ChannelVision Playbook 13

8 THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK tallied the market at $593 million in 2017. Surveys of Avant sales part- ners, meanwhile, show that 68 percent believe their customers will buy into SD-WAN by 2021. That compares to the 49 percent who expected customer buy-in by 2019. RDI of SD-WAN adoption by Company Revenue $1M to $10M 16% $10M to $100M 15% $100M to $1B 13% >$1B 8% Source: Avant In some ways, SD-WAN is a tech- nology whose time has come. Mid-mar- ket and large enterprise WAN networks, quite simply, aren’t what they used to be. Employees and customers are increasingly mobile and dispersed, ser- vices reside in the cloud, and prosumer applications – some that work quite nicely, thank you very much – have pro- liferated. And some of those web-based applications have become mission criti- cal. Corporate workforces need access and connectivity and reliability across the public internet in ways that the old point-to-point, hub-and-spoke and star models simply can’t provide. In a sur- vey of global enterprises from Aryaka Networks, slow application performance leading to poor user experience in branch offices was named as the “big- gest issue” faced by IT help desk or support teams by 45 percent of respon- dents, the top among responses. A software defined network that thinks on the fly, simplifies management and interoperates with all the impor- tant pipes – from MPLS and Ethernet to 4G/5G wireless, DSL, private fiber networks and satellite – is simply better suited to keeping pace. “Oftentimes, a discussion on SD WAN begins with a conversation on an entirely different subject – most likely a value proposition around UCaaS, SaaS or some other application that requires a substantial amount of band- width or is otherwise latency sensi- tive,” said the Avant study. “In such circumstances, the discussion can turn to SD-WAN as a means of providing the network power necessary to sup- port the higher-level application that is intended to provide a competitive dif- ferentiator for the customer.” “Mid-size and small enterprises are moving quickly to cloud, with large en- terprises consideration rates increasing more each day” said Gary Levy, vice president of alliances and channels at Oracle Communications. “As mission critical applications are sourced across cloud environments, enterprises are re- thinking how they are leveraging MPLS. We find that enterprises are reducing expensive point to point MPLS circuits, increasing usage of less expensive broadband internet and rapidly deploy- ing SD-WAN.” Of course, SD-WAN’s value proposi- tion early on was tied to “cheaper than MPLS.” So far, it has, and it hasn’t been a straight MPLS replacement. Keep in mind, MPLS, having been around for 20-some years, is widely deployed in enterprise networks, including in the cores of those networks. According to Avant’s research, 40 percent of overall respondents that have already de- ployed MPLS planned to meaningfully increase their use of MPLS in 2019. Just under 15 percent expected their position with MPLS to remain about the same, while more than half of compa- nies with revenues in excess of a billion dollars plan to meaningfully increase their MPLS usage. Among companies with under $1 million in revenues, that stat dropped substantially to 26 per- cent, while 25 percent expected to tran- sition away from MPLS. Significant Investment in MPLS in 2019 by Company Revenue $1M to $10M 26% $10M to $100M 35% $100M to $1B 35% >$1B 53% Source: Avant So while we can expect some MPLS replacement at the lower end of the mar- ket, say $1 million to $100 million, at the higher end, SD-WAN is being deployed to supplement and enhance MPLS infrastructures, and that’s expected to continue, at least in the near term. About 60 percent of all mid-market to large firms counted by Avant currently operate on MPLS networks. When asked about planned WAN environments, more than half of all firms with $1 billion or more in annual revenue had MPLS investments in their near-future plans. According to AVANT’s assessment of customer and partner data, most companies (62 percent) are coming to SD-WAN from an MPLS environment, although 40 percent report a near-term plan to keep their original network. In- cidentally, about four in 10 respondents expect to replace their original network sooner rather than later. Number of Corporate IT Apps Deployed Across Organization 1-50 apps 38% 51-100 19% 101-500 20% 501-1,000 8% >1,000 15% Source: Aryaka Netwoks All told, approximately 40 percent of mid-sized and large enterprises assessed by Avant are aiming at an SD-WAN set up that includes a hybrid environment with MPLS. SD-WAN’s biggest disruption so far, suggest Avant’s findings, is in and around the $100 million and under seg- ment. Perhaps that’s not surprising. Such firms could certainly benefit from simplified management and cost savings in their WANs, and these companies tend to be less anchored to legacy infra- structure or highly customized (sticky) platforms and services. One also can make a case that middle market en- terprises are going deeper into public clouds and rely more on third-party XaaS platforms, at least in terms of mis- sion-critical or near-mission-critical ap- plications and features. SD-WAN shines here by working in conjunction with and enhancing broadband, 4G/5G wireless, DSL and satellite connections.