The increasing network needs Below is part of a 2012 White Paper from Brocade, IBM’s development partner for Windows Server 2012
CHALLENGES FACING THE CORE NETWORK TODAY
Today’s core networks face massive bandwidth demands as consumer Internet traffic continues to grow at accelerating rates—with video content contributing more than 50 percent of that growth. In addition, trends such as cloud computing and mobility significantly alter network traffic behavior. These new traffic patterns create stress points within the core of a network, which network operators must deal with quickly and cost-effectively, as much of this traffic does not carry significant revenue. As consumers and users become more accustomed to highly personalized content that is readily available on demand, providers need a network infrastructure that can scale to meet these demands. This infrastructure also must have far greater flexibility to handle new challenges, since the demand for content will continue to grow. By 2015, mobile data traffic is expected to increase nearly 26 times; global IP traffic, starting from a much higher base, is predicted to increase four times. These new traffic patterns not only consume enormous amounts of network capacity, but they also add a greater degree of complexity to network operations—as more routers, more subnets, and more administrative domains are added. In the core of the network, the data center or the WAN, this means evolving to more simplified designs that provide significantly higher capacity and scale, to drive down costs.
https://www.brocade.com/launch/sdn/index.html
And an interesting article on CISCO
https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardsaintvilus/2012/11/21/cisco-spends-1-2-billion-for-respect-was-it-worth-it/#