Technology is improving at a very rapid pace and an organization must use the combination of SDN and NFV to pace itself.

Fremont, CA: The digital revolution is moving at meteoric speeds. The technologies that started the digital revolution are experiencing even faster innovation cycles. For instance, mobile phone technology has advanced at blinding speeds. While it is tough to stay current with the changes, they present both operational and economic benefits. The way networks are implemented and managed is witnessed by the experts, users, as well as the organizations. Today, enterprises are redundant when it comes to establishing, expanding, and updating the network. The enterprises do not even have to take responsibility for the procurement, installation, configuration, and maintenance of the network hardware infrastructure.  Communications, network, and cloud service providers have made it easy for organizations to take advantage of the latest network capabilities. These service providers allow organizations to spread a communications web globally and manage network resources.

Software-defined network (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) are the two technology trends that are transforming networking management. With the combination of SDN and NFV, the enterprises are able to reduce CapEx and OpEx, provision network resources, and enable greater network flexibility. SDNs virtualization approach to network management handles the data plane controlling network traffic and management of network devices separately. SDN provides greater flexibility and control while establishing policies, configuring network resources, and optimizing performances. Enterprises prefer SDN due to its increasingly disaggregating nature of networks. SDN can benefit the organization by eliminating the protracted hardware procurement, installation, and implementation cycles. Furthermore, it can increase the rate of automation of network activities such as security policy modifications, provisioning/de-provisioning, and performance monitoring.

SDN and NFV complement each other. SDN adoption is prevalent due to the network functions virtualization and NFV provides several actual services managed in the SDN. While NFV focuses on optimizing the actual network services, SDN focuses on the control plane. NFVs innovation has a direct relationship with growing business—as a business grows, it needs faster deployments. NFV replaces routers, firewalls, and VPN terminators with virtual devices that run on commodity hardware. This aspect duplicates the as-a-service approach characteristic of cloud services. Communication, network, or data center providers can provide these virtual devices on-demand.

See also: Top SDN Companies