Survey sponsored by Ciena finds that more than 30 percent of Asian
enterprises have already implemented software defined networking
Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of enterprises in 14 markets across the
Asia Pacific region are at some stage of deployment of virtualized
network functions, from initial planning to final integration and
testing, according to a Ciena®
(NYSE:CIEN)-commissioned Asia/Pacific WAN and Communications
Survey conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC), a leading
provider of global IT research and advice. Additionally, roughly 30
percent of organizations are implementing or running software-defined
networking (SDN) functionality to improve network agility, speed and
programmability. The survey found this adoption rate was driven by rapid
economic growth and business expansion, an increasingly mobile
workforce, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
The Ciena-commissioned Asia/Pacific WAN and Communications Survey
illustrates the investment plans and views of enterprises around SDN and
network function virtualization (NFV), and their readiness to work with
a service provider to implement these technologies. These two
complementary technologies are seen as effective techniques to reduce
network and operational costs, while enabling new business models and
service innovation. The survey also explored the motivations of CIOs and
IT decision makers in adopting these technologies.
Key Findings – NFV:
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At an aggregate level, 64 percent of Asia-Pacific businesses are at
some stage of the NFV deployment process, from early planning to final
staging and testing with their selected service provider.
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Malaysia, Korea and Thailand were the most advanced markets in NFV
deployment, according to the survey. In these markets, 93 percent, 91
percent and 90 percent of enterprises, respectively, were either in
the early stages of planning and analysis, or in the more advanced
stages of strategy, technology evaluation, lab evaluations, demos,
trials, proofs of concept, integration or testing phases. The survey
also found that businesses in markets such as the Philippines, Japan,
Singapore and Indonesia will drive the second wave of NFV deployment
in the region.
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More than 65 percent of respondents said they would consider
virtualizing their firewall function in 2016. Enterprises revealed
that they were also looking to virtualize network functions such as
load balancing, security, routing and switching, WAN controllers and
optimization. This across-the-board demand offers service providers
the opportunity to provide enterprises a broad range of value-added
network services.
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Almost 15 percent of Asian enterprises in most markets, including Hong
Kong and India, said they were looking to their service provider to
help improve security vulnerabilities in the network through
virtualization. With the rise of the mobile worker and workloads
moving to the cloud, security has to change with the times. Businesses
are moving to a security strategy that can provide forewarning, better
threat detection and incident response, and they are ready to adopt
NFV for its carrier-class security features.
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More than 80 percent of respondents felt that NFV implementation would
make network management easier. With networks in the region growing
both in terms of scale and complexity, Ciena believes that ease of
network management through automated processes and provisioning is key
to maintaining network agility and flexibility.
Key Findings – SDN:
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Interest in SDN is growing steadily year-on-year – about half of Asian
enterprises are aware of it, thinking about it or likely to implement.
More than one in five are now making sure future investments will be
SDN-ready. Among respondents who knew about SDN or understood its
benefits, almost 60 percent said they were ensuring that new network
investments were SDN-ready, or were in the process of testing or
running SDN solutions.
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Across the region, centralized management and control of the network
was the top driver for considering or implementing SDN, along with
improved agility of service provisioning and chaining. In Japan,
holistic and centralized network control was the top driver for SDN
investment, while lower hardware cost was the top consideration for
Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and India.
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SDN deployment was slightly less prevalent in India, China, Taiwan and
Vietnam. Across the region, the primary inhibitors were a lack of
internal skill sets and uncertainty about industry standards,
migration and costs. There is a need for service providers to address
these issues and perform an educational role as they seek to increase
the base of customers using SDN solutions.
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Half of the Asia-Pacific markets surveyed said that when considering
or implementing SDN their priority is to increase network visibility
and flexibility and to lower hardware costs. Another motivation is to
include automation to replace manual configurations and eliminate
human error. Self-configuring networks are agile enough to effectively
provision different traffic classes and diverse workloads.
Executive Comments:
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“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. 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.”
- Karl Horne, CTO,
Asia Pacific, Ciena
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“Asia as a whole is making rapid strides in the adoption and
advancement of NFV and SDN. Enterprises have seen the value in agile,
programmable and highly scalable network infrastructures that are
enabled by NFV and SDN.”
- Shiv Putcha, Associate Director,
Service Provider & Connected Consumer Research, IDC Asia-Pacific
About the Survey:
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The Asia/Pacific WAN and Communications Survey was commissioned by
Ciena and surveyed 1,400 senior IT decision makers from large
enterprises in 14 markets in the Asia Pacific region: Australia,
China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the
Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
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Ten percent of the companies surveyed have more than 1,000 employees
and 30 percent between 250 and 1,000.
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The survey was conducted by IDC in October 2015.
Supporting Resources:
About Ciena
Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) is the network specialist. We collaborate with
customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks
and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. Ciena
leverages its deep expertise in packet and optical networking and
distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with
its OPn architecture for next-generation networks. We enable
a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and
adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to
coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified,
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Note to Ciena Investors
Forward-looking statements. This press release contains certain
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Ciena's actual results could differ materially from those stated or
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