Software defined network (SDN) enables direct programmatic control of the network and simplifies the way network provisioning to create network services and virtual networks are handled. It plays a huge role in an efficient service delivery and an increased service velocity. Service providers have been the early adopters and they are using SDN’s pervasively.
SDN enables extensive automation of service provisioning and network management processes across many devices, multiple layers, and multiple vendors. SDN helps:
- reduce opex by upto 70% and labour costs by 62%
- consolidation of IT resources: number of switches and its power consumption is reduced by 70% while server racks are reduced by 55%
- brings in business agility
- Recovery time objectives are reduced thus increasing network availability and performance
- flatten LAN architecture which results in 85% saving in real estate, power, cooling and cabling. In traditional deployments 63% of total LAN costs are for personnel resources these also include connectivity, administration, general network and application support and some hidden costs.