RESEARCH PAPER: The Battle of SDN vs. NFV

For the past 20 years there has been a slow, methodical pace of change in networking where each set of new technologies arrives, surpassing the previous generation in an orderly fashion. But today, two new technologies, Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), are poised to truly disrupt that pace by changing networking from physical to virtual. In the enterprise market there appears to be a lot of confusion about the differences between these two, often people compare the two and say one is a better approach than the other. If you are looking for the smack down article that pits these two emerging networking methods against each other in a glorious battle for three-letter acronym supremacy, you’ve come to the wrong place. Both SDN and NFV have a lot in common with each other. In actuality, the two can coexist in the same network environment and share a lot of the same characteristics and components. What makes them different has more to do with

where they started and who is deploying them than anything else. Both methodologies have a similar goal: reduce the cost, complexity and rigid nature of networking, enhancing the physical network with a virtual overlay that is easier to deploy, manage, reprovision and troubleshoot – all with a lower OpEx and CapEx profile.

Executive Summary
SDN: The Heavyweight
NFV: The Challenger
High-level Comparison
Similarities and Differences
Vendor Impact
The Future
The Bottom Line

You can download the paper here.

Companies Cited

Arm
AT&T
Big Switch Networks
BT Group
Cisco
Dell
Deutsche Telekom
European Telecommunications Standards Institute
Facebook
Google
HP
IBM
Juniper
Nicira
Oracle
Orange
Pica8
SAP
Telecom Italia
Telefónica
Verizon
VMware
Wind River

Patrick Moorhead

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Patrick founded the firm based on his real-world world technology experiences with the understanding of what he wasn’t getting from analysts and consultants. Ten years later, Patrick is ranked #1 among technology industry analysts in terms of “power” (ARInsights) in “press citations” (Apollo Research). Moorhead is a contributor at Forbes and frequently appears on CNBC. He is a broad-based analyst covering a wide variety of topics including the cloud, enterprise SaaS, collaboration, client computing, and semiconductors. He has 30 years of experience including 15 years of executive experience at high tech companies (NCR, AT&T, Compaq, now HP, and AMD) leading strategy, product management, product marketing, and corporate marketing, including three industry board appointments.