A rapid rise in production deployments means that software-defined networking (SDN) is moving beyond the ‘hype’ phase to take the enterprise “by storm” according to a new report.

The survey, SDN Growth Takes IT Infrastructure by Storm, found that 39 percent of respondents have or plan to use SDN within their IT environments within the next 12 months, while 49 percent plan to do so within the next 24 months. The survey was conducted by QuinStreet Enterprise, publisher of eWeek.com, which first reported the news, and found that another 25 percent of respondents are looking into SDN, but are yet to commit themselves so far.

Those figures represent a significant increase in deployments from a similar survey on SDN conducted by QuinStreet Enterprise in 2014.

SDN is popular because it offers a way to separate the control plane and networking tasks like routing, firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, and load balancing from the underlying hardware. Instead, the software can be run on lower-cost commodity switches and servers, allowing businesses to build cheaper networks that are more agile and simpler to program, scale and manage.

QuinStreet Enterprise’s findings suggest SDN is a rapidly growing market encompassing a range of deployment options, standards and vendors. It also finds that other network virtualization technologies like network-functions virtualization (NFV) and virtual LANs (VLANs) are growing in popularity too, though SDN has more momentum.

The survey’s projected growth for SDN mirrors what other research houses have been saying. Last year, International Data Corp. (IDC) said that it expects SDN revenues to top $8 billion a year by 2018, while Research and Markets reckons the market will explode to $11.5 billion by 2020. It added that SDN will go “mainstream” by around 2019/2020. The report also tallies with findings from Wikibon’s 2015 Future of Cloud Computing survey which found that 41.9 percent of enterprises are currently exploring SDN.

What’s driving this rapid adoption? Well, the latest survey says cost savings are the major factor, according to 53 percent of respondents. Another 47 percent cited improved network performance, while 46 percent saw increased productivity as a benefit, and 45 percent were excited about the security improvements SDN offers. Intriguingly though, 47 percent of respondents said cost savings was the biggest challenge of SDN, followed by integration and interoperability, security and actual deployment.

“Deciding to use an SDN architecture brings with it further choices, starting with which platform to use,” QuinStreet Enterprise noted in the report’s summary. “Organizations must choose a cloud-based deployment, virtual switches, bare metal or a combination of the three.”

Right now it seems that the latter option is the most popular route, with 53 percent of respondents opting for a combo. Meanwhile 28 percent chose the cloud model, followed by 13 percent using virtual switches.

“With cloud-based SDN, networking appliances can be easily updated,” the authors wrote. “This is the primary reason respondents from enterprises of all sizes choose the cloud for their SDN deployments.”

Image credit: Shahart via pixabay