New Year's Resolutions for SDN Success

IT organizations are constantly facing pressure to increase efficiency and agility in their data centers in order to meet enterprise demands. While SDN promises faster provisioning times, improved visibility, and greater network flexibility, it has yet to really take off. Few businesses that implemented an SDN architecture in 2015 reported successful deployments that lowered costs and increased productivity. Instead, most enterprises felt the sting of complex deployments and scaling issues they weren't prepared to handle due to under-skilled IT staff.

It's no doubt that 2015 was the year of learning curves for SDN. However, with a brand new year coming up, we believe 2016 will be the year enterprises begin to fully realize the benefits of SDN as we learn from early deployment mistakes.

As cloud becomes more commonplace and the Internet of Things knocks on the door, enterprises will need to adapt to meet growing demands. There's still work to be done before businesses can turn to SDN as a main method for driving overall results, and next year will no doubt be a year of critical progress. The five recommendations outlined here will help ensure your SDN deployment tops the list of successes for in 2016. 

(Image: Frank Peters/iStockphoto)