Global market research and consulting firm, Frost & Sullivan, has recently announced the findings of a global end-user market survey sponsored by leading software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solution provider, Silver Peak. The survey offers insights into enterprise IT decision makers’ thoughts on SD-WAN market trends and their impact on enterprise WAN architectures.

Anton Jacobsz, managing director at Networks Unlimited, the distributor for Silver Peak for Sub-Saharan Africa, comments, “When businesses look to cut the high costs of running a wide area network (WAN), SD-WAN can help to save on money by augmenting high cost private MPLS networks with economical broadband internet connections. At the same time, SD-WAN also enables businesses to embrace the cloud, connecting users to applications wherever they reside, while assuring the highest levels of network and application performance. The Silver Peak sponsored survey, which was web-based and included responses from 850 individual companies across five industries from eight key countries https://www.silver-peak.com/sd-wan-edge-survey,has revealed some interesting findings as SD-WAN continues to come into its own.” 

"As global companies adopt SD-WAN technology, they are shifting from a device-centric WAN model toward a business-first networking model that ensures resiliency and business continuity while delivering superior WAN and application performance," says John Vincenzo, senior vice president and CMO at Silver Peak. "This global survey confirms that enterprises are seeking not only to integrate network functions at the WAN edge but that they are also demanding centralised cloud-based network management from their SD-WAN vendor. 

·        Thirty-three percent of enterprises surveyed have deployed or are in the process of deploying SD-WAN. 
·        Sixty-one percent intend to deploy SD-WAN in the next two years. Those who do not plan to deploy SD-WAN in this time frame say it’s because of an existing maintenance contract. 
·        Sixty-nine percent of US respondents intend to replace their existing CPE routers with an SD-WAN appliance with integrated routing. Jacobsz says this is consistent with a blog written previously by Silver Peak founder and CEO, David Hughes. 
·        Sixty-seven percent of US IT decision makers want WAN optimisation as an integrated function with SD-WAN. 
·        Seventy-five percent of US and 58 percent of global enterprises indicated cloud-based network management is their top criteria during the SD-WAN vendor selection process. Again, notes Jacobsz, this is as predicted by Silver Peak founder and CEO David Hughes. With SD-WAN, enterprises have the choice to deploy the network management/orchestration tool in their own data centre or host it in the cloud. 

“According to the survey respondents, SD-WAN emerged as a top three technology priority in the next 12 to 24 months, along with hybrid cloud services and network and application security. Reasons for embracing SD-WAN include benefits such as ensuring resiliency and business continuity of network and applications; enforcing granular security policies to applications and users, and achieving superior application and WAN performance,” concludes Jacobsz. 

Download the complimentary eBook with the survey results here. For more information, please contact Anton Jacobsz at anton.jacobsz@nu.co.za