Cost is often one of the motivators for a business to migrate from a traditional network to a software-defined network. Which design decision is directly influenced by CAPEX drivers?

SDN decouples the control plane from hardware, allowing organizations to scale capacity by adding inexpensive, commodity switches and servers rather than purchasing proprietary, high-cost hardware at each growth increment. This directly reduces capital expenditure per unit of added capacity, making scalability the design dimension most tightly linked to CAPEX reduction goals.

Stability is a reliability and uptime concern that primarily drives operational decisions and SLA commitments, not capital hardware purchasing decisions.

Complexity affects OPEX through increased labor, training, and troubleshooting costs - not the upfront capital investment in physical infrastructure.

Manageability improvements reduce OPEX by lowering administrative overhead through automation, but do not directly drive decisions about capital expenditure on hardware.