SDN is a tidal wave in the making, and just the way MySQL decimated Oracle RDBMS in the web database business, SDN is likely to do the same to Cisco’s switching business. Many experts state that large enterprises won’t shift their resources to open source technologies and vendors, including SDN, because open source equates to uncertainty and unreliability. However, there is always a different point of view. How can SDN impact the Fortune 1000 the way its impacting the large hyperscalers of Google, Facebook and Netflix? The answer is simple, just let SDN run its natural course. The SDN ecosystem is like Red Hat in the early days, now look at them in the Fortune 1000 space. SDN technology will go through dozens of iterations, and eventually it will become a rock solid platform.
Also, is it possible that Cisco’s biggest competitor is not Juniper or Brocade, but Akamai. What many don’t realize is that Akamai and other CDNs were actually the first Cloud and SDN companies in existence, there just wasn’t any label to what they were doing. If there is anyone in the industry that can match Cisco in the area of network protocol innovation, its Akamai. In fact, its likely that Akamai is probably a little further ahead than Cisco when it comes to protocol optimization and acceleration across the Internet. Akamai should rock the networking industry and create their own SDN switch and router software products, as that would throw everyone off guard.