The market for Wide Area Network (WAN) solutions met an accelerated growth in 2014-2018, according to International Data Corporation (IDC) analysts. This happened mostly due to the increased demand for Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) solutions, a niche that has recorded steady and sustained growth in recent years. Based on Software Defined Network (SDN) technologies, SD-WAN solutions introduced important changes in dealing with common network problems. By boosting or even exchanging traditional routers with virtualization appliances that can manage application-level policies and with provided overlay network software, cheaper consumer-grade Internet links can be used more like a dedicated circuit.
Among the business benefits, SD-WAN solutions can provide the most important seem to be cost savings, improved performance, availability and easiness in implementation and management. The rapid growth of the SD-WAN market is caused by the wide adoption of cloud services that has led to an increase in the number of business applications that require broadband connections. Intensive use of mobile devices in the business environment is another reason for the growth. These are all developments that turn WAN networks into complex architectures, causing many companies to strive to maintain a balance between end-user service performance and costs. And this is where the business benefits SD-WAN started to make a difference.
It’s all about the money
Lower costs are among the main arguments for SD-WAN solutions because SD-WAN architecture enables companies to make better use of broadband connections without resorting exclusively to MPLS. The breakthrough provided by SD-WAN solutions lies in the fact that it can monitor broadband connections and dynamically steer them according to WAN traffic conditions, link status, and application priority. Significant savings can be made in investments and operational expenses, as other major benefits of SD-WAN solutions include ease of deployment and reduced network management effort. Routing protocols do not typically react to the change of certain operating parameters, like queuing delays, packet loss, jitter, traffic problems. Measuring all these parameters and taking action where it is needed involves a significant effort for common systems. SD-WAN applications automatically monitor changes to network characteristics and redistribute traffic depending on the current state of the network. To put it simply, a router, firewall or any other SD-WAN device can actually pick the best way for any application to such a degree it offers a cost-effective delivery of business applications.
Who can use SD-WAN?
As SD-WAN solutions can ease the steps towards lower-cost Internet transport, a wide range of organizations from all over the globe are already using these solutions. At first, only large US companies that had significant IT resources and many subsidiaries deployed SD-WAN technology for their businesses. But as SD-WAN provides actual tangible benefits in costs, performance, and availability when compared to alternatives, the technology soon went mainstream. Businesses with large SD-WAN deployments include food industry and FMCG, retail, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and government. Larger organizations with high rates of telecommuting workers and numerous subsidiaries have more interest in SD-WAN architecture than smaller companies. But these solutions can also provide small companies worldwide with simpler and more efficient ways to manage networks at branch locations and make WANs more efficient.
What lays in store for SD-WAN?
SD-WAN solutions have been adopted by more and more companies in recent years because this approach actually makes network management more efficient and less costly. The technology’s ability to accurately address critical networking demands has led to a remarkable growth. A new forecast from IDC predicts that worldwide SD-WAN architecture and services revenues will meet a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 69.6% and amount to $8.05 billion in 2021. The number of SD-WAN suppliers has dramatically increased over the last five years, with at least 35 providers in the market today. SD-WAN vendors range from niche startups, like CloudGenix, Glue Networks, VeloCloud, Pertino, Versa Networks and Viptela to established WAN suppliers that latter added SD-WAN technology: Citrix, Riverbed, Silver Peak and Talari Networks, to name a few. Traditional network equipment suppliers like Cisco and Dell-EMC have also joined the group and so did large technology suppliers like Nokia. While many new technologies proved to be just buzzwords branded as the next best thing, SD-WAN solutions are actually living up to the hype.
SD-WAN solutions have proved to be helpful for numerous organizations but especially for companies with branch locations. Businesses that use intensive voice and video applications over the Internet and those that use cloud-based services quickly adopted the new technology. SD-WAN solutions proved to be extremely useful in this latter case because 75% of companies that have moved their applications and services to the cloud were already facing numerous difficulties in monitoring and promptly addressing connectivity issues. SD-WAN can enable organizations to efficiently deliver business applications at lower costs, optimizing network performance, agility and ease of management and improving branch-IT efficiency through automation.
