Huawei: "SDN will lead to the development of next-gen network architectures"

 
Huawei unveiled its viewpoints on 2013 industry trends, among them the evolution to SDN:

"To support evolution from a "hard" pipe to a "soft" pipe, we should develop programmable, scalable, application-agile, automatic, and open intelligent networks. Software-defined networking (SDN) will lead to the development of next-gen network architectures.

Technologies are enablers of network development. In the past two decades, driven by advancements of technologies from time-division multiplexing (TDM) towards all-IP, networks have undergone three different revolutions: analog to digital, fixed to mobile, and narrowband to broadband. At present, All-IP networks are undeniably the mainstay for telco and enterprise networks. However, as networks grow, with information flowing in and out in uncertain directions and technologies being upgraded rapidly, it is important that networks be flexible, intelligent, scalable, and automated. Equally important is a change in how we think about network architectural design. The core concepts for cloud computing development, such as virtualization, software decoupling from hardware, centralized resource pool scheduling, automatic deployment, high scalability, and on-demand service provisioning, provide valuable references for network development. Introduction of these concepts into the design of network architectures and products can form the concepts of SDN, including forwarding and control element separation (FORces) to centralize network control and resource scheduling, software decoupling from hardware to virtualize network functions, network function development of cloud-based architecture to realize automatic deployment and high scalability, and application-aware network development to improve network capabilities, among others. By adopting these concepts, we can lead the developments of next-generation product architectures and network architectures, establish an intelligent application-aware network that can intelligently schedule traffic, improve user experience and network utilization, support traffic-based operations, and generate new revenue streams".

See "Beyond ICT: Embracing the next digital revolution" - here.