2020 is going to be a year of innovation. Businesses are poised to embrace the Internet of Things (IoT) more fully and rely more and more on the cloud to lower costs and remain agile. This means that the white-hot SD-WAN market will continue to explode with more vendors and suppliers introducing new products or building on their existing offerings. In fact, PRNewswire’s research shows that the SD-WAN market and the like will exceed $5 Billion dollars by 2025.Â
With all of this, what should we expect? We expect you will see innovations in cloud onramps, support for leading SaaS applications, security and management/automation platforms as the year goes on. But what else is in store for SD-WAN this year? Here are the top five trends we’re watching this year.
Improved security, both in vendor partnerships and built into the technology.
The nature of SD-WAN, leveraging the bandwidth of mostly unsecured internet connections, makes it particularly vulnerable security-wise. Since the beginning, SD-WAN vendors have beefed up their offerings with additional security to ensure data remains safe. This year, we expect that SD-WAN suppliers will continue to improve the depth and breadth of their native security protocols to counter the rising tide of cybercrime.
Additionally, we expect that SD-WAN suppliers will start to take advantage of strategic partnerships with big-name security firms, building those capabilities into their offerings. These partnerships should offer a one-stop security solution for easy orchestration and management, along with the ability to include analytics that may warn on impending attacks.
Enhanced integration with large cloud providers.
No business uses just one cloud provider anymore. The offerings are too numerous and too critical to limit to just one application. In the coming year, you can expect SD-WAN to give your employees a seamless user experience, no matter what cloud-based application they are using. SD-WAN automation will also make adding new cloud applications easier than ever, despite the inherent complexities.
Greater extension of SD-WAN deployment.
SD-WAN deployment is poised to break out of the office in the coming year. As our lives become ever more technology-enabled, the SD-WAN edge will continue to expand to ships, trains, and even the backpacks of first responders, wherever high-quality cloud-connected activity is needed. This trend will drive WAN transformation beyond the office and into every aspect of the way business is done.
Better support for SaaS.
With the expansion of business reliance on the cloud, SaaS providers have become more and more crucial to the way business gets done. But it’s challenging for today’s IT departments to guarantee the quality of service to these applications because of non-standard services, security mechanisms, APIs and management tools. Currently, it’s up to the IT department to clear each SaaS provider within the SD-WAN management portal. We expect this to change in the coming year. Knowing the importance of the critical SaaS applications, SD-WAN suppliers will continue to improve their automation of policies designed to deliver appropriate QoS without IT intervention.
Service providers enhance their offerings to include managed service options.
Currently, about half of enterprises who have deployed SD-WAN are using a managed services solution, and service providers have taken notice and are gearing up to meet this need. A select few service providers already have years of pilots under their belts. Many have realized that their initial technology options were too limiting to their customers. This year, they will amp up their SD-WAN solutions offerings to more fully satisfy the needs of their customers.
If you’re looking to find a partner for your SD-WAN managed services, we can help. Contact us for a free consultation.
