Cisco/Tail-f, Nokia and Ciena are Carriers’ top picks for SDN Orchestration Solutions, IHS Markit says

LONDON (August 3, 2016) – IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, conducted in-depth interviews with global service providers that have deployed software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) or will do so in the future and found that respondents identified Cisco/Tail-f, Nokia and Ciena—including Cyan—as the top SDN vendors.

“In our survey of global carriers, Cisco/Tail-f, Nokia and Ciena led all vendors in unaided brand awareness for SDN orchestration software,” said Michael Howard, Senior Research Director and Advisor, Carrier Networks, at IHS Markit. “And Cisco/Tail-f and Nokia were also tops in SDN hardware and software under evaluation.”

The 2016 SDN and NFV Vendor Leadership Global Service Provider Survey from IHS Markit explores SDN and NFV deployment timing, supplier types, perceived top vendors and operator ratings of SDN and NFV manufacturers on nine criteria.

“Over three-quarters of our operator respondents will use telecom equipment manufacturers, among other supplier types, to supply SDN hardware and software for their networks,” Howard said.

“Carriers envision a world of multi-supplier SDN and NFV, with centralized orchestration of network services and equipment, and new control mechanisms and network architectures. They’ll use a variety of suppliers to avoid vendor lock-in,” Howard said.

More than 40 percent of survey respondents will buy from each of the following supplier types: specialized SDN vendors, open source distribution vendors, SDN application software specialists, data center virtualization/orchestration software vendors and virtualized network functions (VNF) software specialists.

The top-ranked criteria service providers use to select an SDN vendor include product reliability, service and support, technology innovation, price-to-performance ratio and management software.