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Virtual Realities
applications running on the network.
But another market approach is for
businesses to use SD-WAN for secure
best-efforts traffic, in order to free up
MPLS for video and voice.
“SD-WAN is seen as an MPLS re-
placement product, but the concern
is that it sends traffic over the best
available connection,” said John Cun-
ningham, founder and co-CEO at BCM
One. “If there’s latency on all the con-
nections, you end up with a not-great
experience. If the broadband connec-
tions aren’t up to the task, SD-WAN
can’t help with that. So a hybrid ap-
proach where some applications are
still on MPLS makes sense for a lot
of companies.”
Having a hybrid option is also neces-
sary if customers have contracts with vary-
ing termination dates, requiring integrated
MPLS and SD-WAN support. “You have to
be looking to make sure the network has
proper routing support and devices that
interoperate with both,” said Baker.
SD-WAN also brings everything under
one roof from a management perspective –
the SD-WAN itself along with any cloud ap-
plications can be managed from one point.
“Moving into the software-defined
realm makes provisioning easier and
also easier to support and do everything
we need to do through the lifecycle,”
Loon said. “We can pretty much do ev-
erything remotely except plug cables in,
and customers like that.”
SD-WAN sales aren’t automatic, how-
ever. Loon explained that getting decision
makers to make the jump from dedicated
circuits to running things over public
broadband can be a bit of a challenge.
“It’s not fully understood by your av-
erage network manager or IT person, so
everyone wants a refer-
ral for their exact use
case,” he said. “This is
very similar to the early
days of VoIP – people
were worried about
quality. But eventually
everyone got the idea.”
There’s also market
confusion about what
SD-WAN actually offers.
“Any time you have a
disruptive tech, there’s
a certain degree of
end user and partner
education, and with this,
everything around orchestration seems to
mean different things to different people,”
Suitor said. “You can say, here’s how to
get the most utilization I can out of the
links, and you can optimize the perfor-
mance on the up and downlink; you can
have voice and video guarantees;
you can do this at distances because
there are offices spread out; it inte-
grates with legacy MPLS; and you can
do all of this with much simpler pro-
visioning, supporting multicast over
a fundamentally unicast environment
like the Internet. Oh and it’s secure.
It all sounds great, but from a market-
ing perspective, it’s a huge challenge
to explain how that works in practice.”
With all of the excitement over SD-
WAN, one caveat is to be aware that the
market is in its heady early days, and
that consolidation will be inevitable.
“Not one company we speak to
isn’t interested in it, and it’s a great
conversation for channel partners to
have in order to be relevant in the WAN
spaces,” Cunningham said. “But chan-
nel partners should understand that the
market is going to change.
“Gartner said there are now about
40+ companies offering SD-WAN. Re-
member when the automobile came
along, there was a time when there were
a hundred car companies,” continued
Cunningham. “We ended up with just
three. That doesn’t mean the other 97
didn’t have good cars.”
Rather, “the market can’t support
all of these companies indefinitely, so
that’s something that CPs should be
aware of,” he said.
That caveat can also be an opportunity.
“Any channel partner with a multi-site cus-
tomer base should get in now,” Baker said.
“And you should go after every big chain
in your market. There’s a lot of money to
make, and there’s no one established as a
dominant player in this yet, so treat it as a
land grab and get as much as you can.”
o
Source: IHS Markit
Source: Samsung; Channelnomics
Which area of mobile security
do you think you are
lacking in?
What are your organization’s top challeges
in network/WAN management at branch
office locations? (Select all that apply)
S urce: Forrester, survey of U.S. network/telecom decision makers
Do you currently have multiple connections to your
branch offices?
Source: IDG Connect, Silver Peak survey of 160 mid-market & enterprise companies
13.3%
20.0%
13.3%
33.3%
Maintaining security across
public and private connections
Managing cost of increased
bandwi th requirements
Ensuring performance of
business-critical applications
Deliv ring reliable and/or
highly available connectivity
Deploying new applications
and services cost efficiently
55%
50%
49%
46%
40%
What kinds of features or capabilities are
you inte ested in to help manag your WAN?
(Percentage rated “very i terested”)
Source: Forrester, survey of U.S. network/telecom decision makers
Centrally monitor WAN links,
dependencies, anomalies
Manage traffic between
different link types
Remotely provision/configure
branch office networks
Ability to deploy WAN services
on com odity computing
Latency mitigation and
application accel ration
Deduplication/caching data to
optimize bandwidth utilization
56%
51%
47%
45%
43%
42%
No 8%
Yes, MPLS
and Broadband
38%
Yes, MPLS
and LTE
25%
Yes, Dual
Internet
14%
Yes, Dual
MPLS Links
15%
$60
$50
$40
$30
$20
$10
$0
2015 2016 2017
1G 2.5G 10G
US$ Billions
Sof war offerings
Hardware offerings
Services
Vendor relationships
Knowledge
20.0%
Source: IHS Markit
Global hosted hosted VoIP and UC seats
will pass the 70 million mark in 2020
$2,000
$4,000
$6,000
$8,000
$10,000
$12,000
$14,000
$0
Revenue
Seats
Global Revenue (US$ Millions)
2015
2020
What kinds of features or capabilities are
you interested in to help manage your WAN?
(Percentage rated “very interested”)
Source: Forrester, survey of U.S. network/telecom decision makers
Centrally monitor WAN links,
dependencies, anomalies
Manage traffic between
different link types
Remotely provision/configure
branch office networks
Ability to deploy WAN services
on commodity computing
Latency mitigation and
application acceleration
Deduplication/caching data to
optimize bandwidth utilization
SaaS
Applications
14%
Remote
Replication
13%
None
9%
Voice
8%
Other
9%
Proprietary
Data Center
Application
14%
Workforce
Collaboration
9%
IaaS
9%
Guest
Wi-fi
8%
56%
51%
47%
45%
43%
42%
Is there one application you wish you could run over
the Internet that you are n t today?
Source: IDG Connect, Silver Peak survey of 160 mid-market & enterprise companies
Source: I
Globa
will p
$2,00
$4,00
$6,00
$8,00
$10,00
$12,00
$14,00
$
Global Revenue (US$ Millions)
branch offices?
Source: IDG Connect, Silver Peak survey of 160 mid-market & enterprise companies
)
aS
What kinds of features or capabilities are
you interested in to help manage your WAN?
(Percentag rated “very interested”)
Source: Forrester, survey of U.S. network/telecom decision makers
Centrally monitor WAN links,
dependencies, anomalies
Manage traffic between
different link typ s
Remotely provision/configure
branch office networks
Ability to deploy WAN services
on commodity computing
Latency mitigation and
application acceleration
Deduplication/caching data to
optimize bandwidth utilization
SaaS
Applications
14%
Remote
Replication
13%
None
9%
Voice
8%
Other
9%
Proprietary
Data Center
Application
14%
Workforce
Collaboration
9%
IaaS
9%
Guest
Wi-fi
8%
56%
51%
47%
45%
43%
42%
No 8%
Yes, MPLS
and Broadband
38%
Yes, MPLS
and LTE
25%
Yes, Dual
Internet
14%
Yes, Dual
MPLS Links
15%
Is there one application you wish you could run over
the Internet that you are not today?
Source: IDG Connect, Silver Peak survey of 160 mid-market & enterprise companies
Global Revenue (US$ Millions)
Channel
Vision
|
January - February, 2017
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