AT&T CEO: It is Hard to Explain the SDN Concept; 10X Traffic Growth to 2020

Earlier this month I covered the intention of AT&T to use SDN ("AT&T Will Manage Data Demand w/Software-centric Approach" - here) - and it turns out it is the "most exciting thing happening now" for AT&T's CEO,  Randall Stephenson [pictured].

And it is all about Streaming Video, And Apple, And Netflix.

In an interview by Jonathan Vanian, to Fortune, Mr. Randel says:

• "You’re going to find this horribly boring, but it’s this concept called software-defined networking. You’re managing a massive global network the way you’d manage a cloud-based data center. It’s a little geekish, and only the white-socks guys and knuckle-draggers in the industry appreciate it, but it’s actually going to change how businesses operate. It’s hard to help the general businessman understand this concept.
   
• I’ll give you an example. This year’s Masters Golf Tournament came at an interesting moment in time. Over that weekend Apple released an iOS update to all of its users, the Masters was streaming over the Internet, and there was the debut of Game of Thrones. All of this was coming across the same peering point [where Internet networks connect] in our various networks, and the end customer had a miserable experience. In a software-defined network, we could have redistributed and managed that capacity in real time
   
• If you look at our core network, since 2007 the volume that we’re hauling by virtue of smartphones and video is up 100,000%. And we’re looking out to 2020, and engineering and designing to accommodate another 10X growth in volume across the network. You’re seeing this kind of mismatch playing out that has tormented us. Capacity and performance are scaling according to Moore’s law, but networks around the globe are not
   
• Without software-defined networking I don’t think the industry keeps up with these kinds of volumes. Without software-defined networking Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is going to continue to scream about how slow peering points are. You have to have this technology to accommodate video traversing these kinds of networks"

See "AT&T CEO: 'Half of our mobile network traffic is video'"- here.