what the hell does that mean
""The promise of SDN is that you have an abstracted control plane that allows you to tie your applications to the network,"
I keep seeing people talking about SDN but still have yet to come across an example that let's me see the value in such a thing. I'm sure there is, but I'm betting it's pretty niche compared to the amount of hype it's been getting recently. Just now I browsed over two more articles on SDN and they told me nothing other than it makes the network more programmable, and can tie into things like Openstack. I don't get what there is to be excited about. I have seen some people say it allows you to experiment with different ways of routing data without making changes to the OS code on the switch - again, I see no point unless your in the specific field of needing to do that(e.g. developing the next BGP or something) - I've never had a problem (and don't know anyone personally who has) who has had issues with today's methods of routing.
When I tie applications into the network I do it with load balancers(oh sorry I think they are called application delivery controllers or something - in any case full layer 7 traffic routing), what applications need to be tied into switches?