SD-WAN MARKET REPORT
“From late Q1 we will see the number of “SD-WAN” solutions currently being promoted to the Channel
there are many decent SD-WAN
avours to choose from.”
Justin Fielder, CTO at Zen
Internet, commented “Whilst
this all seems ideal for the
Channel, at present, SD-WAN
is used to dene a broad range
of services, products and
technologies – from simple
to scalable, DIY to a fully
managed service. Several kinds
of proposition are now described
as SD-WAN, from on-premise
rewalls enhanced to include
simple orchestration of VPNs
to sophisticated and scalable
solutions managed in the cloud
with additional features such as
SD-WAN integrated with service
provider MPLS networks; virtual
network functions; and multiple
cloud computing platforms
providing a sophisticated feature
set for HQs and the smallest
oces. For this reason, vendors
and distributors must work
together with their partners to
reduce as some products don’t quite meet the new SD-WAN standards.”
ensure that they understand
the services they’re oering to
customers, making themselves
invaluable, and ensuring partners
don’t miss out on the benets of
SD-WAN.”
A straight MPLS swap?
When the SD-WAN hype started
a couple of years ago the victim
was clearly painted. MPLS had
a target on its back and everyone
was predicting its demise. e
market’s understanding has
matured somewhat on this front
and the MPLS doom mongers
have been taking their prescribed
‘chill pills’. A recent IDG Market
Pulse survey showed that when it
comes to SD-WAN, 80 percent
of enterprises opt to augment
(rather than replace) their existing
network infrastructure. It’s
perceived as risky to jump o
an established platform. Despite
this there are still established
research organisations who are
Anthony Senter, Managing Director, SDWAN Solutions
utilising it live ongoing when the
primary MPLS experiences high
utilisation, re-routing at an app
level dynamically to the backup
circuit.”
Claudio Scola, Director of
Product Management, EMEA
at CenturyLink, commented
“With the growth of softwarede
ned networking solutions,
it might be tempting to toll the
death knell for MPLS, but that
would be a mistake. SD-WAN
can overlay MPLS and Internet.
CenturyLink customers want
the best of both connectivity
types in a Hybrid model. It is
still important for businesses
to have guaranteed end-to-end
performance with MPLS, and to
now blend that with the scale and
cost eectiveness of Internet. SDWANs
are most impactful when
>
A DISTIE VIEW
Mark Curtis-Wood, Head of Network Services at Nimans
Network performance and agility are critical to the success of digital
transformation initiatives and the effectiveness of the IT environment
that underpin them. As data volumes grow and applications become
more distributed – network technologies must be equally agile to keep
up with pace. When it comes to connectivity, no two customers are
alike. As such, you must understand your customers’ unique use-cases
and networking challenges. From there, you can select the SD-WAN
vendor and specific solutions that match their needs. Some questions
you might ask to better understand your customers’ challenges are:
• What are the issues you face with your current network
infrastructure?
• Do you plan to fully move to the cloud or deploy a hybrid
environment?
• What is your cloud migration strategy, and what services and
applications are you looking to invest in?
• What are your budget restrictions? Do you want to hire more IT staff
or scale back?
©Rawpixel.com-stock.adobe.com
keen to adopt a more dramatic
message. Gartner released a white
paper in September 2018 titled
“SD-WAN is killing MPLS, so
prepare to replace it now!” Before
people start preparing for an SDZombie
apocalypse type scenario
I thought I would ask some
Channel providers their thoughts.
Russell Horton, CEO of
FluidOne commented on the
potential for replacing MPLS
with SD-WAN. He said,
“Our experience providing
connectivity to thousands of end
customers over many years is
that in the UK, mission-critical
applications such as voice and
ERP require the quality, latency
and security end to end that an
MPLS network provides. e
opportunity for SD-WAN is for
cloud-based applications (that
are not hosted in the MPLS) to
be routed over a DIA line, and
so blend the bandwidth required
on MPLS with a second DIA
line (or 4G). is also provides
value from a backup circuit by
they support a Hybrid WAN
underlay because this enables
organisations to optimise price
and performance.”
Senter added, “SD-WAN is
replacing pure MPLS networks
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