiple virtual “units,” enterprises can use their full capacity and compute power.
To deploy and benefit from SDN, it is important to realize that the ‘network’ remains the critical foundation to technology plans and business performance.