SD-WAN technology is growing at 70 percent a year and will be worth over $8 billion by 2021.
SD-WAN isn’t just another buzzword, and it’s expanding quickly.
If you want to take advantage of this solution, it is essential to understand the benefits and expected trends of SD-WAN in 2020.
What is SD-Wan?
SD-WAN makes your business more agile by shifting the responsibility of traffic management from hardware to software, making it easier to manage multiple connection types, improve end-user experience and application performance.
SD-WAN utilises multiple internet services to ensure that your applications are always accessible and performing efficiently.
Benefits of SD-Wan
- Lower total cost: Implementing an SD-WAN solution will lower your operational costs and improve resource usage, especially for deployments spread across multiple sites.
- Better performance from applications: Bandwidth can be used more effectively and will ensure that your critical applications are performing at full potential. You will gain all these benefits without having to forfeit your security and data privacy.
- Application awareness allows you to manage and control your applications: By employing application awareness through your network, it will increase your performance and adaptability while effectively directing your network traffic.
- Fast deployment for new sites and branches: Zero-touch provisioning allows you to create configurations and policies that can be rolled out to all your branch locations removing the need to program each device manually.
- Overlaying SD-Wan technology: Due to the shift from hardware to software, SD-WAN enables easy implementation of virtual overlays, which allows network automation, central network control and traffic management capabilities.
Trends for SD-Wan in 2020
1. Vendor Viability
There are over 50 active suppliers of SD-WAN. With so many options and different feature sets available, it introduces a deeper level of complexity when choosing the right solution for your business.
There is an expectation for several SD-WAN vendors to either be acquired or leave the market entirely in 2020.
Whether you already have SD-WAN in place or not, it is crucial to assess the viability of your current or future solution provider.
2. Accelerating Cloud on-Ramp
If your business is running a multi-cloud solution, it is vital to evaluate SD-WAN platforms based on their integration capability with your cloud platforms.
SD-WAN technology and providers are continually improving their ability to help organisations migrate across a wide range of infrastructure platforms.
3. Improved Support for SaaS
SD-WAN can integrate with leading SaaS platforms, such as Microsoft Office 365. Automation policies that are critical to SaaS applications will continue to improve throughout 2020 - resulting in a higher quality of service without the need for IT intervention.
4. Built-in Security
Additional security is required when deploying an SD-WAN solution to ensure that you can enforce corporate policies. Because SD-WAN utilises bandwidth from a variety of internet connections it could lead to a potential data breach or cyberattack if left unsecured.
Most SD-WAN providers include built-in security on their platforms. A trend that will continue to grow in 2020 is consistent improvements to native network security capabilities.
5. Management, Automation and Orchestration
SD-WAN can scale to thousands of locations and is compatible with existing network and application-management platforms.
Improvements to management and automation will continue through 2020 with the ability to:
- Customise application performance capabilities and allow your network to make routing decisions.
- Change locations, onboard applications, add or remove ISPs, or connect to devices.
- Create dashboards that provide detailed reports on the health of your network and application performance.
If you are interested in learning more about SD-WAN and how you can implement the right solution for your business, contact us to book your free consultation with one of our specialists today.
