MARKET REPORT SD-WAN
Catching the SD-WAN Wave
Dissecting the SD-WAN market is a little like trying to perform a colonoscopy on a fl y… blindfolded. It’s diffi cult to
pin down an exact, non-biased, defi nition and even when you get close it would seem it means different things to
different companies. Then there are those companies that take advantage of the lack of defi nition to jump on the
bandwagon. One thing most people would agree on is that there is an opportunity here for Channel to get involved
and educate the business market as to how they might utilise the technology within their current connectivity
setup. In this feature David Dungay takes a look at the UK SD-WAN market
SD-WAN adoption is
gathering pace, particularly
in the enterprise, and IDC
predicts that the market
will be worth $8 Billion by 2021.
Digital transformation projects
looking to deploy cloud, big data,
analytics and mobility are key
drivers of the technology.
In a survey of 200 senior IT
and networking managers in the
US and the UK, Sapio Research
found 20% of respondents said
they have a software-de ned
WAN project in progress,
while 32% haven’t explored the
technology and 27% may look at
it in the future. About one-third
of respondents said they wanted
to reduce network costs and to
better manage their network
infrastructure. e research
study found that 48% of those
are running SD-WAN proof of
concept at select sites or other
limited deployments. at means
only about 10% are transitioning
fully to SD-WAN.
We asked the Channel
‘What makes a good SD-WAN
proposition?’. Nick Sacke,
Head of IoT and Products at
Comms365, commented, “ ere
are several key attributes of
an SD-WAN proposition that
stand out immediately: highly
agile, rapid con guration and
deployment (‘zero touch’),
Quality of Service (QoS)
to prioritise applications
(comparable to MPLS
networks), connectivity agnostic
delivery (even over 4G), and
security. Given the increasing
commitment to improving
user experience (‘Quality
of Experience’ or QoE) and
enhancing the management of
application performance, it is
the ease with which the features
of the SD-WAN technology
can be programmed and used
by a variety of stakeholders
– that should be an essential
consideration.”
Anthony Senter, Managing
Director, SDWAN Solutions
added “Even though the market
hasn’t yet been tightly nailed
down, this is still a bit of good
news for the Channel - From late
Q1 we will see the number of
“SD-WAN” solutions currently
being promoted to the Channel
reduce as some products don’t
quite meet the new SD-WAN
standards. e Channel will
still need to be educated and
trained on SD-WAN but the
pseudo-solutions will no longer
feature. So to nally answer
the question – What makes a
GARTNER’S SD-WAN DEFINITION
SD-WAN solutions provide a replacement for traditional WAN routers
and are agnostic to WAN transport technologies. SD-WAN provides
dynamic, policy-based, application path selection across multiple WAN
connections and supports service chaining for additional services such
as WAN optimization and fi rewalls.
good SD-WAN proposition?
– e solution will rst and
foremost BE ALLIGNED
TO THE CUSTOMER
REQUIREMENT i.e. the
SD-WAN vendor solution
chosen will satisfy the unique
requirements of the customer –
Anthony Senter, Managing Director,
SDWAN Solutions
24 | Comms Business Magazine | February 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
/www.commsbusiness.co.uk