Software-defined networking (SDN) has the potential to be the most disruptive technology the networking industry has seen in a generation. While SDN and related technologies, such as network virtualization and network functions virtualization (NFV), offer both enterprises and network service providers the opportunity to make their networks more agile, automated, and transformative for the business, there are many unanswered questions. For instance, we don't fully understand how networking organizations will engineer and operationalize SDN. Furthermore, it is becoming quite clear that existing network management tools and practices are not fully prepared to support these new architectures.

This research study explores these issues in detail. EMA has surveyed early SDN adopters among enterprises and network service providers to understand how organizations are using SDN, network virtualization, and NFV. More importantly, this study reveals just how prepared these early adopters are to manage these technologies. It assesses the readiness of enterprises to manage data-center SDN underlays and overlays, software-defined WAN, campus SDN, and enterprise NFV. The research also reveals the abilities of network service providers to manage SDN and NFV in their telco networks.

As this report will demonstrate, the majority of enterprises and service providers have discovered that their existing network engineering, monitoring, and troubleshooting tools do not fully support SDN, NFV, and network virtualization. This EMA research report identifies the functional requirements that SDN adopters want added to their management systems. It also explores the use cases, benefits, and organizational impacts of SDN adoption.