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FierceTelecom.com 17 M ay 2 0 13 18 M Ay 2 0 13 FierceTelecom A fine line exists between how much control a customer relinquishes to the data center or, conversely, how much control the data center lets the customer have. SDN, because it is software defined, blurs that line even more. In the end, said Savvis' Owens, the SDN becomes an overlay, not a component in itself. It might be software defined and it might be IP but it is still a controlled element of an overall network scheme. "The perception that the Internet is the way that everything is going to happen is the wrong approach," Owens said. "The Internet will always be there and many customers will use the Internet for what the Internet is good for." But when push comes to shove, the data center is always going to feed off to the private network because that's what the end users want. SDN, then, gives the data center operator "the ability to connect to the right network based on their application needs." Both Savvis and Windstream, while open to the idea of SDN, are hardly committed to any fast-paced timetable for its implementation. Both are closely watching evolving standards and inter-vendor cooperation to determine when a product will be ready that will be useful for existing and future customer needs. "There's still quite a bit that needs to be done through standards," cautioned CenturyLink's Feger. After all, SDN hasn't followed the traditional standardization route. "It really started as an open initiative that the vendors came into vs. getting pushed from a single vendor view into the industry and everybody else jumping on it," Feger said. "We've made this hockey stick approach of progress and now we might start flattening out a little bit." Which, for now at least, won't cause any data center problems because customers, while grousing about the need for quicker turnaround, haven't yet embraced SDN on their own. "Customers aren't saying 'Give me SDN' or 'Give me a controller I can manage,'" Owens said. "They're frustrated having to wait for circuits to be provisioned and having that come live. They want that to be available through the API like everything else." l "The main driver for us to look at sDn a year ago was that customers were expecting everything… to be immediately available like servers are." ken owens, clouD cto anD chief scientist for centurylink's savvis business Can your Network Boost the Bottom-line? www.radisys.com VIRTUALIZE the Core Network T-Series MONETIZE VoLTE and Video MRF M A X I M I Z E Spectrum Utilization Small Cell

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