SDN is moving into the data center at a rapid clip, but while deploying a new technology is one thing, getting people to use it properly is quite another.
According to market analyst IHS Inc., SDN revenues grew more than 80 percent in 2015 compared to the year earlier, topping $1.4 billion. The bulk of that came in the form of new Ethernet switches and controllers, although newer use cases like SD-WAN are on the rise as well and will likely contribute substantially to the overall market by the end of the decade.
This means that, ready or not, the enterprise network is quickly becoming virtualized, severing the last link between data architectures and underlying hardware. This will do wonders for network flexibility and scalability, but it also produces a radically new environment for network managers, few of whom have gotten the appropriate levels of training, if anecdotal evidence is any indication.
This lack of expertise is emerging as a key challenge not for the developers of SDN platforms but for solutions providers who have to integrate them into client’s legacy data environments, says Channel Insider’s Michael Vizard. The main problem is turning networking engineers and admins into programmers, a task that is fraught with difficulty. While IT personnel spend their lives keeping up with the latest technology, jumping into an entirely new discipline is another matter. This explains, in part, why senior IT leadership has been eager to implement SDN, but acceptance among the rank-and-file is less forthcoming. After all, if today’s techies were acclimated toward coding, they would have gone into the more lucrative field of software development right out of college.
But change is inevitable. A good place to start retraining for SDN is the very same certification programs that network engineers utilize for their current jobs. Cisco recently updated its core CCNA routing and switching program to focus more heavily on SDN, NFV and analytics-based management.
Read More@ http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/datacenter/datacenter-blog/sdn-is-coming.-is-your-workforce-ready.html
According to market analyst IHS Inc., SDN revenues grew more than 80 percent in 2015 compared to the year earlier, topping $1.4 billion. The bulk of that came in the form of new Ethernet switches and controllers, although newer use cases like SD-WAN are on the rise as well and will likely contribute substantially to the overall market by the end of the decade.
This means that, ready or not, the enterprise network is quickly becoming virtualized, severing the last link between data architectures and underlying hardware. This will do wonders for network flexibility and scalability, but it also produces a radically new environment for network managers, few of whom have gotten the appropriate levels of training, if anecdotal evidence is any indication.
This lack of expertise is emerging as a key challenge not for the developers of SDN platforms but for solutions providers who have to integrate them into client’s legacy data environments, says Channel Insider’s Michael Vizard. The main problem is turning networking engineers and admins into programmers, a task that is fraught with difficulty. While IT personnel spend their lives keeping up with the latest technology, jumping into an entirely new discipline is another matter. This explains, in part, why senior IT leadership has been eager to implement SDN, but acceptance among the rank-and-file is less forthcoming. After all, if today’s techies were acclimated toward coding, they would have gone into the more lucrative field of software development right out of college.
But change is inevitable. A good place to start retraining for SDN is the very same certification programs that network engineers utilize for their current jobs. Cisco recently updated its core CCNA routing and switching program to focus more heavily on SDN, NFV and analytics-based management.
Read More@ http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/datacenter/datacenter-blog/sdn-is-coming.-is-your-workforce-ready.html
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