This archived TechRepublic Premium report, originally published in June 2016, is available for free to registered TechRepublic members. For all the latest research reports, 100+ ready-made policies, IT job descriptions, and more, check out TechRepublic Premium.

Here are some key findings from the report:

• Nearly half of respondents (45%) have implemented SDN or are planning to do so.
• “Network flexibility,” “better service provisioning” and “faster time to production for both cloud and internal business solutions” were the top three business drivers for companies which had implemented SDN.
• Cisco was the highest-ranking vendor chosen by respondents using SDN, followed by a seven-way tie between Ericsson, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Nokia and VMWare.
• 80% of respondents stated their SDN project met operational objectives.
• The top two positive operational outcomes from SDN were “faster time to production for new business solutions” and “network performance improvements.”
• The top two negative operational outcomes from SDN were “lack of internal SDN skill sets” and “no or inconsistent interfaces between applications and raw primitives, such as OpenFlow.”

For more findings and analysis, download the full report.