ChannelVision Playbook 13

Make no mistake, however, cost savings for all size firms, and even “cheaper that MPLS,” is and will remain a key driver. After all, cost was the number one WAN challenge among firms surveyed for Aryaka, and when asked why they were looking at SD- WAN, nearly six in 10 cited cost sav- ings over MPLS, show Avant figures, making cost a close third among all op- tions given. Companies in the 250-500 seat range, in particular, were far more drawn to potential cost savings than any other value category, named by 77 percent of this cohort. Why are you looking at SD-WAN? Auto-failure and redundancy 66.8% Simplified management 61% Cost savings over MPLS 58% Improved application QoS 48% Need more bandwidth 41% Enable cloud applications 39% Active usage of backup links 34% Decrease reliance on carriers 23% Replace firewalls 12% Replace routers 10% Source: Avant Communications Among all respondents, simplified management edged out cost savings for second place at 61 percent of respon- dents. Tops overall, and certainly an early bullet point in SD-WAN marketing, was for auto failure and redundancy. “The ability of SD-WAN to dynami- cally make a decision on where to route traffic makes it an ideal solution for higher reliability networks,” explains the Avant study. “Multiple service providers can be used in an all-active configura- tion in order to minimize the impact of an outage.” SD-WAN allows for the simultane- ous use of the backup network, Avant executives explained, achieving more combined bandwidth availability and higher performance than any single network due to dynamic routing. Users can still configure SD-WAN solutions with backup networks that are nominally unused. And SD-WAN edge devices also are being offered with built in LTE capabilities for built in resiliency, or additional circuits can be set up intended for network resil- iency with a lower monthly fee but high usage rate. Along with handling backup duties, SD-WAN providers are increasingly incorporating other elements and at- tachments of the WAN, potentially addressing mid-market firms’ desires to reduce complexity and cost of their WAN environments. Arguably the most important, today’s offerings have many security features baked in, effectively replacing standalone security applianc- es, firewalls, VPNs and more advanced security functionality. “Security continues to be the num- ber one concern that IT decision mak- ers have when considering migration to SD-WAN,” said Ray Watson, vice presi- dent of innovation at Masergy. “This ultimately favors solutions which tightly integrate and support unified threat management as well as managed de- tection and response.” Much the same can be said about corporate edge routers, as well as WI- FI access capabilities. Network products and technologies users are looking to displace through the adoption of SD-WAN include rout- ers (55 percent), standalone firewalls (47 percent) and WAN optimization tools (23 percent), show Avant surveys. About one in 10 surveyed even listed either replacing firewalls or routers as a reason for looking at SD-WAN in the first place. Up to this point, it seems pretty clear that SD-WAN networking tech- nology’s greatest disruption has come in the mid-market and lower end of the large enterprise spaces. Avant execu- tives, however, believe SD-WAN will continue to encroach into the core networks of higher end enterprises through their remote offices and other edges of their networks. o Source: Avant Communications 10 THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK