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SD-WAN-market-2030-Growth

SD-WAN will continue to offer Cost Savings in 2021

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SDWAN Rankings is your source for the latest SD-WAN and SASE news and vendor rankings. We also partner with clients to help them find the best SD-WAN solutions at no charge. Through our relationships with the industry we can offer an agnostic service to help YOU find the best provider. If it works out, the provider (they all do this) will provide us a small bonus.

Here are some of the things the people we’ve helped have said about SD-WAN in 2020 and heading into 2021.

The cost of SD-WAN is much less than the cost of MPLS. The main difference between SD-WAN and MPLS is that while MPLS involves a centralized network, SD-WAN uses a decentralized approach. SD-WAN is a next-generation network that delivers a high level of security, scalability, and reliability. It uses both MPLS and BGP to create virtual private networks (VPNs) that can span across geographic boundaries. SD-WAN is the next big thing in network technology. It’s an open-source solution that provides a more secure, scalable, and efficient network.

Bob – VP Information Systems at a regional Credit union

Despite the increase in MPLS deployments due to WAN optimization, SD-WAN continues to be a cost effective alternative. In fact, SD-WAN is a more affordable and more scalable alternative than technologies such as MPLS. SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) is a software framework that provides better visibility into the network and the data it carries. SD-WAN provides the ability to create private, virtual networks over existing WAN infrastructures. SD-WAN allows enterprises to efficiently and securely move applications from one datacenter to another without compromising network performance or security.

Lisa – Director of IT in Recruiting Vertical

SD-WAN can reduce the cost of a network by as much as three times compared to MPLS. SD-WAN is also easier to scale than MPLS, so it’s easier for some businesses to deploy. SD-WAN is a branch of SDN technology that offers stronger security, scalability, and management of data centers. With SD-WAN, IT organizations can reduce costs and improve efficiency by combining their WAN links into a single network. SD-WAN is a technology that offers a better network performance for your business. When used with the appropriate NOC solution, SD-WAN can improve the performance of your network and provide greater agility to your connected devices.

James P – CTO Retail

SD-WAN has a lot of benefits over MPLS for the network and the company. MPLS is expensive and requires a lot of maintenance. SD-WAN is a new technology that creates a virtual private network (VPN) between networks. It’s a more secure alternative to WAN optimization, which uses traditional routing protocols and TCP port numbers for transporting data. SD-WAN offers better network performance and better uptime than traditional WAN technologies, like MPLS. SD-WAN is very efficient, and reduces CPU utilization, which also extends the life of your servers and networking equipment.

DIY VP

SD-WAN is a new kind of network architecture that allows a company to have multiple WAN paths and direct connections between sites. This can improve the performance of applications on your network, but it comes at a cost.
SD-WAN allows for centralized communication between users and devices. This could be a huge deal for businesses that are concerned about security. SD-WAN is a virtual private network that delivers the benefits of traditional VPNs with improved performance and reduced cost.

Trusted SD-WAN Advisors

SDWAN Rankings exists to help you find the best solutions to help with your networking needs. Organizations selecting SD-WAN providers often rely on the partner community as trusted advisors to help select these networking technologies.  We can help you select a partner that will help you through vendor selection at no cost. ever. If you’d like an introduction to SD-WAN vendors or partners, let us know. 

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SD-WAN Recommendations for the SMB

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Key Considerations for Small and Medium-sized Businesses looking for SD-WAN

When your company is shopping for SD-WAN vendors, how many of them have asked “what is the business intent of the SD-WAN solution?” or something along those lines? CIOs and IT managers wouldn’t be looking at SD-WAN if it wasn’t intended to solve an issue with their business. However, rarely will SD-WAN vendors lead with the business intent question to start a conversation about finding the right solution. Most SD-WAN vendors are still stuck in the mode of selling on a list of product features and hardware specifications—likely because the SD-WAN industry is dominated by hardware manufacturers started by nerdy engineers.

SD-WAN Rankings helps CIOs and IT managers to select vendors based on solving business rather than technological issues. The question is: “What are you needing this SD-WAN solution to do for your business?” rather than “do you want a box that has forward error correction?”

If you are a CIO or IT manager at a small to midsized business (SMB), SD-WAN Rankings encourages you to consider these high-level options available based on your deployment scope and typical business intent:

SD-WAN is about Location, location, location

The connectivity needs for retail (e.g. dry cleaners, florists, etc.), restaurant (locally-owned but could include franchises with independent owners), and professional organizations (lawyers, realtors, etc.) obviously vary, but not too much. Generally, a CIO or IT manager at SMBs across all these industries are connecting and supporting employees who serve customers in a community or in several communities in a state. It’s often overlooked, but geographical location is important when it comes to SD-WAN connectivity.

Certain vendors’ SD-WAN deployments—usually the managed service providers and telecom carriers—deliver the best performance for on-net customers. This is because the SD-WAN hardware is “tuned” to perform best on the bandwidth provided by the managed service provider or carrier. Successful SMBs that deliver locally-focused services with employees drawn from the community are well served by this type of SD-WAN connectivity.

Speed and support

Most SMBs are cost-conscious when it comes to IT support. A good SD-WAN solution for SMB organizations should limit the need for 24/7 onsite IT and networking support. Depending on the industry, a co-managed SD-WAN solution could be an attractive option for SMBs that need tight control over customer data for regulatory reasons. The turnkey nature of a managed SD-WAN solution is most attractive to SMBs because the hardware-only setups place the support burden on the CIO and IT manager who are both already likely understaffed and overworked.

Managed SD-WAN service providers also are attractive to SMBs because they often bring their own bandwidth. Bundling managed bandwidth with SD-WAN is preferred for SMBs to reduce the overall deployment complexity. Hardware-only deployments of SD-WAN where the CIO and IT manager at an SMB buy appliances from VMware, Cisco, or Fortinet then procure the connection bandwidth between locations comes with the increased costs of 24/7 management. In more rural communities, the lack of bandwidth choice could raise costs even more and create technical issues for IT staff without the time and training required to do the job of a telecom engineer on top of their daily IT duties at the SMB.


SD-WAN Rankings Recommendations for SMBs

For the majority of SMBs in North America, a managed services provider for SD-WAN is the best bet. Depending on the locale, you should look to partner with top-tier providers such as CenturyLink, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Spectrum in the USA and Bell Canada, Shaw, and Telus in Canada. Second-tier alternatives Aryaka, Cato Networks, and Masergy are good alternatives with limited name recognition but excel at delivering SD-WAN solutions based on your organization’s business intent. For those SMBs who prefer the 100% do it yourself approach of installing and managing SD-WAN appliances, Cisco Meraki and Versa offer top-tier experiences at an affordable price point.

Trusted SD-WAN Advisors

SDWAN Rankings exists to help you find the best solutions to help with your networking needs. Organizations selecting SD-WAN providers often rely on the partner community as trusted advisors to help select these networking technologies.  We can help you select a partner that will help you through vendor selection at no cost. ever. If you’d like an introduction to SD-WAN vendors or partners, let us know. 

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Does SD-WAN have major Security Flaws? yes.

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SD-WAN created the SASE segment

SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) has blown up over the last 12 months. Many organizations are quickly pivoting to incorporate an SD-WAN + SASE strategy for their network operations. The underlying issue is the numerous security flaws. This is a major challenge organizations must accept as they move to software-defined solutions.

While hardware based solutions have had security flaws, bugs, an loopholes, the fact that they previously relied on dedicated on-premise devices added a fundamental layer of security. As cloud first technologies take hold, security becomes increasingly paramount.

Staggering SD-WAN Security Holes

In a recent reddit post on r/networking, two users jemilk and LucidZulu identified a number of organizations that publicly disclose their security bugs and advisories.

Here is a short list of available Security Advisories. While many of these bugs expand pass SD-WAN specific advisories, the importance of updating these technologies regularly is critical.

Juniper Security Advisories

Cisco Bug Search Tool (You can google Cisco Bugs and see specific bugs, but need to be logged in to use the tool and see a list)

F5 Networks

Palo Alto Networks

Silverpeak

SD-WAN Vulnerability Disclosure is key

There are notable absent names on this list. These providers either do not disclose the bugs publicly and likely have alternative reporting methodologies. It’s worth noting the importance of public transparency around these issues to help organizations fix these holes quickly and effectively.

Trusted SD-WAN Advisors

SDWAN Rankings exists to help you find the best solutions to help with your networking needs. Organizations selecting SD-WAN providers often rely on the partner community as trusted advisors to help select these networking technologies.  We can help you select a partner that will help you through vendor selection at no cost. ever. If you’d like an introduction to SD-WAN vendors or partners, let us know. 

HPE (aruba) acquires Silver Peak

Silver Peak acquired by HPE

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SD-WAN Consolidation Continues in 2020

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced the acquisition of SD-WAN provider Silver Peak for around $925 million or around 6x Revenue. This acquisition will combine their networking unit with Aruba to address the changing SD-WAN Landscape. We’ve been keeping an eye on the consolidation factors within these categories all year. This acquisition is likely not the last major consolidation factor we’ll see this year. Aryaka continues their massive media push for a likely fall IPO. Key factors for this consolidation include:

  • Aruba and Silver Peak will be combined to focus on cloud based SD-WAN
  • Silver Peak takes a simple “self driving” WAN approach that will decrease costs for legacy network organizations.
  • Silver Peak will compliment the existing Aruba network solutions.

Antonio Neri (CEO of HPE) is quoted as saying, “With this acquisition we are accelerating our edge-to-cloud strategy to provide a true distributed cloud model and cloud experience for all apps and data wherever they live.” HPE acquired Aruba Networks in 2015 to leverage enterprise mobility.

“Today’s announcement comes at a unique moment for our customers, who are grappling with business recovery in the wake of the pandemic,” said Keerti Melkote, president of Intelligent Edge for Hewlett Packard Enterprise and founder of Aruba Networks. “The need for edge-to-cloud architectures has never been more relevant as enterprises look to extend connectivity to branch locations and enable secure work-from-home experiences. Silver Peak’s technology transforms legacy WAN architectures to self-driving WANs, which is a perfect fit with Aruba’s cloud-native, AI-driven Edge Services Platform. Together, we will be able to meet these needs with critical connectivity, security, and AI capabilities to drive the next generation of Edge-to-Cloud transformation.” 

This appears to be a big win for investors as they secured $175m in total (with the largest chunk of around $90 million in 2018.) TCV looks poised to make decent return on their investment very quickly. TCV is heavily invested in a number of digital transformation and SaaS companies. This type of return during this climate makes sense for the organization.

Details about Silver Peak are listed Below

Market Share: 7.50 %
Revenue Estimates: $200 Million
silver-peak-website
Check our this provider:
Silver Peak

Silver Peak

SD-WAN Technical Details
SD-WAN Deployment Types:
  • On-Premise (Physical)
  • Virtual
  • Cloud (AWS)
  • Cloud (Azure)
WAN Optimization: Yes
Visit their website:
Silver Peak
WAN Architecture:
  • Hardware
  • Software
Managed Firewall:
  • Basic
  • Advanced (3rd-party)

Trusted SD-WAN Advisors

SDWAN Rankings exists to help you find the best solutions to help with your networking needs. Organizations selecting SD-WAN providers often rely on the partner community as trusted advisors to help select these networking technologies.  We can help you select a partner that will help you through vendor selection at no cost. ever. If you’d like an introduction to SD-WAN vendors or partners, let us know. 

SD-WAN Expansion Australia and New Zealand

SD-WAN Expansion in Australia and New Zealand 2020

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Fortinet SD-WAN expands in New Zealand

The Asia-Pacific region (specifically Australia and New Zealand) are seeing massive growth around software defined wide-area-networking (SD-WAN). Spark (New Zealand’s largest telco and managed services company) recently partnered with Fortinet to deliver and expand on their software defined networking services. Fortinets secure solutions are a great fit. Spark chose Fortinet because of their ability to deliver automated network security, better application routing and performance, as well as cost efficiency for their customers. Spark also says that this solution will be easy to integrate for enterprise and government customers along features including business continuity and other functionality.

The APAC region has been going through various transformations over the last decade. It has been rumored that Telstra has been doing massive investigation into opportunities for growth outside of the AIPAC region which would inherently provide additional features and functionalities within the region.

Cisco Expands in Australia

Cisco launched their secure SD-WAN solutions for NBN (Australia’s Broadband Network) to help businesses across Australia. Cisco managing director Karen Negus emphasized the massive potential for SD-WAN in Australia and the greater APAC region. Cisco stated that the “quality connectivity” offered by NBN are why they selected them as a key secure SD-WAN provider. This announcement shows the massive potential for SD-WAN solutions in and around the area.

VMware expands SD-WAN to APAC Channel Partners

VMWare has offered the VeloCloud SD-WAN solutions to NOAM partners since completing the acquisition in 2017. They recently announced expanded offerings for channel partners through their Partner Connect Program allowing these Partners to sell these solutions through Monthly Recurring Charges (MRC) or one-off CAPEX payment. This is a great win for channel partners in the APAC region.

Trusted SD-WAN Advisors

SDWAN Rankings exists to help you find the best solutions to help with your networking needs. Organizations selecting SD-WAN providers often rely on the partner community as trusted advisors to help select these networking technologies.  We can help you select a partner that will help you through vendor selection at no cost. ever. If you’d like an introduction to SD-WAN vendors or partners, let us know. 

SD-WAN Growth Shrinking

SD-WAN Revenue Shrinking? the COVID-19 impact

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Well it’s not all upside is it comes to SD-WAN. Vertical Systems Group has been measuring the anticipated impact of SD-WAN revenues throughthe rest of 2020 and beyond. While some organizations are reaping the benefits of the pandemic, other carriers aren’t so fortunate. This truly is a story of have’s and have-not’s and it will be interesting to see which organizations flourish during this period. It appears that the top providers are gaining momentum. Our analysis is slightly different than their top three (AT&T, Hughes, and Verizon) and I’m curious if these are their proprietary solution deployments or reselling the likes of VMware, Fortinet, and Cisco or some hybrid.

Additionally, we love the analysis showing that organizations saw triple digit revenue growth selling these managed networking solutions in 2019. For 2020, @VerticalSys sees a major drop to 17% growth driven primarily through the pandemic. They also anticipate a holiday rebound for businesses and growth in 2021. This makes sense as many organizations are struggling to figure out what to do with their branch offices, how employees are going to respond to coming back to work, and the general sentiment of the larger market. Previously discussed the role of high-value workers and it will be curious to see how organizations respond to that possibility. Another interesting conundrum is going to be the impact on full-time remote and the impact of 5G deployments that will begin sometime next year. It truly is an interesting time for these hybrid networking providers and hopefully the dust settles in the near future so we have a better understanding of what’s ahead.

You can read their STATFlash around COVID-19 here.

Trusted SD-WAN Advisors

SDWAN Rankings exists to help you find the best solutions to help with your networking needs. Organizations selecting SD-WAN providers often rely on the partner community as trusted advisors to help select these networking technologies.  We can help you select a partner that will help you through vendor selection at no cost. ever. If you’d like an introduction to SD-WAN vendors or partners, let us know. 

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Kinetic SD-WAN for the SMB

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Windstream started flexing their Kinetic brand into the SMB in late 2017. Today they announced that they are extending SD-WAN services to that same market powered by our top ranked provider VeloCloud (VMware).

Their use-cases are compelling. As SD-WAN becomes more prevalent, SD-WAN solutions allow SMBs like Bar owners to control when and how their music streaming, POS systems, and phones will prioritize bandwidth and/or leverage 4G / LTE and eventually 5G backup. VMware is positioned to help these businesses and with windstreams footprint, it may be a slam dunk.

“Our customers are increasing their network complexity with multiple WiFi networks and cloud applications,” said Joe Johnson, vice president of Kinetic Product Development and Management. “We already deliver an excellent broadband product over our robust fiber network. Our customers have asked for greater simplicity and control over their networks, and with this partnership we are delivering an industry leading solution easily managed from a web interface or a mobile device.”

It is important to note that Windstream filed bankruptcy and began restructuring in 2019. While the circumstances of the bankruptcy were technicalities, using the Kinetic brand to launch SD-WAN services may be a sign of a larger rebrand coming beyond the SMB space.

Trusted SD-WAN Advisors

SDWAN Rankings exists to help you find the best solutions to help with your networking needs. Organizations selecting SD-WAN providers often rely on the partner community as trusted advisors to help select these networking technologies.  We can help you select a partner that will help you through vendor selection at no cost. ever. If you’d like an introduction to SD-WAN vendors or partners, let us know. 

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GTT expands SD-WAN portfolio… again

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In January, GTT announced the incorporation of Fortinet Secure SD-WAN services. This was in addition to already having offerings from VMware (VeloCloud) and SilverPeak Unity EdgeConnect. at the time, Todd Kiehn stated, “Fortinet has been a long-standing partner of GTT, delivering network firewall solutions as a core aspect of GTT’s managed security portfolio.”

Diving deeper it appears that the acquisition of interoute gave them access to the aforementioned Silver Peak solutions. Interoute, one of the largest network providers in the EMEA region was a very large (if not the largest) acquisition made by GTT in 2018. The $2 Billion cash transaction expanded GTT’s coverage area broadly. It also gave them innovations as Interoute was seen as the only competitor to perennial networking innovation organization Masergy in Gartner’s Network Magic Quadrant. GTT has since fallen back into the niche category.

Reclaim old glory?

GTT Stock Performance

Now the Silver Peak solution is available in the Americas. It will be interesting to see if they can move the needle and reclaim growth and take market share. The SD-WAN space has become increasingly convoluted and we’ve been bullish on massive consolidation even during and post-pandemic. It is important to note that GTT has a variety of debt obligations that come full circle in the coming years and the general performance outlook is down short, mid, and long term from the Commodity Channel Index. In fact, since mid 2018 (shortly after the Interoute acquisition) GTT’s stock has been on a steady decline from $56 dollars per share to around $9 dollars a share.

Americas Expansion

IDC anticipates enterprise SD-WAN services to grow over 25% per year through 2023 in the Americas Region. GTT uses this metric as a key reason for their SD-WAN / Silver Peak addition stating, “The addition of Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect expands GTT’s managed SD-WAN offering in the Americas and offers enterprises an attractive technology option to meet their specific network bandwidth and applications requirements,” stated Ghassan Abdo, research vice president, worldwide telecom at IDC. “GTT’s managed SD-WAN service allows enterprises to focus critical IT personnel on core business operational activity and provides substantial value-add in the management of complex network integrations, as well as helping conserve scarce capital resources.”     

Has GTT Turned the Corner?

On May 8th 2020, GTT announced their financials for Q1 2020. It is interesting that while their YoY revenue was down 5%, their QoQ performance was up marginally. Given the beginnings of the pandemic, uncertainty and distractions, this may actually be a positive sign. Additionally, while EBITDA has decreased, their cash flow increased 37% QoQ and 157% YoY and their CAPEX decreased nearly half a % point as a percent of revenue.

The biggest concern with this announcement is can GTT provide a consistent reliable user experience across 3 of the top SD-WAN Services available today. If they can succeed in this area, they may be poised to seize the market as our society continues its digital transformation revolution.

Trusted SD-WAN Advisors

SDWAN Rankings exists to help you find the best solutions to help with your networking needs. Organizations selecting SD-WAN providers often rely on the partner community as trusted advisors to help select these networking technologies.  We can help you select a partner that will help you through vendor selection at no cost. ever. If you’d like an introduction to SD-WAN vendors or partners, let us know. 

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FINALLY: Metro Ethernet Forum defines standard for SD-WAN

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International networking standards body metro ethernet forum (MEF) has published the industry’s first standard for SD-WAN. The MEF first floated the idea of an SD-WAN standard back in 2017, gathering requirements and feedback from SD-WAN industry luminaries (including hardware makers Cisco, Silver Peak, and Huawei along with managed service providers such as Colt and Verizon), and the long-awaited document finally delivers a common definition for managed SD-WAN services.

The MEF’s published SD-WAN standards document describes the requirements for an “application-aware, over-the-top WAN connectivity service that uses policies to determine how application flows are directed over multiple underlay networks irrespective of the underlay technologies or service providers who deliver them.” The goal for creating this industry standard is to enable service and technology providers to focus on providing a core set of common capabilities. From there, a wide range of companies can build on the standard for differentiated offerings, helping ensure maximum flexibility for customers.

Describing boundaries, not deployments

While the MEF’s publication represents significant progress to codifying standards for the wildly-popular technology of SD-WAN, it only describes the behavioral model—not the implementation. Far from actually telling an enterprise exactly how to deploy SD-WAN, the MEF is suggesting a common definition of the service. This is largely because every SD-WAN vendor speaks a slightly different language with their own proprietary vocabulary when it comes to the technology. As more vendors begin to speak the same common language about the technology, network architects, software engineers, and technicians can work inside that standard to deliver better managed SD-WAN experiences for customers.

An example real-world benefit of the MEF’s new SD-WAN standard: A wide array of companies can start building open standard APIs that support what customers and providers need to create automated provisioning. Although SD-WAN deployment currently takes only days or weeks depending on the complexity (as opposed to the months it typically takes to set up legacy MPLS networks through carriers), the MEF SD-WAN standard promises to enable deployments that can take minutes to hours.

In addition, the MEF standard promises to bring clarity to an already a well-known feature of SD-WAN: network analytics. The MEF SD-WAN standard also promises to define service attributes for application flow performance and importance, SD-WAN topology, and connectivity.

Provider and customer benefits

Although the majority of both SD-WAN hardware makers and service providers have signed onto the MEF standard, enterprises wanting to deploy these standardized SD-WAN components on their networks might have to wait up to six months due to the lead times required by original equipment manufacturers and industry supply chain logistics. However, for the managed SD-WAN service providers who participated in the MEF such as Verizon in the USA, Fujitsu in Asia, and Colt in Europe, their managed SD-WAN services will likely see solutions using those standards implemented much sooner.

Curious about how the MEF’s published standards will benefit your SD-WAN deployment? Connect with one of our consultants to learn more.

Trusted SD-WAN Advisors

SDWAN Rankings exists to help you find the best solutions to help with your networking needs. Organizations selecting SD-WAN providers often rely on the partner community as trusted advisors to help select these networking technologies.  We can help you select a partner that will help you through vendor selection at no cost. ever. If you’d like an introduction to SD-WAN vendors or partners, let us know.