Totally Unscientific SDN and Cloud Survey Results

[Lori_MacVittie]

#SDN #Cloud #F5 #agility2013 #SDDC #devops We did some question asking during SDN sessions at F5's Agility conference. Here's what we discovered about ... everything that's a buzzword

Before you get any further, let me reiterate - these are totally unscientific and the sample size is rather small as it was taken from two sessions at the conference focusing on SDN and application services. The good news is that the results pretty much mirror every other survey and research with respect to devops, cloud, and SDN.

One of my favorite questions is to determine whether cloud is being adopted because it makes sense or because it's a mandate from on high. As expected, the majority (62%) of respondents indicated the adoption of cloud in their organization was... a company mandate.

Some interesting points I pulled out specifically around current data center initiative priorities: 

• 25% of respondents are migrating to a devops model of application deployment
• 50% of respondents are incorporating SaaS offerings into solutions sold by the organization
• 65% of respondents are focused on implementing a software defined data center (SDDC) using virtualized resources
• Despite all the hype around mobile applications, only 20% of respondents have a mobile "first" strategy for  applications and infrastructure

When looking at responses with regard to private cloud deployments:

• 24% say a full service deployment is in place
• 17% of respondents have a pilot deployment in place
• 19% of respondents are putting plans together with no solid timeline for deployment
• Only 12% had no plans at all for private cloud
• Of the popular private cloud platforms:
• 86% indicated they were using VMware
• 22% are adopting OpenStack
• 11% have elected to use CloudStack

And of course the one you've been waiting for: SDN

• A whopping 41% have no plans to deploy SDN
• 36% of respondents are putting plans together but have no solid timeline for deployment
• A somewhat surprising 10% of respondents have a pilot SDN deployment in place

[Kevin_Irwin_107]

It would be interesting to have a breakdown of these results by industry vertical.

[Lori_MacVittie]

Yes, it would, good point. I have organizational size but not vertical. Will try to add that to the next one. Thanks!

[Kevin_Irwin_107]

My guess is that enterprises would lead the pack on SDN adoption. I'm still waiting on the analysis about commodity hardware btw 😉

[brywood_115192]

If I understand the report correctly, 41% of respondents said they did not want to deploy SDN. Which, in turn, means that 59% will pursue it at some point. This is a small but significant majority, especially considering that OpenFlow v1.1 was released in Feb. of 2011. I am not surprised that OpenFlow and similar solutions are gaining steam, at least for the time being.