The global SD-WAN market was valued at USD 1,521.2 million in 2018 and is expected to register a CAGR of approximately 45.3% during the forecast period. Software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) can be applied to different WAN connections such as 4G, broadband, LTE, or MPLS. SD-WAN connects enterprises network that includes data centers and branch offices over a considerable distance. With the growing number of cloud-based applications, the traditional WAN is unable to offer proper connectivity and speed; SD-WAN is preferred as it provides flexibility to control the efficiency of connections in high traffic networks. The SD-WAN relies on edge connectivity abstraction, WAN virtualization, elastic traffic management, and policy-driven, and centralized management. SD-WAN provides faster routing between network points, offers high-quality services for critical applications, and increases the network agility, and therefore occupies a larger market share in the overall SDN market as compared to SD-LAN and security applications. Considering the current market situation, it is imperative for the vendors in the SD-WAN market to enhance their offerings and cater to the growing demand for SD-WAN solutions in order to gain significant market shares.
Enterprises in various industry verticals such as retail, healthcare, IT & telecom, and BFSI have realized the importance of SD-WAN as it helps them to tap into customer data and preferences at the points of service, along the provision of network security. Additionally, the deployment rate of SD-WAN is significantly growing, with a large number of enterprises planning to replace their routers within one or two years with SD-WAN. A significant growth in the adoption of SD-WAN is attributed to its ability to enable the use of a combination of different access points at a site to deliver greater uptime and more available bandwidth for a lower cost as compared to legacy network services such as MPLS. SD-WAN also has the capability to generate a triple-digit return on investment on faster payback intervals, leading to cost savings in the form of reduced network downtime, optimized network access costs, and resource savings from a managed service.
At present, in the SD-WAN market, the supply-side vendors are focusing on enhancing their capabilities in terms of professional services, implementation services, support and maintenance services, consulting services, and managed services. The utilization of these services is growing at a considerable rate and this upsurge is projected to continue for the next five to six years.
In order to gain a competitive advantage and prevail in the SD-WAN market, most of the companies are required to integrate SD-WAN with machine learning and deep learning in order to cater to new and emerging use cases. For instance, in July 2019, IBM Corporation invented a deep reinforcement learning approach to maximize the overall performance of the modern programmable SD-WAN architecture supporting 5G.
The data center is a key application area for SD-WAN vendors. It is growing at a considerable rate and with high growth prospects. The modernization of data centers due to the introduction of digital transformation is leading to an increasing requirement for SD-WAN. Furthermore, the rising adoption of cloud infrastructure is expected to contribute to the growth of the SD-WAN market for data centers significantly. Therefore, the vendors in the market are focusing on various prospects to extend data center SD-WAN overlays and fabrics to multi-cloud application environments.
Cisco Systems Inc., VMWare., Silver Peak, Nuage Networks, Aryaka Networks India Pvt Ltd and Riverbed Technology, are the major companies in the market, competing in terms of services offered and price. These companies primarily focus on the development of switches, network infrastructure, and controllers. Although the global players are dominating the market, regional players with reasonably smaller market shares also have a strong presence. The global players are expected to strengthen their presence worldwide through the adoption of organic and inorganic growth strategies during the forecast period.
· Increasing adoption of private cloud
· Rising software defined data center
Key Market Opportunities
· Increase in use of Cloud-Based Technologies
Key Vendors
· Cisco Systems Inc.
· VMware Inc.
