Networking was a hot topic at this week’s OpenStack Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. One of the most notable use cases discussed during the Summit was Verizon’s Software-Defined Networking-Network Function Virtualization OpenStack cloud deployment across five of its U.S. data centers. But while the network industry has been discussing SDN for the past five or so years and there have been some success stories like Verizon’s, the rate of change has been slow, according to Lee Doyle, principal analyst at Doyle Research.

Though hyperscale companies, such as Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., are already using SDN and reaping the benefits, other organizations are striving to follow their example. “We’re still early in the truly software-driven networking game,” Doyle stated.

Doyle recently joined host Stu Miniman (@stu) and guest host John Troyer (@jtroyer), of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during OpenStack Summit. Among other issues, Doyle explained how SDN is a big change from managing networking in the past.

Better, quicker connectivity

One aspect of SDN is starting to take off. Called the Software-Defined Wide-Area Network it’s especially prevalent in the financial services and retail industries, but it is also extending to government and healthcare — anywhere, essentially, that requires a great deal of connectivity between distributed environments, according to Doyle.

The real change is that previously the setup would be a “hub-and-spoke” network, he added. Starting with Multiprotocol Label Switching, the information would move from the branch and into a data center or centers. Now, with the advent of cloud and Software as a Service, the information doesn’t need to go to the data center; in fact, by doing so, a lot of latency would be added, Doyle stated.

“SD-WAN is adding the intelligence, the traffic-steering, the ability to manage multiple networks, and [it is facilitating] a move away from MPLS and toward more cost-effective internet connectivity,” Doyle concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of OpenStack Summit 2017 Boston.

Photo: SiliconANGLE