“The SDN revolution brings power to network users” – claims Dan Pitt at NetEvents Miami |
Software-Defined Networking is today’s key theme at Americas Press & Analyst Summit |
26th July, NetEvents Miami: Software-Defined Networking (SDN) was a hot, much debated topic at today’s NetEvents Americas Press and Analyst Summit. A combination of keynote address The SDN Revolution – Empowering the People by Dan Pitt, Executive Director, Open Networking Foundation (ONF) together with new market research data and projections from Dell’Oro Senior Analyst, Casey Quillin, lead into a heated debate on the controversial topic – As the old order goes under, who will come out on top? The day’s other highlights included a visionary presentation by MEF President, Nan Chen, and debates on Security Intelligence for Tomorrow’s Networks and Carrier Ethernet’s role in Boosting Operators’ Profit. “The SDN revolution brings power to the network users and those who operate them” said Dan Pitt. “What has died is the old way of doing networking, and it will take time for us to absorb those changes and to change the culture of networking. It’s a movement not just a technology – a tsunami of sorts.” Outlining the history of SDN, the underlying technology and the role of the ONF, he went on to describe how OpenFlow – conceived in academia – has become the industry-standard protocol driving SDN into the real world. He backed this with current examples of immediate benefit including Google’s Gscale WAN which attains 95 percent utilization, Genesis Hosting, Chicago, which “allows tenants to control the network as if it’s their own”, and NTT Communications’ enterprise cloud and virtualization service. Above all, Dan presented a fascinating view of the future, foreseeing operators becoming software or management companies and new networking start-ups developing network applications to be sold in app stores. “We’re returning the network to the people that use and deploy it,” he said. “It’s the democratization of the network.” As to the here and now of SDN, Casey Quillin highlighted the industry’s excitement over Software-Defined Networking (SDN) – way beyond the usual new technology hype. “Vendors have adopted OpenFlow switch control quickly,” he said, “Dell’Oro Group predict that datacentre switch revenues will increase to $2.5bn by 2013.” Full transcripts of these and other first day sessions, together with speaker presentations, are available from the NetEvents website Speakers included: Accedian; Alcatel-Lucent; BT Global Services; Cisco; ClickSecurity; Dell Oro Group; Enterasys Networks; Extreme Networks; FierceMobileIT; Frost & Sullivan; Fujitsu Network Communications; Huawei Technologies; IDC; Iometrix; MEF; Open Networking Foundation; Overture; Signals Telecom Consulting; Spirent Communications; Telco Systems; TheInfoPro; Tower Cloud; Telco Systems; Verizon Network and Technology; and Vertical Systems Group |
