Business Agility Drives Network Virtualization Demand

In the past few years, because the software-definednetworking (SDN) and network virtualization (NV) market have evolved from PowerPoint ideas to operating merchandise, the market has matured into a multibillion-dollar business. The network virtualization demand is currently poised to accelerate as managers check up on virtualization’s role in building a a lot of versatile and climbable networking platform for business.

Let’s take a more in-depth check up on however this can be evolution – and why. Server virtualization took a decade to drive the cloud market. Now, in precisely a couple of years, SDN and NV square measure driving networking. In 2013, we have a tendency to printed Associate in Nursing infographic hinting at the dimensions of the SDN and NV markets— that required $35 billion in SDN disbursal and $1.2 Billion in knowledge center network software system disbursal by a pair of018. Not solely do these numbers currently seem realistic, however actual sales documented within the market mirror this growth.

The easiest thanks to track real-world disbursal on data-center virtualization technology is to appear at the numbers of the 2 market leaders — Cisco Systems and VMware. For its second quarter of yr 2016, Cisco Systems rumored one,100 new Nexus 9K customers, transferral the overall put in base to only over six,000. Of course, the Nexus 9K may be a hardware platform, however Cisco says that it currently has one,400 customers victimisation Application centrical Infrastructure (ACI) software system design. It puts the overall market of ACI, driven by the Nexus switch line, at a $2 billion run rate.

VMware is additionally commerce NV software system at a healthy clip. in keeping with figures discharged on its fourth quarter of 2015 quarter, VMware has one,200 paying customers for its NSX product, that initial shipped in this fall of 2013. VMware aforesaid that it's bookings of $600 million for NSX on Associate in Nursing annualized basis on its fourth-quarter telephone call.

These square measure the 2 largest players within the market. There are several non-public firms or public firms gaining client traction — like Juniper Networks and Nuage (owned by Nokia) — that don’t get away NV sales figures. If you add these sales to the market, it’s safe to mention that SDN and NV reside up to expectations. In fact, I’d say our estimate of a $1.2B marketplace for NV by 2018 currently looks low. SDN, of course, may be a abundant larger market that features more software-based networking parts, however that conjointly appearance poised to achieve multiple tens of billions of bucks in revenue succeeding few years.

What’s driving this growth? Customers have confirmed that they need the pliability, agility, and security provided by virtualized solutions, in keeping with our analysis. It’s clear they now not need their networks nailed right down to proprietary hardware. they need their network to be terribly flexible – desirable in an automatic fashion – to the speedily dynamic  desires of business applications.

We mamma into these details in our 2015 Network Virtualization within the knowledge Center report.

Our surveys have unconcealed alittle of a shift of the initial advantages touted by the NV business. it had been originally thought that greenback savings — in terms of terms of capital disbursal (capx) savings on hardware or lower in operation prices (opex) – would drive the market. however customers square measure currently language that flexibility and quantifiability of NV solutions square measure the first drivers: the potential to quickly roll out, deploy, or maybe amendment their networking infrastructure and applications. Organizations conjointly see SDN and NV solutions as higher ways in which to scale their networks to satisfy dynamic  demand.

When asked to settle on all the advantages that apply to NV, an awesome seventy seven picked flexibility. This year, quantifiability (68%) overtook operational value savings (52%), that was the distant runner up last year. apparently, value savings came in fourth at thirty first.

Expect this demand for business lightsomeness to drive growth. once asked to rank however necessary it had been to search out a NV answer within the next 2-5 years, half of 1 mile of respondents to our NV Survey aforesaid it had been “Important” or “Mission essential.” many purchasers see Associate in Nursing NV infrastructure as easier to integrate and align with the extremely virtualized storage and calculate resources it's connecting, delivering fast provisioning, improved resource utilization and operational efficiencies.

If you think that the expansion is over – it’s simply started. liv p.c of respondents to the SDxCentral 2015 Network Virtualization Survey aforesaid they need not however deployed their NV solutions in an exceedingly production atmosphere.  Overall, 1/2 the respondents to our survey have already adopted NV solutions and [*fr1] haven't. of these that haven’t, seventy eight have plans to deploy NV solutions. Forty p.c have plans to deploy within the next 3-12 months; whereas hr believe they're going to have deployments within the next 12-24 months.

So next time the person sitting in an exceedingly chair next to you at a conference grumbles concerning slow growth within the networking business, you may need to imply that real amendment is really happening – which billions of bucks square measure at stake.xt to check? Click "Select Samples".