3 Barriers to SDN Adoption

Just because SDN is better doesn't mean adoption will be easy.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

July 2, 2014

3 Min Read
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While SDN makes sense on technological merits, it faces major barriers to adoption. And those barriers aren't technical.

One major barrier to SDN adoption is cultural. Carrier network engineers are currently hardware operators. They deal with dedicated, physical boxes that need to be transported, hooked up, configured with a command-line interface and occasionally visited in situ. SDN will turn carrier networking upside-down; engineers will become software developers, configuring networks using graphical software and writing code in interactive development environments. The only time they'll get up on their feet is if they have treadmill desks.

The job of being a network operator will change. It requires a lot of retraining and redrawing the lines, circles, and boxes on the org chart. (See The Three Faces of SDN and SDN Faces a Human Hurdle .)

Which leads to the second barrier: Power politics. Many network engineers will be simply unable to make the transition to software networking, and they'll be out of work. People resist being put out of jobs. Even tougher for SDN advocates: Some of these people will be upper management who've built their careers around hardware-defined networks. Many of these people are going to see the shift to software networks as a threat to their position within the company. They see the transition to software networks as a death-struggle, and they'll fight against it with every iota of their being.

Sure, hardware-defined networking has its issues. But people whose job it is to solve problems have a strong vested interest in preserving those problems. (I wish I could remember who said that -- it's brilliant.) If your job is to clean the hair out of the shower drain, you're going to fight like a Klingon against any attempt to eliminate shower-drain-hair as a problem.

But what of the benefits? Software-defined networks are more easily maintained, less expensive in capex and opex (allegedly), and more flexible, permitting the deployment of new services faster to customers.

That all appears to be true, but it's difficult to prove -- which is the third barrier to SDN adoption. SDN exists down deep at the bottom of the network, while financial benefits become obvious high up in the application layers. SDN requires foundational network changes whose benefits are indirect and difficult to quantify immediately.

So what's an SDN advocate to do? Start small, deploying SDN in new services. Do fast projects with quick, demonstrable financial return. Enlist allies in the organization where you can find them, and do your best to navigate around opponents without confronting them.

NFV, often mentioned in the same breath as SDN, represents a way to get SDN in the back door of network operators. Virtualizing a network application like a load-balancer or firewall, particularly if it's customer premises equipment, can be a small, local project with immediate financial benefit. Do enough of those and somebody's going to see that virtualizing the underlying network architecture is a great idea too.

As to the managers and senior VPs who fight SDN as a threat to their survival: Some will come around, some will be proven wrong and sidelined, and for others, you may just have to wait for them to retire. Putting arsenic in their coffee, tempting though it may be, will get you the wrong kind of attention.

— Mitch Wagner, Circle me on Google+ Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profileFollow me on Facebook, West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading. Got a tip about SDN or NFV? Send it to [email protected].

About the Author

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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