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Why 2018 will be the year of the WAN

News
Nov 29, 20173 mins
NetworkingSD-WAN

Software-defined WAN is growing from early adopter to mainstream

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Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) technology is sweeping across the industry, growing from an emerging technology in 2017 to become mainstream in 2018.

Research firm IDC predicts SD-WAN revenues will hit $2.3 billion in 2018, growing 69% on a compound annual growth rate to reach more than $8 billion by 2021. “2017 saw a lot of early adopters of SD-WAN that were limited to maybe two or three sites,” says IDC networking analyst Brad Casemore. “Now, rollouts are getting a lot bigger; we’re starting to see hockey-stick inflection point.”

+ MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: SD-WAN: What it is and why you’ll use it one day +

And experts say as SD-WAN deployments become ubiquitous for organizations with branch and remote offices, more big changes will accompany it.

“We’re moving from SD-WAN 1.0 to a 2.0 phase,” explains Lee Doyle of Doyle Research. SD-WAN 1.0 was all about hybrid WAN; aggregating MPLS and Internet connections to reduce bandwidth costs and increase performance. “SD-WAN 2.0 is all about multi-tenancy, improving the management and monitoring and better security.” Doyle says SD-WAN 2.0 moves beyond just the WAN toward an entire software-defined branch.

What is a SD-Branch?

Doyle says WAN virtualization technology will soon mean organizations do not need branch router infrastructure. IP/VPN, firewalls and Internet connections will be aggregated into software, reducing – if not replacing – the need for hardware in the branch office. “SD-WAN vendors are rapidly adding capabilities into the software,” Doyle says.

One of the biggest trends to watch for in 2018 will be further integration of security services in SD-WAN environments, says Casemore. ZScaler and Websense are software-based security platforms that have both partnered with SD-WAN vendors including Viptela, VeloCloud, Riverbed and Talari, among others.

SD-WAN has seen the most pickup in enterprises with a lot of locations, such as banks and retail businesses. Capital One – one of the 10 largest banks in the U.S. with 45 million customer accounts – has more than 700 branch offices, each of which need a reliable Internet connection. The bank has transitioned in recent years to offer non-traditional banking centers in the form of cafés that encourage customers to browse the Internet while doing their banking. “Now, if our Wi-Fi is down, then the customer can’t bank with us,” says Jason Abfalter, director of technology for Capital One’s retail and direct banking division. “The network needs to be always-up and secure.”

This use case led Capital One to begin a massive SD-WAN deployment across the company’s network. Capital One is able to segregate a reliable, multi-band Wi-Fi connection for customers from the secure traffic conducting back-end official banking duties. Abfalter says as the deployments ramp up in 2018, he’s looking to further integrate security tools like URL filtering and firewall capabilities into the SD-WAN software.

Mobile backup in SD-WAN

Incorporating mobile connectivity as a backup in SD-WAN is expected to be another major advancement in the market in 2018, Doyle says. Large corporations already have data plans from a cellular provider, and in some cases they’re able to pool data across the organization and use cellular connection as a backup to broadband connections in a fail-over situation. All this can be managed by SD-WAN software deployed in the branch. Doyle says as prices for LTE and 4G continue to drop, this option will become an expanded use case.

brandon_butler
Senior Editor

Senior Editor Brandon Butler covers the cloud computing industry for Network World by focusing on the advancements of major players in the industry, tracking end user deployments and keeping tabs on the hottest new startups. He contributes to NetworkWorld.com and is the author of the Cloud Chronicles blog. Before starting at Network World in January 2012, he worked for a daily newspaper in Massachusetts and the Worcester Business Journal, where he was a senior reporter and editor of MetroWest 495 Biz. Email him at bbutler@nww.com and follow him on Twitter @BButlerNWW.

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