TT Radio Show: Service Providers' SDN Ambitions & Plans

SD-WAN has become the breakout star for software-defined networking, according to a recent report by IHS Markit.

In terms of generating revenue, SD-WAN topped the list of SDN and NFV-based services, according to the fifth edition of IHS Markit's "Carrier SDN Strategies" service provider survey.

"SD-WAN is such a big, exploding market segment that it's pulling along other software-defined services," said IHS Markit's Michael Howard, senior research director of carrier networks. "I think of SD-WAN as opening the eyes and the awareness of enterprises around the world to software-defined networking."

SD-WAN gives enterprises the flexibility of putting their low priority traffic on the Internet via broadband connection while high-priority traffic can be routed to MPLS connections.

"Cost savings was the initial driver and attraction, but SD-WAN has become a lot more," Howard said. "Now SD-WAN is going to be one of those new VNFs that the operators are planning as part of their virtualized services. SD-WAN is also one of the services that is part of the virtual enterprise CPE use case. Operators are planning on deploying the virtual enterprise CPE use case in the next few years."

With virtualized CPU, enterprises will be able to replace individual boxes, such as boxes for firewalls, VPN and WAN optimization, with VNFs at customer sites.

SD-WAN is just one of the SDN-related topics that Howard will address during Thursday's radio show. He'll also talk about the biggest drivers for SDN, the obstacles to deployments -- including legacy OSS -- and the domains that carriers are focused on.

Register here for the next On-The-Air Thursdays radio show and have your SDN-related questions ready for Howard.

— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation