Management of pluggable transceivers in a software defined network

A software defined network (SDN), comprising:

• at least one processing device disposed in an application plane of the network and executing a pluggable optical transceiver configuration management application (POT-CMA);
• a SDN controller disposed in a controller plane of the SDN network;
• a SDN data plane comprised of a plurality of network devices, each facilitating optical communications in the SDN using at least one pluggable optical transceiver (POT);
• wherein said at least one processing device is configured to:
• receive from the SDN controller data comprising first configuration information accessed from an internal memory of a POT, which has been inserted into a first port of a first network device of the plurality of network devices;
• responsive to receiving the data, automatically determine at least one modification or addition to the first configuration information to facilitate use of the POT in the first network device;
• and
• cause at least one write event at the first network device wherein the at least one modification or addition is written to a memory in the POT to define a second configuration information different from the first configuration information.