SD-WAN Market to Reach $8 Billion in 2021

Software-defined wide area network solutions have only been commercially available for a few years, but the technology's ability to address pressing enterprise networking needs has led to remarkable growth. A new forecast from IDC estimates that worldwide SD-WAN infrastructure and services revenues will see a compound annual growth rate of 69.6% and reach $8.05 billion in 2021.

The most significant driver of SD-WAN growth over the next five years will be digital transformation in which enterprises deploy 3rd Platform technologies, including cloud, big data and analytics, mobility, and social business, to unlock new sources of innovation and creativity that enhance customer experiences and improve financial performance. DX generally increases network workloads and elevates the network's end-to-end importance to business operations.

Another factor driving the growth of SD-WAN is the continued rise of public cloud-based software-as-a-service applications. The increase in SaaS adoption for business applications throughout the enterprise disrupts the prominence of MPLS-based WAN connectivity to the branch. SD-WAN is increasingly leveraged to provide dynamic connectivity optimization and path selection in a policy-driven, centrally manageable distributed network architecture.

Finally, the growth in SD-WAN will benefit from the broader acceptance, and adoption, of software-defined networking throughout the enterprise. As virtualization, cloud management, and SDN continue to gain traction throughout enterprise networks, SD-WAN will benefit from this paradigm shift and receive increasing consideration.

"SD-WAN is not a solution in search of a problem," said Rohit Mehra, vice president, Network Infrastructure at IDC. "Traditional WANs were not architected for the cloud and are also poorly suited to the security requirements associated with distributed and cloud-based applications. And, while hybrid WAN emerged to meet some of these next-generation connectivity challenges, SD-WAN builds on hybrid WAN to offer a more complete solution.