MEF has certified Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN services comply with the highest industry standards for SD-WAN Service Providers. “MEF 3.0 SD-WAN certification is a competitive differentiator that aims to help organizations make informed decisions when selecting an SD-WAN solution. We congratulate Fortinet on this achievement, which shows its commitment to addressing WAN transformation requirements of both service providers and enterprises.”
Fortinet started partnering with MEF in 2017 and has closely worked with the organization to develop SD-WAN standards and practices. Today there are now around 25 service providers that meet the 3.0 certification .
GTT CEO Rick Calder is stepping down
After a 13 year run that massively expanded GTT, their CEO is stepping down. During his tenure, Rick gobbled up a number of smaller telecom networks including Interroute, Persues and more. These acquisitions made headlines and drove substantial top line revenue, but added heavy debt. The company announced earlier this year that they wanted to focus more on networking and get out of the infrastructure business. GTT has begun selling assets especially in the APAC regions. It will be interesting to watch this story unfold. If GTT can bring in a CEO with experience consolidating their incredibly complex string of networks, they may be poised for major growth. Through their Telecom acquisition quest, they now have over 600 POPs (points of presence) worldwide.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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 revenue reached almost $640 Million for the fourth quarter of 2019, a 75% increase ($365m over the same period in 2018). The main driver for the growth appears to be Service Providers embracing the fact that they are no longer carriers allowing them to bundle various other services including Unified Communications (UCaaS) and managed security services.
Cliff Grossner, Senior research directors for Omdia was stated as saying “The SD-WAN market is moving toward larger scale and globalized deployments…” he also cited that vendors are releasing new features around SD-WAN to support the scale needed to embrace enterprise level deployments.
VMWare is the front runner
VMware is the obvious front-runner in the SD-WAN market with over 16% total market share. Worth noting, Fortinet (as previously reported on sdwanrankings.com) is gaining significant momentum and is stealing market share quickly placing them in a surprising third-place finish for q4 2019. It will be interesting to see if they can usurp Cisco in the coming quarters.
Other interesting data points from the report include:
The top 3 SD-WAN providers represent ~ 41% of total market share
The Next 9 Providers (including Aryaka, SIlver Peak, Versa, Hussein, Nuage, Oracle, and Cradlepoint) represent the next 40% of market share
The rest of the market only makes up ~19% of total SD-WAN Deployments
I expect that the top 3 or 4 SD-WAN providers look to the outliers as potential acquisition targets. The majority of the players with any meaningful wallet share either have too much venture capital (Aryaka) or are too large to consolidate. That being said, Silver Peak could be an interesting play that would be a market mover in the near term.
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.
Fortinet, long considered to be a dark horse in the SD-WAN arena is combining their Next-Gen Firewall Security, Routing, and Open Fabric Ecosystem to scale through their Managed Service Providers.
Fortinet Poised for massive growth
Momentum for SD-WAN and SD-WAN like technologies has become more than a swell. As stated yesterday, AT&T has seen 700% growth with their “SD-WAN” like solutions. Fortinet is seizing this opportunity and securing wallet-share from the global momentum with managed security service providers (MSSPs). They recently cited Node4, Zain Jordan, andLiquid Networx as their leading partners. According to the release SD-WAN Infrastructure is expected to reach $5.25 Billion within 3 years.
Fortinet EVP products and CMO John Maddison is quoted as saying, “Fortinet’s global partners leverage our innovative Secure SD-WAN solution to take advantage of the new business opportunities presented by the rapidly growing SD-WAN market. Increasingly, MSSPs in particular are delivering new managed services built on Fortinet’s industry-leading Secure SD-WAN solution to meet customers’ evolving business needs. Our MSSP partners realize that delivering connectivity-only SD-WAN services is not sustainable long-term and are choosing to differentiate their services through the inclusion of security, which Fortinet Secure SD-WAN uniquely provides offering networking and security functionalities through a single offering.”
Competition is a good thing, A few days ago we discussed the CloudGenix acquisition by Palo Alto, The chess pieces are being put in place. We suspect that by the end of 2021, there will be 4 or 5 major SD-WAN providers with the smaller providers falling into the MSP category.
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.
Today, Palo Alto Networks has signaled their intentions regarding the competitive SD-WAN market. Palo needs to move quickly to cut into the early lead fortinet enjoys in the Sd-WAN space. The industry has been a tale of two cities. Fortinet stock has enjoyed a lift from SD-WAN while Palo Alto has suffered from slowed growth.
With RSA Conference this week, expect big announcements in this and other cyber security areas as well as a continued debate related to the software-defined industry at large.
Gartner has recently released their updated guide noting over 40 vendors competing for limited SD-WAN markethare. Other network leaders including Cisco and Juniper Networks are moving hard to maintain and grow market share. Currently, SD-WAN represents roughly $2 Billion in market investment and is expected to grow over 30% in the next 5 years.
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.
