The Philippines' ePLDT Adopts Software Defined Networking
One of the biggest industries in the Philippines is business process outsourcing (BPO), which greatly relies on a robust IT infrastructure. Currently, the BPO segment generates around $25 billion to the national GDP annually, and as more companies continue to use the services, the IT sector needs to deploy technologies that will be able to address the demand. One of the leading providers of data center services and IT solutions in the country, ePLDT, just announced it is going to be adopting Software Defined Networking (SDN) to improve operations and the delivery of services for better customer service.
The growth and adoption of Software Defined Networking is not limited to the Philippines. A recent report by International Data Corporation revealed that that global data center SDN market is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53.9 percent from 2014 to 2020.
The PLDT Group is the largest telecommunications and digital services company in the Philippines, and, as a digital enterprise arm, ePLDT
provides the technology for enterprises across the country and the region. This includes cloud and data center facilities through a nationwide network infrastructure.
As new trends in IT, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, Big Data and others continue to increase in adoption, it is vital for businesses in the Philippines, and the world for that matter, to use Software Defined Networking.
“With SDN, we can provide our services to clients faster. Our previous provisioning standard to our clients may range anywhere between 5 and 15 days depending on the scope but now with SDN, our standard services can be provisioned to customers in a matter of hours,” said Dave Simon, ePLDT Group Chief Technology Officer.
As highlighted by Simon, the difference between five to 15 days and hours is huge when it comes to competing with global service providers. According to ePLDT, the large number of switches and routers in its data centers across the country can be more efficient, flexible and secure across its entire infrastructure with SDN.
The SDN approach to networking is to decouple control of network policies and resources through a single SDN controller. This allows operators to manage traffic flow through software instead of the traditional way of locally-managed switches and routers. This means enterprises, CSPs and other service providers can make changes immediately when they need to scale up or down as well as add new services.
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Edited by Alicia Young
