SD-WAN adoption growing as enterprises embrace app-centric architecture transition
The connected era and cloud-based environment have created a need to redesign network operations, according to ResearchAndMarkets.
In addition, businesses find it operationally draining to utilize resources on ensuring a connected ecosystem rather than focusing on critical business issues.
Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) helps enterprises build an agile and automated environment, which is streamlined to support new-age cloud environments and traditional Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) systems in a cost-efficient manner.
To understand enterprise perceptions and activities regarding SD-WAN, an end-user survey was conducted in April 2018. The net result is a set of data, and conclusions drawn from that data, which provides directional insight regarding the SD-WAN market within Europe.
A web-based survey was administered to European-based IT decision-makers and returned responses from 276 companies. The results have been released in the “Europe SD-WAN Survey Results, 2018” report.
SD-WAN adoption
SD-WAN adoption in Europe is growing as enterprises embrace the transition from router-centric network architecture to an application-centric architecture. There is a growing demand from enterprises to have the ability to centrally manage all enterprise sites.
More than half of the survey respondents planned to deploy SD-WAN in the next 12-24 months. While there are differences among verticals on the reasons and strategies to deploy SD-WAN, the adoption trend is growing strongly across verticals and enterprise size.
Fully-managed SD-WAN
Enterprises believe that an SD-WAN deployment will enable them to centrally manage all enterprise sites and move to an application-centric architecture. There is a strong preference for fully-managed SD-WAN.
Almost 50% of enterprises surveyed indicated their interest in fully-managed SD-WAN deployment models. Very large enterprises and small enterprises preferred the DIY model owing to its offering the ability to have full control over network and application routing and centrally manage network policies.
An SD-WAN solution is expected to reduce businesses’ reliance on MPLS-only WAN, and enable hybrid WAN deployments that make the best use of public (Internet/wireless/satellite links that are more affordable and widely available) and private links (MPLS/Ethernet links that are private and reliable).