Silver Peak shows SDN importance to IT

Silver Peak Systems has revealed software defined networking (SDN) to be a key ingredient to IT strategy across the industry.

The accelerating data over distance provider says results of a recent study shows over half of the companies asked (59%) feel SDN is important to their IT strategies, with 20% considering it “very important.”

The importance of SDN was also reflected in how soon IT managers plan to implement it according to the results, with one-in-six IT managers intending to implement some form of SDN in less than 12 months, while 40% of those surveyed indicated they would implement it in less than two years.

“Software defined networking is riding the fine line between promise and hype,” says Larry Cormier, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Silver Peak.

“The biggest issue is the constantly evolving definition of SDN. Do the results of this survey say we will see mass replacement of physical infrastructure in the next two years? No.

"But what is clear is that enterprise IT professionals are excited about virtualization.

"It is a proven path to both capital cost savings and operational efficiencies, which matches exactly our own recent experience as we’ve seen virtual WAN optimization adoption grow 900% in the last year.”

In other results from the study, two-thirds of those polled indicated their companies were “going virtual” either because of better uptime and high availability (33.3%), or the ability to deliver new services faster (36.5%).

Nearly three-quarters of respondents (73%) are currently using virtualisation in their branch offices and nearly all (95%) have implemented virtualisation in their data centers.

But given the choice between physical or virtual wide area network (WAN) optimisation in the branch office, Silver Peak says the vast majority (81.6%) indicated they prefer virtual.

“This finding certainly reinforces the value, flexibility and simplicity that IT professionals see in virtual solutions,” Cormier says.

The survey also looked at issues around cloud computing, showing one-third of the respondents to currently leverage the cloud as part of their enterprise infrastructures and a further 20% to follow within a year.

When asked about their concerns over the move to the cloud, results showed nearly half (41.8%) were most concerned with security, while one-in-five (20%) were worried about reduced performance.