In our last blog, we highlighted the current situation of SD-WAN in the Indian market and why it is an integral part of business success today? Today, we shall continue that discussion and figure out as to why experts, across industries are calling SD-WAN a natural upgrade? And networking challenges that enterprises like your’s could face in this journey.
Top Reasons for SD-WAN Adoption
Before we proceed and discuss the challenges, let us have a look at the top drivers for SD-WAN adoption.
- Digital Transformation
- Cloud
- Improved and consistent security
- Seamless and optimized bandwidth
- Automation
Typically, in new economies like India, China, and Brazil, adoption of latest technologies happens much faster. For instance, while 3G just started making headlines, 4G adoption started in India. And, the country now is in the cusp of adopting 5G. This allowed democratization and adoption of latest technology in India faster. Its the opposite in older economies like USA or Europe, which rely on legacy technologies.The pace of adoption of newer technologies is slower.
So, it is rather clear that unlike their European or American counterparts, economies like India and China would rather directly start with SD-WAN than using any other legacy technologies. This could be one of the most obvious factor as to why SD-WAN is the most natural upgrade for new economies.
Figure 1
Software defined market size for the year 2018 is about 7.9 Billion USD. See Figure 1. It is only expected to grow to about 13.8 Billion USD by 2021. Nowadays, almost everything is getting online, storage is on the cloud and enterprise applications are moving to the cloud as well. This means a dramatic increase in Cloud Computing. MPLS and legacy technology was not built for the Cloud. For Cloud readiness and ensuring the best performance and security for cloud applications, SD-WAN is the best solution from an enterprise standpoint.
Challenges in the Networking Technologies
Figure 2
One of the greatest challenges enterprises are liable to face in future with upcoming networking technologies, is security. This is notable given the sheer size of the industries and the advancements happening everywhere. For example, in the telecom industry with the soonish arrival of 5th generation high speed network, consumers would heavily depend on mobile internet and transactions (See Figure 2 for reference). This means more information getting tethered to the cloud, sensitive enterprise data and information will be exchanged online.
Even though the networking products that are in the market already have relevant security measures in place, it remains awfully important that the service providers continue developing new protocols to ensure further safety. Compromised security of information could cause huge amount of loss for enterprises.
Second challenge is connectivity issues. Many enterprises would like to use Hybrid WAN- merge existing MPLS systems with internet-based SD-WANs. This is much helpful if the branch offices are present in the local area and applications are hosted close to the end-users. Nonetheless, using internet as the baseline for WAN is not sufficient for global deployments. For such situations, a global private network is most relevant for accessing cloud services and SaaS applications over long distances keeping the speed and the security intact. However, GPN cannot be built over MPLS owing to its limited connectivity issue. And thats exactly where SD-WAN steps in, ensuring fast, secure and reliable transition to cloud networks.
Perks of SD-WAN Architecture
With the SD-WAN architecture, the primary benefit for the enterprises is software-defined security. SD-WAN allows end-to-end encryption across the entire network, including the Internet. All gadgets and endpoints are verified, on account of a versatile key-exchange functionality. SD-WAN increases network performance, eases scaling of networks, reduces total cost of ownership and operational costs drastically. No doubt, SD-WAN is here to stay. Cloud, Internet and Networks are what will define the future of enterprise IT. And, the only technology that will ensure that the holy trinity- Cloud, Internet and Networks coexists together is Software defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN).
Data Courtesy – www.statista.com
