2017 SD-WAN Trends to Watch For

Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) has gotten a lot of publicity in 2016 as adoption has continued to spread. SD-WAN is igniting a significant change in enterprise networking. It’s transforming WANs from inflexible and expensive to agile and cost-effective. What can we expect to see in SD-WAN in 2017? Tech Target, an industry technology resource, suggests these 5 trends to watch:

1. Move to enterprise scale. During 2017, SD-WAN will move from pilot projects to full deployments in many highly-distributed organizations, like retail and financial services.
2. Mature product offerings. SD-WAN technology is rapidly moving beyond its initial functionality, like its ability to deliver hybrid WAN architectures or services. As products mature in 2017, buyers should look for the following SD-WAN capabilities:

• Improved centralized management, orchestration and administration
• More granular analytics and application visibility
• The ability to work with third-party network security, as well as better built-in security

3. Improved on-ramp to cloud services. IT organizations are rapidly increasing their use of public cloud platforms and applications to augment their internal IT resources. With this hybrid cloud approach, enterprises can utilize public clouds for application innovation and flexibility, for their ability to scale during periods of peak demand, and as backup for redundancy and disaster strategies.
4. Increased managed services offerings. Managed service providers (MSPs) are increasingly offering SD-WAN options, like with unified communications or outsourced WAN. Many organizations that wish to simplify their WAN operations can benefit from SD-WAN options delivered by MSPs.
5. Rise of internet-only connections. Most large organizations have started their SD-WAN journey with hybrid WAN architectures — typically MPLS and internet. Some smaller enterprises have opted for internet-only or internet with Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless WAN options. As the reliability and security of SD-WAN technology becomes well-established, expect to see name-brand enterprises migrating to internet-only options to maximize bandwidth and reduce MPLS costs.

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If you want to learn more about whether SD-WAN is the right fit for your network growth, contact the experts at Corporate Technologies Group. Why CTG? We make your network stronger and more cost effective, we make your support more capable, and provide you technology better during implementation, post-install support and remediation. We can help you. Contact us today.