1. Software-defined networking will follow NAC's maturity path

Software-defined networking will follow NAC's maturity path

The network access control (NAC) industry exploded with suppliers producing their own solutions without acknowledging the entire security and networking ecosystem. Thus, early NAC-enthusiast I&O teams got stuck with a dysfunctional and disparate set of components that proved very difficult to assemble. Over time, NAC suppliers standardised interfaces and worked together to ensure that endpoints and their assessments could flow from the devices to the network nodes to the policy managers and back.
Software-defined networking (SDN) solutions will go through this same refinement process. SDN solutions, products and concepts will need five years to mature enough for enterprises to use them in production. There is a lot of work to be done to tie the components together and fit them into other management systems, orchestration software, hypervisor management solutions and Layer 4 to Layer 7 services.
SDN's value only comes to fruition as part of infrastructure evolution to automation. You will need a large upfront investment in standardising processes and infrastructure, as well as changes to organisational structures, skills and sourcing, that will be uncomfortable for I&O teams and colleagues alike.
Forrester recommends putting SDN on the back burner and focusing on getting the networking team up to speed on virtualisation to achieve consistency in roles and responsibilities across the virtual and physical worlds. Once your networking team members master virtualisation, they will be in a much better position to take on SDN.