This presentation addresses why service providers need SDN to better monetize their networks amid challenges of controlling costs, scaling capacity, and innovating services. Current OSS systems are slow, fragmented, and manual. SDN promises CAPEX/OPEX savings, operational simplification, service innovation, a single orchestrated touch point, and business intelligence. The architecture requires abstraction of control and data planes with a logically centralized, programmable controller and open APIs. The evolution from today's networks to a revolutionary SDN model will be gradual. Key challenges include maturing OpenFlow, missing service control software, lack of open northbound APIs, managing control traffic, and defining boundary functions between SDN domains and legacy networks.

Session Keynote
Broadband World Forum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
October 2013​