Cisco, VeloCloud, Aryaka Headline SD-WAN Leaders in New Study

The latest software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) study pegs the market at $1 billion and growing.

A study published by MarketsandMarkets forecasts SD-WAN to generate $4.1 billion by 2023. The report attributes the anticipated fourfold increase to the proliferation of mobile traffic and cloud services. The rise of a wireless and often remote workforce is creating complexity that SD-WAN can help solve. That’s one of the reasons why AT&T last month announced plans to integrate 5G capabilities into its SD-WAN platform.

Customers also are looking for SD-WAN solutions that fit their migration to cloud-based platforms such as Office 365, AWS and Salesforce.

“The cloud segment is expected to witness a high demand, due to its wide range of functionalities, such as high higher flexibility, lower cost, and faster service. The cloud-enabled SD-WAN deployment model offers the benefits and features of on-premises along with the added benefit of connecting to a virtual or cloud gateway,” the report authors wrote.

Decreasing the cost of business is also a driver, according to the study.

A worthwhile tidbit from the study is that it shows service providers growing more quickly over the next four years. That reflects conclusions other researchers have made about carriers selling SD-WAN.

“In the present scenario, service providers are partnering with pure play SD-WAN vendors to provide SD-WAN as managed service to the enterprises,” the authors wrote. “Hence, communication service providers (CSPs) and managed service providers (MSPs) are adopting SD-WAN solutions.”

Services is a leading segment of the market in terms of growth, according to the study.

“These services help end users in reducing costs, lowering operational costs and improving business performance. With the help of these services, organizations can track, evaluate and analyze the requirements of their business to make informed decisions,” the report said.

Plenty of channel experts also have suggested that customers prefer SD-WAN as a managed service. CNSG executive Devin Williams, now a regional director with AppDirect, told us last year that customers lean on the side of having more help.

“Many organizations, especially the distributed enterprise, are strapped for IT staff at each individual location that they run,” Williams said. “When they deploy hundreds or thousands of SD-WAN devices to their organization, they need to be able to have the peace of mind that someone is managing and monitoring that network to ensure its operating at its prime.”

While the study predicts a compound annual growth rate of nearly 33 percent, it would actually seem to reflect a decrease. MarketsandMarkets at the end of 2016 said the market was worth $738 million and would increase to $9 billion by 2021. That’s a 65 percent CAGR for those keeping track at home.

Opinions on the market’s growth tend to vary. In the latest edition of the Channel Partners podcast, Coffee with Craig and Kevin, Oracle’s Nate Grinnell pegged the number as closer to 70 percent.

MarketsandMarkets lists 23 vendors as major players: Cisco (which owns Viptela), VMware (which owns VeloCloud), Silver Peak Systems, Aryaka Networks, Nokia (which owns Nuage Networks), Oracle (which owns Talari), Huawei, Infovista, Citrix, Juniper Networks, Fortinet, HPE, Fatpipe Networks, Riverbed, CloudGenix , Versa Networks, Adaptiv Networks, Peplink, Lavelle Networks, Martello Technologies, Mushroom Networks, Zenlayer and Bigleaf Networks.