Assessing the readiness of applying software defined networks in the digital transformation journey of Iranian telecom companies

Along with the digital evolution and the emergence of new technologies such as the Internet of Things, some factors such as expansion, agility and management of infrastructure and communication networks has also developed alongside with software, service orientation, open source and virtualization approaches, so that the development of Software Defined Networks (SDN) has become one of the main pillars of the digital transformation journey of telecom companies. In this study, we have evaluated the readiness of applying software-based networks in the digital transformation journey of Iranian telecom companies. The data of this research has been provided through a questionnaire from 54 experts in digital telecom transformation in Iran in 2021. As for the research methodology, Confirmatory factor analysis, one-sample Wilcoxon test and Friedman test were used to test the research hypotheses. The results show that the existing concerns are mostly in the fields of security, suppliers and experts, but there is a positive trend in accepting software-based networks. Also, the findings of this study indicates that the attention to the benefits of software-based networks in the telecom industry (5/99) is in the first priority and the main factors of applying this technology (5/97), business impacts (4/56) and barriers to acceptance (4/5) come next.