IDC Uncovers What is Driving Enterprise SD-WAN Deployments

Software-defined networking has moved out to the enterprise branch. A special study from IDC highlights results from an extensive worldwide SD-WAN survey and finds that "bandwidth optimization", "consistent application security", "integration with existing WANs", and "improved automation and self-provisioning" were the top four motivators considering SD-WAN adoption.

IDC believes this increased confidence in emerging WAN architectures, and the rapid embrace of SD-WAN, across enterprise and service providers will help drive the market to reach $8 billion in infrastructure and services by 2021. The new study examines current and future enterprise plans for SD-WAN infrastructure and services, including their relationship to enterprise WAN connectivity, cloud/SaaS applications, WAN management and use cases, operational requirements, and the potential impact these will have on overall enterprise IT efficiency and on the business value of enterprises across a number of geographic and vertical markets.

"Given the affinity towards leveraging broadband for enhanced capacity across enterprise sites, in parallel with the proliferation of cloud-based applications and services, the enterprise WAN is being rapidly re-architected to cost-effectively deliver new, secure capabilities," said Rohit Mehra, vice president, Network Infrastructure. "Understanding and adapting current WAN network and security solutions across the emerging connectivity and application landscape is going to be a key ingredient for success as this market transforms in key geographies and across the service and solution provider domains.

Additional findings from the special study suggest that faster deployment, operational efficiency and reduced complexity for IT also scored high as motivational factors for enterprises considering SD-WAN deployments. Key SD-WAN components include WAN optimization, application and network security, application policy-based path selection, integrated routing and application visibility. Top use cases include ability to simplify WAN infrastructure, use multiple WAN providers and use broadband to off-load non-critical business apps. While SD-WAN is being embraced across major geographies, its use cases and deployment scenarios across the top 2 IT markets, the United States and China, are quite a study in contrasts.

The emergence of SD-WAN over the last couple of years has paralleled the deployment of hybrid WAN architectures that have leveraged broadband, 4G/LTE, and other technologies. SD-WANs leverage hybrid WANs, but incorporate a centralized, application-based policy controller, analytics for application and network visibility and security, a software overlay that abstracts underlying networks, and an optional routing capability that together provides intelligent path selection across WAN links.