Almost two thirds of enterprises across 14 APAC markets are at some stage of deployment of virtualized network functions, according to research conducted by IDC for Ciena.
The research finds that 64% of APAC businesses are at some stage of NFV deployment, with the most advanced markets being Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand.
More than 65% of APAC respondents to a survey also indicated that they will consider virtualizing their firewall functions in 2016, with enterprises also looking to virtualize functions including network load balancing, security, routing and switching.
Interest in software-defined networking (SDN) is also growing steadily year on year. Around half of enterprises are aware of it, thinking of it, or likely to implement, with more than one in five making sure future investments are SDN-ready.
In Hong Kong, lower hardware cost is the top driver for considering or implementing SDN. Other common motivations for adopting the technology include gaining greater, holistic control over the network, increasing network visibility and flexibility to lower hardware costs and replacing manual configurations to eliminate human error.
“Two-thirds of Asia-Pacific businesses are already engaged in deploying NFV: this dispels misconceptions from the vendor and service provider community that the market is not ready,” Ciena CTO for APAC Karl Horne said.
“Truth be told, demand is ahead of many vendors’ readiness to sell these solutions. The benefits of virtualization, combined with this tremendous appetite for it, will give service providers who deploy NFV and SDN-based services a clear competitive advantage in 2016.”