Many enterprises are unable to create business innovation because of aging networking environments. Network design and architectures have remained largely unchanged for more than a decade. While applications and systems have evolved to meet the demands of a world where real time rules, the underlying network infrastructure has not kept pace. Software-defined networks (SDN) redefines the way we think about the network and removes the barriers to innovation by giving cloud providers and enterprises complete programmatic control of a dynamic, abstracted view of the network. This white paper gives an overview of software-defined networking and how HP is leveraging SDN to deliver the Virtual Application Networks strategy.