More than 1,800 customers are deploying Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) because they see great value in its ability to automate IT tasks, accelerate application deployments and reduce data center TCO. According to Zeus Kerravala of ZK Research, Cisco is now the “market lead by number of deployments”. Watch my interview with Zeus and see why customers are choosing ACI more than any other Software Defined Networking (SDN) solution. And read Zeus Kerravala’s blog in Network World, “Software-defined networking touches every industry segment” for more, including quantifiable business benefits that customers are reaping from ACI.
(Or Watch Video Interview HERE)
More than 1.800 ACI customer, how the network enable the SDN (and byond)
Hi Luca, I’m not exactly sure I understand your question, but if its regarding enablement of the h/w and s/w elements, I think ACI’s tight integration of the two is a key differentiator. Being able to leverage a single policy across physical, virtual or container based endpoints, and to integrate h/w or s/w services (think device packages for L4-7 products) with that policy means automation is accomplished more effectively. Ultimately, this helps streamline operations and ease troubleshooting.
So it seems that ZK Research thinks different that recent Gartner MQ for DC Networking 2016, which literally states: “NSX is the leader of the sales and production deployments of SDN platforms in the market” – https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-36UFTCZ&ct=160517&st=sb
Hi Angel,
thanks for the feedback. your comment and question are excellent and highlights the problem with the SDN industry. Everyone seems to have their own definition of what SDN is and is not. Gartner, doesn’t actually consider ACI to SDN, which is why they say that NSX leads SDN sales and makes the comment in the MQ. However, Gartner has acknowledged that ACI does have more customer than NSX (1400 versus 1200) in this report (http://www.gartner.com/document/3285817)
Does this make sense? Again, thank you for the feedback
oops, I forgot to attach my name to the above comment. thanks Zeus Kerravala, ZK Research
Hi Zeus.
Thanks for following-up. I can’t open your like but I guess it older than the MQ? So there is always a choice, to look at the more recent info or at older one.
There is always another choice, when you dot’t like the definitions and categories of the reference analyst (Gartner) regarding SDN or any other topic you can always build your own one so that you get the result you paid for 🙂
Cheers,