The 10 Coolest Software-Defined Networking Technologies Of 2016

SDN Reached $1.1 Billion In The First Half Of 2016

The global data center and enterprise software defined networking market reached $1.1 billion in sales for the first half of 2016, according to research firm IHS Markit. That represented a 42-percent increase over the first half of 2015, with all parts of the globe reporting upticks in spending. Significant growth is expected to continue in 2017.

Although Cisco and VMware remained the market leaders, new technology such as from SD-WAN startups Viptela and Velocloud turned some heads in 2016. CRN looks at 10 of the coolest and most highly sought after SDN technologies in the market last year.

Cisco ACI

Closing out 2016 at an annual run rate of $3 billion, Cisco's Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is continuing to gain momentum as the SDN market leader. The San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant's ACI business grew 33 percent year over year during its first fiscal quarter, while the company also acquired cloud management startup CliQr for $260 million to boost ACI capabilities.

"We are building on the foundation of ACI by extending our capabilities with analytics through Tetration, agnostic cloud management with CloudCenter from our CliQr acquisition and our hyper-converged offering, HyperFlex," CEO Chuck Robbins said during Cisco's first-quarter earnings call in November. "This will give our customers flexibility, agility and savings by delivering the benefits of both private and public clouds."

ACI is based on the company's Nexus 9000 series of switches and includes Cisco's Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC).

VMware NSX

VMware's popular hardware-agnostic NSX network virtualization platform leverages virtual switches running in each hypervisor to create an SDN overlay. During VMware's recent third fiscal quarter earnings call, the vendor reported that NSX now had more than 1,900 customers, more than double what it had a year earlier.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware also integrated NSX into several new releases throughout 2016 including vSphere and Cloud Foundation.

"The security use case around NSX [has] very strong momentum expanding customer presence," CEO Pat Gelsinger said during the company's third-quarter earnings call.

To boost NSX even further, VMware last year acquired Arkin, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup that provides software to let organizations track traffic flows and security issues in virtualized and physical environments.

VeloCloud Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN

As more carriers sign up for SD-WAN in hopes of adding new value-added services for customers, Velocloud has become a magnet in the service provider market, scoring technology partnerships last year with the likes of AT&T, Sprint, NetOne, Vonage and Earthlink.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based startup's Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN solution provides assured application performance, secure and available hybrid networks, and zero-touch WAN automation. The solution includes a choice of public, private or hybrid cloud for enterprise-grade connection to cloud and enterprise applications, branch office and data center appliances, automation and virtual services delivery.

Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN has the flexibility to be deployed as an over-the-top solution with on-premises SD-WAN, which can be combined with VeloCloud's gateways for direct SD-WAN access to Software as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service.

Aerohive Networks SD-LAN

Milpitas, Calif.-based Aerohive touts its new SD-LAN solution as a more secure, adaptable and cost-effective approach to wireless and wired access networks. Aerohive's SD-LAN builds an application- and policy-driven wired and wireless access architecture to offer self-organizing and centrally managed networks that are simpler to operate, integrate and scale.

The solution defines what users, clients and things can do when they access the SD-LAN. It also contains open APIs that allow for tight integration of network and applications infrastructures, as well as the ability to prioritize or change network behavior based on applications.

On the security front, Aerohive’s SD-LAN addresses Internet of Things attack vulnerabilities by putting security protection right at the point where IoT traffic first touches the network. providing a first line of defense for businesses against IoT malware.

Big Switch Networks' Big Monitoring Fabric With BigSecure Architecture

SDN specialist Big Switch Networks introduced a significant upgrade to its SDN Big Monitoring Fabric product line with the addition of its new BigSecure Architecture – a high-performance cyberdefense platform that enables Terabit attack mitigation. The new security functionality helps customers protect their data centers against massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

The company’s new Big Monitoring Fabric 6.0 is a network packet broker deployed at the data center edge that connects security tools and leverages SDN, open networking switching and x86-based Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) service nodes to offer scale-out monitoring. Big Monitoring’s controller-based SDN platform provides centralized control of policies and configurations through a single pane of glass. New features include support of machine-to-machine traffic visibility in VMware environments and the ability to monitor container-to-container traffic.

Juniper Contrail

Juniper Networks' overlay solution provides cloud networking and service orchestration that combines automation with Juniper's OpenStack distribution, allowing for a turnkey platform for building and scaling secured networks.

Contrail received a shot in the arm last year with Juniper's acquisition of application infrastructure software startup AppFormix. Juniper plans to integrate AppFormix's machine-learning technology into its Contrail line to improve cloud orchestration, security, accounting and planning.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Juniper also offers an SDN controller and a Contrail Service Orchestration platform that delivers complete service life-cycle management in an open framework.

Viptela SD-WAN Platform

Viptela's SD-WAN technology virtualizes WAN infrastructure, allowing customers to roll out voice, video and data applications faster using any edge access link across their extended infrastructures. The SD-WAN platform enables service providers and enterprises to build carrier-agnostic, policy-controlled and cost-effective WANs providing service providers the ability to roll out out zero-touch deployments at thousands of sites with centralized management.

San Jose, Calif.-based Viptela enables carriers and service providers to deliver virtualized WAN services at half the cost, with 10 times more bandwidth and five times higher voice and cloud performance than alternatives, according to the company. Major carriers using Viptela SD-WAN include Verizon and Singtel.

The SD-WAN startup unveiled its first partner program, vForce, in October.

Brocade SDN Controller

Brocade Communications' open-source SDN controller is built directly from OpenDaylight code, without proprietary extensions or platform dependencies. The SDN controller is distributed along with its VCS Fabric and ensures the ability to quickly develop and monetize applications. Customers can optimize their infrastructures to match the needs of their workloads and develop network applications that can be run on any OpenDaylight-based controller.

In March, San Jose, Calif.-based Brocade acquired DevOps automation startup StackStorm, creating the basis for Brocade's Workflow Composer, which was launched earlier in the year. Workflow is a DevOps-based network automation platform that integrates across IT domains for end-to-end workflow automation that's now compatible with Brocade’s SDN Controller.

Avaya SDN Fx Architecture

With the ability to support up to 168,000 devices, Avaya's SDN Fx Architecture contains a OpenDaylight-based controller and Fabric Orchestrator that integrates with OpenStack. The SDN Fx includes the Open Network Adapter (ONA), an Internet of Things gateway targeting the healthcare market that provides secure network connections for devices with an Ethernet port.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company's ONA automatically provides a secure network path that enables management of thousands of devices.

Extreme SDN Platform

Extreme Networks' SDN platform is based on a hardened OpenDaylight controller that includes network management, access control, application analytics and wireless controller technology using open APIs. The platform extends orchestration and automation capabilities while enabling provisioning to the entire network under a single pane of glass. Extreme's SDN can integrate with existing multi-vendor hardware and software network environments.

Extreme broadened its SDN market through its acquisition last year of Zebra Technologies' wireless LAN business for $55 million. The deal, which closed in October, combines Zebra's WLAN technology and customers with Extreme’s wired and wireless capabilities while expanding its end-to-end hardware and SDN solutions.

San Jose, Calif.-based Extreme also provides an OpenDaylight-based API software development kit to help customers keep pace with new security, wireless technology and converged SDN infrastructure.