Couple of years back, while I was going through cisco live library, found below screen shot . In center, could be ACI/Any of the SDN product(Is anyone aware of that how many SDN products are available in mkt??(Almost 140) but I know very very few 🙂
Recently we would have seen lot of articles that SDN/NFV/ open networking going to rule the networking world …!!!
In future, market requirements going to change, there won`t be any network engineers. Going to be replaced with new roles viz Cloud Network/SDN experts/Network programming experts ??? Partially yes.
What additional skills require along with Expert level (CCIE or any kind expert level certificate ) ..here are my thoughts!!
We should know the SDN(ACI/NSX ..) & NFV products functionality and should know how can we integrate with legacy network.
Improve the virtualization skills (Vmware/Hyper-v/KVM just try to understand these technologies functionality because it might be useful when you are troubleshooting end to end flow.
Improve the cloud networking skills (AWS/Azure) because in future, your management may ask you to integrate existing data center with cloud because of various factors (cost cutting/agile..) and DR/UAT/test may move to cloud so, you need to know the options on how we can extend the network connectivity to cloud from on-prem (viz : Direct connect in AWS and express route in Azure)
Understand the open networking functionality viz : Openstack neutron/Open daylight/Open flow …. To handle these technologies you should be well versed with linux OS.
last but not least, we should know the programming like Python/JSON/XML off course, I can understand that this is one of the DRY area for all of us include`s me 🙂 but no option for us .
Seen couple of articles that do we really know the container functionality as well (viz docker ) ??? But i am also not sure at this point..
Might be in my post I would have covered specific domains (Datacenter, Enterprise networks), not covered much on service providers but as per my knowledge, NFV plays key role in Service provider
Cheers to Network folks, We have to accept the fact and have to be up to speed and take the hot seat/grow up before someone occupying it in SDN era..
http://sateeshkolagani.com/?m=201510 –> you can look for SDN vs NFV vs Traditinal Networking posted couple of months back ( sorry, I forgot the source, depicted well in diagram )