
SD-WAN has been available from past few years and SD-WAN adoption in India has grown at a remarkable pace. The early adopters have scaled their pilot to enterprise-wide deployment “SD-WAN in India from Pilot to Production in 2018”.
Enterprises are adopting SD-WAN as there are lot of benefits for businesses, and it’s not just about saving money, it’s about providing simple and secure connections for your business. SD-WAN is being deployed by different sectors like Retail, BFSI, Manufacturing, Logistics, Energy & Pharma. For Startups SDWAN is an elegant, economical and effective solution for business expansions
Read More : “SD-WAN Benefits for Enterprises”
In 2020, SD-WAN vendors will focus on “Fit-for-Purpose SD-WAN” solution based on size of the branches, number & type of users, bandwidth, applications, sector specific use-cases & also company specific requirements; BFSI customers will need Scalability, Reliability, Security & Performance. Retail businesses need secured network to protect billing and customer information. Manufacturing and Energy companies will need support for broadband & Mobility(4G/LTE) for secure connectivity to their factories and power plants in remote locations. Few Companies will need support for Serial Ports on the SD-WAN edge devices as that is the only option available from Service Providers in some locations.
Security continues to be a significant concern for those adopting SD-WAN solutions. It’s one of the features most crucial for every enterprise, SD-WAN vendors will continue to incorporate security features in their solution and also support integration & interoperability with other security vendor solutions, Cloud Security and SIEM solutions.
As Enterprises opt for hybrid cloud and multi-cloud strategy, SD-WAN solutions support on all Public Cloud and Virtualized environment will be an important aspect
AI/ML powered SD-WAN to drive automation using machine learning models for network path selection, to solve universal pain-points, fault prediction with notifications and also pre-emptive actions.
Few Enterprises, in particular Mid-Market segment will prefer “Managed SD-WAN Services” which will include managing SD-WAN devices, links/bandwidth, cloud, applications and security for the customers. SD-WAN vendors along with the partner eco-system will deliver Managed Services.
SD-WAN “Software only” model will be available from vendors; Partners, Service Providers and customers will have the option to procure and manage hardware devices on their own.
In 2020, CIOs will have to justify why they are not using SD-WAN technology for Enterprise WAN and Cloud Connectivity in their Organisations.