The consortium behind the OpenDaylight Project contends that maintaining the open source nature of software-defined networking (SDN) is imperative for the future of the movement. The overwhelming majority of practitioners seem to agree, according to a survey commissioned by the coalition. The OpenDaylight Project includes top vendors such as Cisco and Broadcom, and has found that 95 percent of networking professionals “want open” in their SDN and network functions virtualization (NFV) solutions.

The results of the poll were published Wednesday in an OpenDaylight report entitled “SDN, NFV, and Open Source: The Operator’s View,” which asserts that open-source software represents greater choice, more functionality, interoperability and lower costs. The OpenDaylight Project is aiming to deliver all four, but it still remains to be seen if the initiative will live up to the high expectations of its backers.

“There is promise in OpenDaylight that, if they can come up with that single platform or at least an interoperable platform, then we can have this next-generation networking,” Wikibon senior analyst Stu Miniman observed in a segment on siliconANGLE’s theCUBE. “But there is a lot of skepticism as to getting all these players to work together because they’re not exactly all aligned as to what they want to sell and how they want to sell it. So OpenDaylight could lead the way to this open platform or it could just slow down the development of the whole SDN marketplace.”

Despite the challenges, the industry remains optimistic. The OpenDaylight report hails the fact that 76 percent of the respondents said they would prefer to consume open source through commercial suppliers as an opportunity. However, the incumbents that have put their weight behind OpenDaylight may not be the first to seize it. A new wave of networking startups, with an entirely different approach to data center design, is making massive strides towards addressing the fast evolving needs of enterprises—the chief among which is security, with 72 percent of the participants naming security as their biggest concern regarding SDN. The second highest priority is network utilization (which was cited by 64 percent) followed by network deployment and management (62 percent) and operating expenses (61 percent).

The survey also found that over 50 percent of organizations plan to deploy SDN and NFV in 2014, and 97 percent intend to do so by the end of 2015. The primary initial target for enterprises is the WAN, while for service providers it is the data center.

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Watch the entire video in which Wikibon senior analyst Stu Miniman discusses OpenDaylight:

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photo credit: travellingred via photopin cc

Video of Stu Miniman courtesy of theCUBE

Suzanne Kattau contributed to this article.