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SDN will enable innovation and business agility in Middle East organizations

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Harmeet
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DUBAI, UAE: The network has never been more critical to business success of enterprises in the Middle East. For organisations of any size and in any sector, it is the network that will turn the promise of new and evolving technologies like cloud, Big Data, Machine-to-Machine communications, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and seamless mobility into reality.

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Yet the network that will underpin these shifts cannot cope with today's pressures, let alone tomorrow's. Exponential traffic growth and increased server virtualisation are putting more strain on the network than ever before. And, with nine out of ten IT decision makers admitting that their infrastructure requires substantial upgrades, it is clear that the network has to evolve. If it does not, the potential benefits of these new technologies will never be fully achieved.

Marcus Jewell, VP EMEA at Brocade Communications says that fortunately, the next stage in the network's evolution is almost here. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) will radically transform the network, unlocking its intelligence to provide the new services and powerful analytics that are needed to deliver the applications and services demanded by today's business leaders and their customers.

What is SDN? As a technology, SDN is still in its infancy. However, it is already clear that it has the potential to profoundly change the way that enterprise networks and data centres are built, managed and provisioned. Given SDN's huge potential, it is no surprise that IDC has predicted it will be a $3.7 billion market by 2016.

From a technology standpoint, SDN refers to the separation of the part of the network that is responsible for routing and directing traffic (known as the control plane) from the part that carries the traffic itself (known as the data plane). The goal is to allow organisations to respond rapidly to changing business requirements. By simplifying how network resources are deployed and managed, SDN gives businesses far greater control of their data and applications and makes network management simpler and faster.

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