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Many C-suite executives rely on digital transformation to underpin business strategies. So, as well as dealing with conventional infrastructure problems including outages and poor performance, ICT teams are also required to deliver new generations of business apps to support the business plan. Understandably, they are feeling the pressure.

The shift from hardware-centric to software-centric ICT promises much help. There are several technologies in play, but the most noteworthy are SDN (Software-Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Functions Virtualisation).

NFV is akin to the server virtualisation that you may be familiar with. It removes physical hardware devices like routers, firewalls or WAN accelerators from a customer's data centre or server room, and shifts the intelligence to an array of standardised services within the network.

SDN breaks a network down to its constituent parts where the network control is decoupled from packet forwarding. Think of SDN as the 'brain layer', a centralised controller with a complete view of the entire network and knowledge of all network paths and device capabilities, all sitting in a single remote application.

While often thought of as competitor, NFV is in fact complementary to SDN. Together they can transform corporate networks by ensuring that every element can be managed and controlled centrally using software. They pave the way for 'enterprise app stores' offering cloud and networking services, so that ICT departments can manage applications including Firewalls and SSL VPNs using an online portal.

SDN and NFV make it possible for new services to be provisioned within minutes and diminish onsite deployment challenges. SDN and NFV promise a big impact on business competitiveness and here's how:

Reduced complexity: by eliminating the ownership and management of thousands of network devices and moving management to one central administrator portal.

Improved Security: SDN and NFV achieve this because ICT can create more systematic and streamlined security policies. Not only can they patch threats more quickly, but this approach reduces the human error that can lead to data breaches.

Improved network agility: Achieved because network functions are incorporated into the cloud. This provides administrators with unprecedented control over the path of network packets, meaning that bottlenecks can be easily identified, and traffic redirected.

New ways of working: SDN & NFV enable remote working by making it faster and easier to give people VPN access or to create a new network security policy. Instead of logging in and configuring all the devices involved a network admin simply configures or modifies a policy on a central portal.

Cost savings: Gartner has opined that SDN can result in OpEx savings of $35 to $100 per year, per virtual server, and it can reduce CapEx on individual network devices by 50 to 70 per cent. For example, customers can turn on and buy services in real time, within minutes, and don't have to invest upfront for a five year, locked in contract.

With such benefits, it's easy to see why Research and Market expect adoption of SDN and NFV to grow by 60 per cent between 2015 and 2020. From their beginnings in telecoms and now within the enterprise, this dynamic duo is revolutionising enterprise ICT in the way SaaS and PaaS have with applications.

The flexibility and scalability of SDN and NFV mean that enterprise ICT will always be 'right-sized' because businesses will only pay for the resources that they use. This asset light approach also means that less of the ICT budget is spent on acquiring equipment and maintenance services. As CIOs will be able to design and roll out the global network infrastructures that they need on demand, it will be almost as easy as downloading an app from an app store. NC