2017: The year SD-WAN advances towards mainstream adoption

2017:
The year SD-WAN advances towards mainstream adoption

David Hughes, Founder and CEO of Silver Peak

Hybrid
SD-WANs go mainstream

As
SD-WAN adoption continues to gain ground and go mainstream in 2017, the
majority of initial enterprise deployments will be hybrid, leveraging both MPLS
and a complement of broadband connectivity. Many enterprises already have some
level of broadband connectivity to branch and remote locations, but these links
often remain idle or are relegated to backup or disaster recovery (DR).
Enterprises will begin to fully leverage this bandwidth to scale bandwidth cost
effectively in line with expanding application and user requirements.

Introduction
of SLAs for SD-WAN over pure broadband

To
date, the deployment of SD-WAN over pure broadband has been limited. In 2017,
enterprise adoption of SD-WAN over pure broadband will accelerate dramatically
as they realise that it’s possible to deliver MPLS-equivalent quality of
service and availability when combining any combination of transport, including
consumer broadband connectivity. Whether or not vendors or service providers
can deliver on pure broadband SLAs will fast become a key decision criterion.

Differences between SD-WAN vendors’
approaches will become more apparent

To a
large degree current SD-WAN solutions sound quite similar. However, under the
hood, each vendor’s offerings are fundamentally quite different and at varying
levels of maturity. As more enterprises gain experience with large-scale
production deployments, the advantages and disadvantages the various approaches
will become clearer. Some vendors’ architectures may be limited to a narrow set
of use cases.

Tsunami
of managed SD-WAN services to hit the market

Following
the initial barrage of service provider SD-WAN announcements this year, 2017
will see a separation between the providers that deliver mature scalable
offerings and those that rushed to market with a minimal viable response to
demand. Throughout the year, it will become clear which SD-WAN architectures
and solutions perform best for carriers – also revealing the criteria that
matter most to enterprises when evaluating new managed SD-WAN service
offerings.

Best-of-breed
or worst of everything?

Some
SD-WAN vendors will attempt to go horizontal, seeking to deliver rudimentary
support for nearly every function imaginable – while others will focus on core
competencies and build partnerships and ecosystems to service chain
best-of-breed functions, capabilities and services. Vendors that embrace
building an ecosystem to complement their own strengths will ultimately win.

SD-WAN
and on-demand WAN optimisation come together

Virtually
all geographically distributed enterprises will continue to require WAN
optimisation, perhaps not for all locations and offices, but certainly for a
significant portion of their WAN traffic. It will become increasingly
attractive to purchase WAN optimisation by-the-drip as an integrated service in
an SD-WAN solution vs. buying it as a stand-alone product deployed at every
location. Enterprises will demand the option to purchase and consume WAN
optimisation on-demand for only the applications and locations that require it
vs. over-paying for the maximum provisioned bandwidth across all sites.

Fine-grained
control of branch office internet breakout

Early
SD-WAN offerings include the ability to breakout internet-destined traffic
locally at the branch office. Enterprises are beginning to realise that this
shouldn’t be an all or nothing decision and will demand finer-grained control
over which web traffic is broken out at the branch and which is backhauled to a
regional hub in alignment with security policies. In 2017, geographically
distributed enterprises will seek to steer different types of internet traffic
in different directions/paths based on business intent. Deep visibility and
control over internet traffic will become a critical requirement for SD-WAN
deployments.

Machine
learning and AI to make debut in SD-WAN

Machine
and deep learning (AI) are rapidly revolutionising all industries. 2017 will
bring early instances of machine learning-based innovations to networking. We
will begin to explore the possibilities of machine learning, ultimately
enabling wide area networks to run themselves autonomously at some point in the
future.

Exiting
2017, leading SD-WAN vendors will surpass 1,000 customer deployments

2017
will mark the most important year for early industry leaders to gain momentum,
making it increasingly difficult for new entrants to survive and thrive.
Smaller SD-WAN vendors will struggle to remain relevant and will be relegated
to occupying a niche position in the market. It will become far more difficult
for new entrants to bring incremental offerings to market and establish market
penetration or traction.