We've been blessed to interview some of the greatest minds in networking and thankful for the opportunity to meet and learn from so many smart people.  Even after interviewing a ton of super smart people -- we are continually surprised by how much we learn about SDN from each interview.

As those of us in the United States kick off summer with a long Memorial Day Weekend -- we figured it would be a good time share some of our most enlightening SDN interviews.  Here's the SDN thought leaders should read about this weekend:

1. Real-world SDN and NFV in SPs: Interview with Colt’s Javier Benitez and Nicolas Fischbach  Nico and Javier are leading an amazing network transformation at Colt Telecom.  If you are a Service Provider this a read for you.
2. Exclusive Interview: Yukio Ito Of NTT Communications on SDN Benefits  NTT is one of first organizations to deploy SDN in production.  Learn about how this impacted their organization.
3. Featured Interview: Radware CTO, Avi Chesla, Discusses SDN Strategy in Application Delivery And Security As former Netscreen guy -- I have a special place for network security in my heart. I LOVE how Radware is using SDN to increase security of our networks.  If you run a high volume web property  and suffer from DOS/DDOS - you need to check this out.
4. Secret Origins of Big Switch’s Floodlight Controller – Interview with David Erickson of Beacon Fame Not only is this the secret origin of Flooding -- it's the origin for the Open Daylight controller.  David is an amazing individual and human and quite a coder, too!
5. Featured Interview: Deep-Dive into Juniper’s SDN Controller and Strategy with Ankur Singla, Former CEO of Contrail  While I'm disappointed that no one at Juniper has asked me how to fix or position for sale the security assets (Answer: they don't know the hidden assets they have and that it's not too late for someone to make a killing with the right focus and reduction in R&D spend) - I still have a place in my heart for my alma mater and think the world of Ankur and Kireeti - it's always wroth hearing what either of them has to say.
6. Featured Interview with Nuage Networks CEO Sunil Khandekar  We've covered just about every SDN launch -- this was one of the best launch executions I've seen -- and they have a cool product to boot.
7. Featured Interview: SDN Startup Plexxi’s CEO, David Husak  What I love about Plexxi is how they are a throw back to networking startups of yesteryear -- cool software with kick #$@ hardware.
8. Featured Interview: Eric Carmès, CEO of 6WIND on SDN, NFV and Commoditization of Networking  If you want to learn how to leverage x86 for networking then you need to check out 6WIND.
9. Interview with Jayshree Ullal of Arista on Network Virtualization and SDN  We released this interview a day before Nicira was acquired by VMware -- and helped put SDxCentral on the map. Enuf said.
10. Interview with Rob Sherwood (former FlowVisor lead) – SDxCentral Exclusive We've watched Rob grow and expand roles at Big Switch and have nothing but respect for him.  Not only is he wicked smart and who add tons of value to any SDN panel -  he's also extremely cool to hang with.

Enjoy the reading!  If you have extra time - check out our DemoFriday™ Archive with recordings of live SDN demo's.