Riverbed Software Defined IT Survey

Software Defined IT
Survey
SDN and SD-WAN Important Areas for IT innovation
By Joshua Dobies, Senior Director, Product Marketing

© 2015 Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved. 2
 Survey was conducted at VMWorld 2015 in San Francisco
 Live survey intercepts
 260 responses
Methodology

 SDN adoption is gaining strong interest
 Early days for extending SDN to the branch
 SD-WAN is emerging as the next wave of network innovation
Key Findings

 77% involved with SDN
 Top reasons?
– Deploy new apps/services more quickly
– Reduce costs
– Reduce mistakes when deploying apps/services
 Biggest SDN challenges?
– Performance
– Reliability
– Lack of IT staff SDN experience
SDN adoption is gaining strong interest

 *45% of respondents plan to
extend SDN to cloud or remote
offices
*201 answered [Are you deploying SDN outside the data center?]. 58% chose either
Branch/remote offices or Cloud. That is 116 people. 116 people represent 45% of the total
pool of 260 respondents.
Early days for extending SDN to the branch

 *29% involved with SD-WAN
– Most are still just discussing
– Only 10 of the 260 we spoke with are currently implementing SD-WAN
SD-WAN is just emerging
*117 out of 260 total respondents answered [What is your organization’s involvement with SD-
WAN]. See slide #16 for total percentage breakdown from 117 people.

2,300
0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500
Median
How many employees work at your organization worldwide? (Median)
2,300
0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500
Median
How many employees work at your organization worldwide? (Median)

20%
17%
16%
13%
12%
8%
7%
4%
2%
1%
1%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
Systems administrator
Other
Datacenter/network architect
Manager of Information Systems or Computer Systems
Network engineer
Director in a computing area
Systems analyst
Vice President or Senior Vice President in a computing area
CTO
CIO
CISO
What is your role?

33%
5%
5%
4%
3%
3%
3%
3%
3%
3%
2%
2%
2%
2%
2%
2%
2%
2%
2%
2%
2%
1%
1%
1%
1%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
California
Illinois
Texas
Wyoming
Florida
Georgia
Massachusetts
New Jersey
Tennessee
Arizona
Connecticut
New York
Ohio
Virginia
Idaho
Kentucky
Michigan
Missouri
Nebraska
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Indiana
Kansas
Nevada
New Hampshire
In which state do you live?

12%
11%
38%
10%
17%
13%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%
I am not familiar with that term
We are not pursuing SDN and have no plans to do so
We are discussing SDN
We are in trials for SDN
We are implementing SDN
We have already implemented SDN
What is your organization's involvement with software-defined
networking (SDN)?

17% 18% 18% 18% 19% 18%
12%
12% 14% 14%
14%
27%
71% 69% 68% 68% 67%
54%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Increase the speed with
which we deploy new
data center applications
or services
Reduce costs Reduce mistakes made
when deploying data
center applications or
services
Reduce mistakes made
when deploying cloud
applications or services
Increase the speed with
which we deploy new
cloud applications or
services
Reduce vendor lock-in
How important are each of the following drivers in terms of
why your organization is pursuing SDN?
Extremely/somewhat unimportant Neither important nor unimportant Extremely/somewhat important

13%
16% 18% 17% 16% 15%
20%
23%
20% 18% 23% 25%
33%
31%
64% 64% 64%
60% 59%
52%
48%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Performance issues Reliability issues Lack of SDN expertise
by our IT staff
Cost Lack of visibility to
troubleshoot
performance issues
Existing SDN
solutions are not as
mature as we would
like
Our existing
infrastructure doesn't
fully support SDN
How impactful are the following challenges you face (or think
you will face) with implementing SDN?
Extremely/somewhat unimpactful Neither impactful nor unimpactful Extremely/somewhat impactful

30%
28%
27% 28% 28% 29% 29% 30% 30% 31%
Branch and remote offices
Cloud
Are you deploying SDN outside the data center?

52%
42%
38%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Infrastructure Services (File, Print, AD, DNS, DHCP)
Network Services (vRouter, vFirewall, vWAN optimization, etc.)
Business Applications
How are you extending virtualization to your branch offices?
[Mark all that apply]

52%
27%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Infrastructure that uses separate boxes for servers and storage
Hyper-converged infrastructure (servers and storage from a single vendor in a
single box)
What kind of infrastructure are you using for your branches?

22%
13%
42%
4%
9%
10%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%
I am not familiar with that term
We are not pursuing SD-WAN and have no plans to do so
We are discussing SD-WAN
We are in trials for SD-WAN
We are implementing SD-WAN
We have already implemented SD-WAN
What is your organization’s involvement with software-defined wide-
area-networking (SD-WAN)?

 Slide 1: Software-Defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) is getting a lot of attention these days. But just how
common is SD-WAN in the enterprise? To find out, Riverbed sponsored a survey of networking professionals at the
2015 VMWorld show in San Francisco …
 Slide 2: We interviewed 260 networking professionals at VMWorld as they walked the show floor. We gathered 260
responses. Here is what we found …
 Slide 3: We’ll dive into each of these findings in more detail in a minute, but at the highest level we found that SDN
adoption is gaining strong interest in the data center, but it is early days for extending SDN out to the branch or
remote offices. In addition, the survey indicated that SD-WAN is following just behind SDN and emerging as the next
wave of network innovation in the market. Let’s look at these results in more detail …
 Slide 4: First, we found that enterprises are beginning to move the needle in terms of SDN adoption, with most (77
percent) currently involved in some way with SDN adoption. Why? The top reasons cited include the ability to deploy
new apps and services more quickly, reducing costs and reducing the mistakes made when deploying these new
apps and services. That said, adopting SDN is not without its challenges. The most commonly cited were
performance, reliability and the fact that most enterprise IT departments lack SDN experience. What about the
branch and remote offices? Are enterprises extending SDN beyond the data center?
Slide Notes: Narration for Key Findings

 Slide 5: Some are, but most are not (yet). We found 30 percent are pushing SDN to branch and remote offices while
28 percent are pushing SDN to the cloud. This leads directly to our original question … just how common is SD-WAN
within enterprises? We asked those currently going forward with SDN to tell us. *201 people answered [Are you
deploying SDN outside the data center?]. 58% of those chose either Branch/remote offices or Cloud. That is 116
people. 116 people represent 45% of the total pool of 260 respondents.
 Slide 6: Not very common, as it turns out. Less than a third (29 percent of all respondents surveyed) are currently
involved with SD-WAN, with most of those still in the discussion stage. In fact, just 1 in 26 are currently implementing
SD-WAN. It seems that SD-WAN is in very early stages. That said, there is sizable interest in this early-stage
technology and Riverbed believes SD-WAN is following in the footsteps of SDN as the next big wave of network
innovation in the enterprise. *117 out of 260 total respondents answered [What is your organization’s involvement
with SD-WAN]. See slide #16 for the breakdown.
Slide Notes: Narration for Key Findings

 Slide 7: N=260
 Slide 8: N=260
 Slide 9: N=260
 Slide 10: N=260
 Slide 11: N=260
 Slide 12: N=260
 Slide 13: N=201
 Slide 14: N=143
 Slide 15: N=143
 Slide 16: N=117
Slide Notes: Survey Graphs

Riverbed Software Defined IT Survey

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Editor's Notes