SDN is the biggest disruption in the data networking market in 15 years, writes Wikibon Analyst Stuart Miniman in his latest Wikibon Professional Alert. It is also the largest opportunity for the competition to crack Cisco’s stranglehold on the market. However, he says, Cisco is not sitting still and has its own new technologies on the way.

Over the years, the growth in network speed has not been sufficient to dislodge the underlying corporate network architecture, as existing switches can often be upgraded. The result is that new-generation architectures, including Cisco’s Nexus, have “not significantly moved the needle on market share.” However, the advent of SDN, already in use in the big Internet companies’ hyperscale data centers, will require rearchitecting of the company network, providing users with an opportunity to reevaluate their network technology.

The former “seven dwarves” of networking have effectively shrunk to four choices, Miniman writes:

1. HP Networking is the clear number 2 in numbers combining ProCurve and 3COM, although it is still far behind Cisco. HP Networking has rebranded and streamlined its portfolio and emphasizes open standards and SDN.
2. Dell Networking is the surprise number 3 in the market thanks to strong growth since its acquisition of Force10, which has an early #2 position in 40 Gb Ethernet, where strong growth is expected.
3. Juniper, Brocade, and Arista have yet to break from the pack and have an uphill battle getting into enterprise environments where solutions are preferred over best-of-breed technologies.
4. SDN has opened the door to white box solutions from Taiwanese manufacturers in massive Web-scale environments. These vendors could also compete particularly in the high end of the enterprise market.

Cisco, meanwhile, is continuing to increase its datacenter business and Nexus adoptions. And it has a secret weapon in Insieme. While Insieme’s strategy is not public, it is expected to have a strong SDN connection and to push toward higher bandwidth and lager scale networks.

Overall, while SDN promises to allow customers to become more hardware-agnostic, “it will take some time to see if OpenDaylight and standards can deliver on this,” Miniman writes. Users should consider all the options.

Like all Wikibon research, this Professional Alert is available in its entirety at no charge on the Wikibon site. IT professionals are invited to join the Wikibon community, which allows them to post their own questions and research and comment on Wikibon research. Membership also includes invitations to the Peer Incite Meetings, where IT professionals discuss how they are solving real-world problems with advanced technologies. And it includes a subscription to the Peer Incite newsletter, which includes analysis of these meetings.