With software defined networking (SDN), the network as we know it, along with the way businesses use computing processes, could be changed beyond all recognition.

And Brocade is at the very heart of that shift, being founder members of OpenFlow and OpenStack and pushing ahead with technologies that ensure its customers are SDN-ready.

Separating the data and control planes, SDN, as the name suggests, puts a layer of software between the components a network runs on and the network admin running them, leading in theory to a higher performance, more efficient networking process.

Yet there have been criticisms of SDN, ranging from accusations of overhype and lack of implementation, to lack of interoperability, to not being in the interest of larger vendors.

But as Simon Pamplin, Brocade enterprise pre-sales manager explains in a call to CloudTech, SDN is in an evolving, almost embryonic stage, meaning not everything’s going to …