Jason Edelman has provided a helpful overview of the software-defined networking (SDN) ecosystem and the vendors currently active within it. Like any form chart, though, it’s a snapshot in time, and therefore subject to change, as I’m sure Edelman would concede.
Still, what Edelman has delivered is a useful contextual framework to understand where many vendors stand today, where “stealth” vendors might attempt to make their marks shortly, and where and how the overall space might evolve.
Edelman presents the somewhat-known entities — Nicira, Big Switch, NEC, and Embrane (L4-7) at the applications/services layer — and he also addresses vendors providing controllers, where no one platform has gained an appreciable commercial advantage because the market remains nascent. He also covers the “switch infrastructure” vendors, which include HP Networking, Netgear, IBM, Pica8, NEC, Arista, Juniper, and others. (In a value-based analysis of the SDN market, “switch infrastructure” is the least interesting layer, but it is essential to have an abundance of interoperable hardware on the market.)
Cards Still to be Played
The real battle, from which it might take considerable time for clears winners to emerge, will occur at the two upper layers, where controller vendors will be looking to win the patronage of purveyors of applications and services. At the moment, the picture is fuzzy. It remains possible that an eventual winner of the inevitable controller-market shakeout has yet to enter the frame.
In that regard, look for established networking players and new entrants to make some noise in the year ahead. Edelman has listed many of them, and I’ve heard that a few more are lurking in the shadows. Names that are likely to be in the news soon include Plexxi, LineRate Systems (another L4-7 player, it seems), and Ericsson (with its OpenFlow/MPLS effort).
These are, as the saying goes, early days.
Twilight in the Valley of the Nerds 