of on-premises applications and poor access to cloud- and SaaS-based applications. The biggest drain on IT help desk and support teams were issues involving slow application performance leading to poor user experiences for remote workers and in branch locations. For the 2022 report, the percentages of respondents who cited such sentiments declined, at least somewhat, across the board. Even the number of respondents who cited “a lack of adequate security” remained even to declining during the past few years. Jumping ahead to the number one WAN challenge, meanwhile, was “high costs,” named by 36 percent of respondents to the 2022 survey compared to a mere 16 percent who cited high cost as a challenge in 2020. That’s not to suggest WAN budgets are expected to be slashed in 2022. Rather, “enterprises are generally bullish on their budgets,” said Aryaka researchers. For networking, almost three-quarters of responding CTOs and IT and network managers and administrators expect budgets to grow by 10 percent or more, including a quarter which expect it to grow by 25 percent or more. The same applies for network security investment, with 72 percent expecting greater than 10 percent growth, and 28 percent looking at 25 percent growth or more. And when asked about their top infrastructure priority for the year, six in 10 respondents cited a “compete WAN refresh,” suggesting a need for further investment in visibility and control after a few years of adding in new technologies, said the research report. “Though budgets are expected to increase by 25 percent, both for networking and security,” said Aryaka researchers, “the focus on ROI implies that these increases must be spent judiciously.” Cost issues, it turns out, were named among the biggest potential barriers to SD-WAN adoption, named by 29 percent of respondents. A lack of internal knowledge or skill sets was the top barrier at 31 percent. And for the first time in the annual survey, cost overtook complexity as the primary motivator pushing SD-WAN deployments. One area that could be on the chopping block as part of WAN transformations could be on-site data centers. According to respondents of Aryaka’s survey, more than a third plan to eliminate all data centers and move to the public cloud within 12 months. Just more than half expect full elimination of data centers and a move to the public cloud within 24 months, and more than three-quarters of respondents have plans to eliminate at least some DCs and move to the public cloud. MPLS could be another area eyed for cost reductions. Among respondents with MPLS currently in place, 46 percent expect to terminate some of their contracts in favor of broadband internet or other technologies. About two in 10 have plans to terminate all MPLS contracts. “Cost savings” also currently are viewed as the “biggest benefit” gained from a SASE deployment, show survey figures, tied with “time savings” with 37 percent of respondents citing each. This despite the fact that only 7 percent of SASE adopters said cost savings was a primary reason for deploying or considering deploying SASE. The expectation to reduce costs might become more common going forward. An analysis by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Cato Networks suggests the total economic impact of a Cato SASE deployment can lead to a substantial return on investment, largely due to the convergence of network functions and security capabilities and the ability to retire costly legacy systems. For the analysis, Forrester combined the results into a composite organization based on the experiences and interviews of five Cato SASE Cloud customers. The decision-maker interviews and financial analysis found that a composite organization experienced qualified and unqualified benefits totally $6.09 million over three years versus costs of $1.76 million, adding up to a What are the biggest challenges your organization is facing with your WAN? 2022 2021 2020 High costs 36% 20% 16% High complexity/difficult to manage or maintain 30% 37% 37% Slow performance of on-premises applications 26% 32% 32% Slow access to cloud services and SaaS applications 26% 33% 32% Long deployment times to bring up new sites 23% 29% 30% Lack of adequate security 22% 28% 31% Inability to properly support remote workforce 21% - - Lack of visibility 18% 20% 26% Poor voice or video quality 16% 23% 23% Source: Aryaka What are the biggest resource-consuming/time-consuming issues faced by your IT help desk or support teams? 2022 2021 2020 Slow application performance leading to poor user experience for remote and mobile users 42% 44% 47% Slow application performance leading to poor user experience in branch offices 37% 44% 43% Accessing/integrating cloud and SaaS application origins security breaches 34% 36% 42% Security breaches 31% 38% 38% Issues caused by shadow IT 28% 14% 12% Managing telcos/service providers 27% 34% 34% Source: Aryaka 37 JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2022 | CHANNELV ISION
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