The carrier SDN market is on track to surge from just $289 million last year to $8.7 billion in 2020 as commercial deployments accelerate, IHS has predicted.
The research firm expects the market to grow at a 98% CAGR over this time as the industry proceeds with its software-designed transformation.
Operators are evaluating use cases as well as conducting proof-of-concept projects and field trials for SDN and NFV technologies, and there have been a slow but growing number of commercial deployments, IHS said.
SDN deployments started in Japan with NEC and NTT, and the country along with China have been helping lead the charge to deploy SDN.
Operators in North America and Europe are also helping drive early SDN adoption, and are expected to account for 13% of the total market between 2015 and 2020.
IHS said it expects software and outsourced services to comprise 46% of SDN revenue in 2020. SDN orchestration and controller software revenue is expected to grow to over $1.8 billion in 2020, but by 2020, there will be more value in SDN apps than in orchestration and control.