EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
WESLEY VAN RAYNE , PRINCIPAL ENGINEER , REDVINE NETWORKS
In the six years since we started working with VMWare VeloCloud , we have deployed SDN to more than 39 countries , helping companies and partners across multiple industries including mining , agriculture , logistics and retail to save costs , drive better network visibility and seamless link remediation and prioritised data management .
If one looks at the adoption of SDN as a solution for businesses across the region , one is able to see a definite shift away from only early adopters , who have done the legwork in terms of testing , absorbing the risk and now being in a position to showcase the impact the technology has on their organisations . SDN has proven itself over the last three to four years and the market is seeing a move to early majority take-up across most , if not all industry sectors . As a first step , this is largely a change in mindset . Once CIOs have clarity on what is available and an understanding of what is possible , they can leverage these to architect and modernise their networks with greater ease .
Vendors like VMWare VeloCloud for enterprise customers with multiple branches both in metropolitan and remote areas are driving significant SDN adoption . In the six years since we started working with VMWare VeloCloud , we have deployed SDN to more than 39 countries , helping companies and partners across multiple industries including mining , agriculture , logistics and retail to save costs , drive better network visibility and seamless link remediation and prioritised data management .
That said , there are a number of pitfalls that CIOs and IT teams face when implementing SDN , but one of the biggest ( and possibly the root cause of some of the others ) is trying to retrofit traditional architecture onto the new technology , instead of fully understanding the capabilities of SDN . There is an immense amount of flexibility and agility that SDN brings to the table and if CIOs and IT teams have a clear view of that the other pitfalls are significantly minimised .
Aside from the flexibility , scalability and transparency of networks that SDN delivers to CIOs , it is increasingly important for enabling greater mobility and remote working , coupled with enterprise-grade security at lower infrastructure costs over the medium term .
A consequence of the pandemic and rapid move to remote work has meant organisations are looking for more scalable , cost effective and reliable ways to enable their employees to have VPN-like access to their networks and SDN meets this need .
We are seeing a growing trend towards leveraging the agility of SDN to create temporary or pop up sites that can be set up quickly and moved as and when needed . Flexibility , mobility , visibility and agility are no longer just industry buzzwords and organisations across MEA are starting to see these as tangible benefits of SDN .
Examples of SDN deployments include : BidFood , as part of its strategy of migrating to a cloud environment and future-proofing operations , national food services distributor BidFood has implemented VMware SD- WAN powered by VeloCloud and transformed its network infrastructure for high availability , scalability and performance . Omnia , a diversified chemicals group is another company that has partnered with Redvine Networks to rollout VeloCloud SD-WAN to not only reduce bandwidth costs but also improve network performance .
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