| | November 20166CIOReviewEnterprises today are embarking on technologies like mobile devices, social media, cloud, IoT, big data, and others to boost productivity and launch new services and applications quickly. All of this gets distilled down to a mammoth increase in data traffic which demands enhanced network capabilities. Unfortunately, the traditional networks that require every network device to be configured separately to incorporate any changes in data traffic, complicates the whole situation. To this end, Software Defined Networking (SDN) is redefining the entire networking paradigm by decoupling the physical and logical network entities to enable network programmability in accordance to varying data traffic needs. SDN also removes hardware barriers in an enterprise networking infrastructure by weaving switches from different vendors together, removing the configurability issues, to achieve common network objective.With an innovative architecture that is capable of automated provisioning, virtualization, and network programmability, SDN is finding rapid adoption across various industry verticals including BFSI, consumer goods and retail, government and defense, manufacturing, healthcare and more. Meanwhile, like many other innovations that evade the enterprise arena, SDN is also not immune to challenges. The centralized or partially distributed nature of SDN seeks a new prospective towards security, scalability and performance. The introduction of new network program may unwittingly introduce a at-risk code and proliferate it across network. The SDN's virtual nature may also result in countless network segments, with each having its own risk and security requirements, and specific control instances to manage them individually. Moving to an SDN model requires enterprises to be prepared to mitigate these challenges. Our goal with this special edition is to help enterprises find best-of-breed SDN solution providers that can unleash the potential of this technology, and at the same time ameliorate the challenges associated with its adoption. This edition blends thought-leadership from subject matter experts with real stories on what selected vendors are doing for their clients, including exclusive insights from CIOs and CXOs. Let us know what you think.Jeevan George Managing Editoreditor@cioreview.comSustaining a Dynamic EnterpriseEditorialCopyright © 2016 ValleyMedia, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part of any text, photography or illustrations without written permission from the publisher is prohibited. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustrations. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the magazine and accordingly, no liability is assumed by the publisher thereof.CIOReviewNOVEMBER - 30 - 2016Mailing AddressCIOReview44790 S. Grimmer Blvd Suite 202, Fremont, CA 94538T:510.402.1463, F:510-894-8405 NOVEMBER - 30 - 2016, Vol 05 SE 113 Published by ValleyMedia, Inc.To subscribe to CIOReviewVisit www.cioreview.com CIOReviewEditorial StaffSalesT: 510-493-7546Aaron PierceAva GarciaJoshua ParkerAlex D'Souza Shashikanth PeetlaSarah FernandesSteve Millersteve@cioreview.comVisualizersStephen ThomasJohn GouthamManaging EditorJeevan GeorgeSDN SPECIAL
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