8 Takeaways from Aryaka's State of the WAN Study
High costs leapfrogged complexity as the biggest challenge IT leaders face with their wide area networks.
![Takeaway Takeaway](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/bltfa73a3a5f2387ed2/6524381896824aa6b7cfc109/Takeaway.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Shutterstock
This takeaway likely won’t surprise you if you’ve been following the news, but it’s worth emphasizing. The data show that businesses have not only settled into a hybrid work strategy but plan to stay in it long-term.
Eighty-six percent of respondents closed a global site over the last 18 months. Twenty-one percent closed 51% or more of their sites.
Nevertheless, hybrid work seems firmly entrenched. For 43% of respondents, 25-50% of their employees were working from home full-time. Moreover, the number stayed very similar when respondents were asked what they would do when pandemic restrictions lifted.
Â
Forty-four percent of customers are using different vendors to build their SASE technology.
Only 19% of respondents said they want to use a single vendor for networking and security. Another 19% said they want to consume via a MSP or telco.
Companies in Asia (26%) were more likely to take the MSP/telco route, followed by Europe (19%) and then the Americas (12%).
The study noted that companies in the Americas are particularly conflicted over how they want to consume SASE. One in three said they are still determining how SASE will fit into their environment.
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
IT leaders are investing in network mangement and monitoring more than ever.
The study asked resondents which infrastructure initiatives they planned to implement in 2022, ranked in order of importance.Â
Network management and monitoring topped the list, followed by a complete WAN refresh and cloud-based network management. SASE and SD-WAN trailed.
Network management and monitoring scored fourth last year. On the other hand, remote access VPN plummeted from third to tenth year-over-year.
Microsoft Teams (58%) scored as the most important application for respondents, followed by its sibling Microsoft 365 (55%). Respondents rated the cloud/SaaS applications that are most important for them.Â
Zoom and Google Docs (35%) trailed, followed by Salesforce (28%) and SAP HANA (25%).
The numbers reflect the terrific jump Teams made in 2021. It came in fourth on this list last year, with only one in three respondents listing it among their most critical apps. Zoom stayed pretty much constant, going from 36% to 35%.
More customers view cost as their biggest WAN challenge.
Thirty-six percent of respondents listed high costs as the biggest challenge facing their WAN in 2022. This was a massive jump from 2021, where only 20% cited cost. High complexity had topped list in the past two years at 37%, but it ceded to second (31%) this time around.
Aryaka CMO Shashi Kiran pointed to the increasingly expensive proposition of remotely managing the WAN and supply chains.
More than one-half of respondents (51%) said they plan to eliminate at least some of their legacy data centers.
Specifically, 35% said they will eliminate all of their data center footprint and move it to the public cloud within the next 12 months. Twenty-seven percent will eliminate some of their data centers and go to the public cloud.
Aryaka noted in its study that data center elimination is helping drive managed services adoption.
Â
Customers plan to increase both their networking and security budgets.
All respondents indicated that their networking and security budgets will grow by at least 10% year-over-year. One in four respondents said their networking budgets will increase by 25% or more, while slightly more than one in four (28%) said their security budgets will increase by 25% or more.
Kiran said that SASE adoption typically takes the most funds out of the security budget. However, in the case where a business already has cloud-based security point solutions but a premises-based SD-WAN solution, the networking budget will pay the brunt of the SASE costs.
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Customers are prioritizing advanced security features of SASE more than ever.
Aryaka asked respondents to list the capabilities that are core to their SASE architecture. Secure web gateway (SWG) topped the list at 47%. It jumped from 30% in 2021. In addition, cloud access security broker (CASB) jumped from 7% to 18%, and zero-trust network access (ZTNA) jumped from 3% to 17%.
In the meantime, good ole SD-WAN remained a core SASE architecture feautre for 36% of respondents.
Customers are prioritizing advanced security features of SASE more than ever.
Aryaka asked respondents to list the capabilities that are core to their SASE architecture. Secure web gateway (SWG) topped the list at 47%. It jumped from 30% in 2021. In addition, cloud access security broker (CASB) jumped from 7% to 18%, and zero-trust network access (ZTNA) jumped from 3% to 17%.
In the meantime, good ole SD-WAN remained a core SASE architecture feautre for 36% of respondents.
Customers are factoring cost into their WAN decisions more than ever, according to a new study.
Aryaka Networks released its sixth State of the WAN survey, which revealed interesting results about how enterprise customers are navigating hybrid work and a multicloud world. For example, 64% of IT leaders are deploying secure access service edge (SASE) or plan to deploy it in 2022. SASE brings together advanced security and networking features into a single, cloud-based platform.
The survey queried 1,600 IT decision makers across the globe.
đź“ŁThe 6th edition of the State of the Wan Report is out! The new report reveals insights for SD-WAN and SASE success from 1600+ global enterprises.
Keep reading:https://t.co/3dDugA2AgG
Download the report: https://t.co/Q46cgpInDV— Aryaka Networks (@AryakaNetworks) January 20, 2022
Aryaka’s Shashi Kiran
Aryaka chief marketing officer Shashi Kiran told Channel Futures that the majority of customers are buying SASE through channel partners. Moreover, a “significant portion” wants to consume SASE in a managed or co-managed model.
We listed eight interesting excerpts from the WAN study in the slideshow above.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email James Anderson or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like