Jonathan Davidson took over Juniper campus and data center switching when the two previously separate business units were combined following the departure of founding engineer R.K. Anand. Davidson has a service provider routing background at Juniper and Cisco, which is no coincidence -- after five years in switching, Juniper has been unable to mirror the success it had in its first five years in service provider routing. But it did start from zero and surpassed at least six other incumbent vendors to attain the No. 3 position in the market. The company has more than 20,000 switching customers cultivated through organic development, Davidson notes. And as Juniper moves forward amid a forklift upgrade facing its EX core switch base and after an initial misfire on the QFabric data center switch, it's focusing on customer demands for simplification, agility and automation. Davidson discussed some recent and future developments in Juniper enterprise switching.

If you're skeptical about the intentions of the OpenDaylight SDN consortium, you're not alone.

In an effort to accelerate the adoption of OpenFlow for software-defined networking, Big Switch Networks this week unveiled an open source-based "thin" virtual switch for servers and commodity switches.

Juniper Networks is readying a new programmable core switch to address software-defined networking in campuses and data centers.

Even though standards bodies like the Open Networking Forum (ONF) are leading the effort to standardize software-defined networking, Dell has proposed an SDN working committee within the Object Management Group.

Dell this week extended its data center networking portfolio with a new top-of-rack switch and plans to extend OpenFlow support for software-defined networking across its product line.

Juniper Networks at long last has laid out its software-defined networking (SDN) strategy, which includes a revamped software licensing plan that the company says will change its business model and differentiate it from competitors.

There was a lot of news and hype swirling around Software-Defined Networking in 2012, so what's on tap for 2013?