The global market for carrier software-defined networking (SDN) software, hardware and services is expected to grow from $103 million in 2014 to $5.7 billion in 2019, according to IHS.
In its recent report, IHS predicts service providers around the world will increase their spending on SDN software by 15 times from 2015 to 2019, as service providers worldwide seek service agility and operational efficiency in their networks to stay competitive.
Yet the market is still in the early stage “in the long-term, 10- to 15-year transformation of service provider networks to SDN,” said Michael Howard, senior research director for carrier networks at IHS.
“Momentum is strong, but we won’t see widespread commercial deployments where bigger parts of — let alone whole — networks are controlled by SDN until 2016 through 2020,” Howard commented.
SDN software, including network apps, such as traffic analytics, and orchestration and controller software, is the critical piece that will convert a network into a software-defined network.
IHS believes there is an incredible demand for expertise to design, deploy and operate SDN-based services, and carriers are looking to vendors for this expertise, given the newness of SDN technology and the fundamental changes it brings to networks.
As such, outsourced services for SDN projects are set to grow at a CAGR of 199% for the period between 2014–2019.
The study is consistent with another report IHS released in July, which predicted that the global NFV market will grow fivefold to $11.6 billion through 2019.