Nine Important Facts About the SDN, NFV Revolution

Depending on your perspective, either a major evolution or revolution is playing out across networking. A massive amount of investment capital is driving the development of software-defined networking (SDN). At the same time, the emergence of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) software is setting the stage for the replacement of billions of dollars of networking appliances with software that provides the same functions at a fraction of the cost. A new report from market research firm Rayno Media suggests that the combination of SDN and NFV will transform networking as we know it. The challenge is that it will take time for this transformation to play out. In the meantime, the entire SDN category, including NFV, will soon be worth $20 billion, according to the report. That suggests the associated opportunities that the category represents for the channel could be quite substantial. Providers of telecommunications and cloud computing services will be the first to make the move. But one thing that is for sure is that traditional enterprise IT organizations won't be too far behind. Here's a look at key takeaways from the study.