The in-use software-defined networking (SDN) market, including ethernet switches and controllers, will reach $US13 billion in 2019, up from $US781 million in 2014, as the availability of branded bare metal switches and use of SDN by enterprises and smaller Cloud service providers (CSPs) drive growth.
“The SDN market is still forming, and the top market share slots will change hands frequently, but currently the segment leaders are Dell, HP, VMware and White Box,” reports Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., Research Director for datacentre, Cloud and SDN, IHS Research.
“SDN will cross the chasm in 2016, with SDN in-use physical Ethernet switches accounting for 10 percent of Ethernet switch market revenue.”
According to Grossner, SDN still spells opportunity for existing and new vendors; the leaders in the SDN market serving the enterprise data centre will be solidified during the next two years as 2015 lab trials give way to live production deployments.
Findings also show that bare metal switches are the top in-use for SDN-capable switch use case while Grossner predicts that SDN network virtualisation overlays (NVOs) will go mainstream as early as 2016.
