Real-World SD-WAN Deployment

Research Brief on SD-WAN

Sponsored by:

Real-World SD-WAN DeploymentA Survey-Backed Analysis

Featuring an interview and insights by IBM Master Inventor and Distinguished Engineers.

© 2018 SDxCentral LLC. All Rights Reserved. 1

SD-WAN | Real-World SD-WAN Deployment

IntroductionSD-WAN (software-defined wide area networking)

is undoubtedly one of the hottest trends to hit both

enterprise and service provider market in recent years.

While the precise definition of SD-WAN might be

elusive, it is now accepted that any major innovation

in enterprise WANs today falls under the SD-WAN

umbrella.

To better understand SD-WAN adoption and

deployment, AvidThink (formerly SDxCentral Research)

conducted a custom survey in the fall of 2018. In this

expanded research brief, we provide an analysis of

SD-WAN’s value, across enterprise verticals, and

examine our survey data to comprehend the overall

SD-WAN adoption lifecycle. This includes barriers to

adoption, reasons for adoption and realized benefits

from SD-WAN deployment.

Enterprises looking to understand the value that

SD-WAN may have for them and the concrete, realized

benefits of SD-WAN will find the data and analysis in

this brief useful.

Industry OverviewIn 2018, the SD-WAN market has over 50 vendors, and

revenues of the leading players are growing rapidly,

prompting other companies in adjacent markets to take

a serious look at entering this space. With an already

crowded market and new vendors continuing to enter, enterprises are challenged to sort through the SD-WAN solutions that are fit within their organizations.

Nevertheless, SD-WAN deployment has benefits for a diverse set of enterprises, and almost all enterprise verticals will benefit from SD-WAN adoption. We will examine expectations of enterprises planning for SD-WAN, discuss benefits realized from existing deployments and provide guidance on how best to choose between different deployment flavors (from DIY (do-it-yourself) to fully managed by a service provider or third-party integrator).

This makes for a seemingly impossible task of delivering all that the business is looking for in terms of increased agility, more bandwidth and quality-of-service, improved security and functionality.

In this research brief, we will use the term hybrid WAN to denote a WAN solution that uses a combination of a private-line (e.g. MPLS) solution coupled with direct Internet connectivity (e.g. business or consumer-grade broadband). A hybrid WAN may have some intelligence to route traffic over either link but generally has a constrained set of features. An SD-WAN includes more advanced capabilities such as centralized (cloud-based) management, intelligent routing over two or more links,



advanced application-specific policy and several other capabilities that we will cover later in this brief.

Business Needs Driving SD-WANIn today’s competitive environment, businesses both large and small must address the needs of a global market and embody greater agility and scalability. Enterprises are challenged to increase productivity and scale their businesses, which pushes them to upgrade their remote connectivity solutions for increased bandwidth and/or establish new locations with remote connectivity. For some enterprises, the ability to quickly scale up or down new pop-up locations in diverse regions can be a strategic business advantage.

Indeed, finding the right connectivity solution is a major challenge for most enterprises. Historically, ISDN and Frame Relay lines of a couple of 100Kbps were sufficient, but today’s remote locations need 10s or 100s of Mbps to accommodate the different types of traffic, including larger data transfers, cloud-based backups, video and audio streaming and unified communications.

In addition, the complexity of connectivity, supporting secure and quick connections to SaaS (software-as-a-service) applications like CRM, ERP, file sharing, as well as private clouds and public clouds add to the burden of IT teams. The simplistic hub-and-spoke topologies of the past are no longer sufficient. They are now replaced by highly meshed networks that enable bandwidth-optimized communication.

SD-WANs, through flexible use of direct Internet access and 3G/4G backhaul options, can provide the quick provisioning needed by these often seasonal businesses.

To further complicate the life of IT teams, management is pushing to achieve all these innovations in the WAN while reducing or capping costs. This makes for a seemingly impossible task of delivering all that the business is looking for in terms of increased agility, more bandwidth and quality-of-service, improved security and functionality.

Key SD-WAN Solution CapabilitiesSD-WAN holds the key to solving real-world problems for enterprise IT teams today. Most SD-WAN solutions have taken a software-centric approach, running either in centralized location with a thin CPE (customer premises equipment) at the edge, or on a uCPE (universal CPE) at the customer location. Likewise, the centralized nature of SD-WAN also provides a single pane of glass across the solution deployment and maintenance lifecycle, encompassing provisioning, configuration, management, visibility, troubleshooting and optimization.

SD-WAN solutions generally include the following key capabilities:

• Central management and cloud-based controls: SD-WAN solutions provide a single view that allows IT teams to set up WAN configurations across multiple locations and virtual circuits. The SD-WAN controller also captures performance metrics and error conditions that can be summarized in reports, used to trigger alerts and forwarded to other IT functions like trouble-ticketing systems.

• End-to-end encryption: Most SD-WAN solutions provide security using IPSec (or other encrypted) tunnels that automatically protect private virtual WANs traversing public, shared networks. In addition, encryption on private MPLS networks is sometimes viewed as necessary in today’s breach-sensitive world, especially within regulated industries.

• Multi-path and multi-link support with dynamic path selection: The ability to bond multiple physical circuits into a single logical channel to increase aggregate capacity and reliability is a key feature of SD-WANs. The solution should also dynamically monitor path performance and adjust traffic flows between available physical circuits to load-balance and reduce congestion and oversubscription. Bonded channels can support virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) to allow network segmentation and control over private network routing policies across public, shared, broadband networks.

• Path conditioning and WAN optimization: Some enterprises might find WAN optimization features necessary for their businesses. These capabilities



include data compression and deduplication, traffic shaping to control contention and latency, client-side caching and TCP protocol optimization. They can also include the ability to handle LAN protocols and reduce chattiness over higher-latency WAN circuits. Some SD-WAN solutions include application-or protocol-specific optimizations for file system protocols or video acceleration.

• Security and firewalling services: Most SD-WAN platforms will provide some level of firewall and security capabilities, ranging from simple TCP/ UDP-port-based blocking to sophisticated malware detection and prevention. Providers might use third-party modules (or external appliances) to achieve such security capabilities, or have them built into the platform.

• Quality of service traffic prioritization, with forward error correction: Application categorization with traffic management to provide bandwidth guarantees for different classes of service can improve performance in certain latency- and loss-sensitive applications. These applications include real-time communications such as VoIP, video conferencing and screen sharing. Some solutions will use path redundancy and error correction techniques such as FEC (forward error correction) that add redundant data to the original packets to help detect and correct errors to avoid performance-sapping data retransmissions.

• Policy-based controls and service chaining: SD-WAN platforms will usually provide intelligent policy-based routing of traffic and the ability to insert virtual network services (VNFs) like firewalls, content filters, proxies and other L7 network functions into the traffic flow dynamically without disrupting the underlying network.

• Local breakout for cloud services: Many SD-WAN solutions will allow for local inspection and direct routing of traffic destined for trusted cloud services like SalesForce, removing the need to backhaul all traffic to a centralized location for inspection. This saves on bandwidth utilization and maximizes the use of cheaper local direct Internet access without compromising security.

The list above is by no means complete, and many SD-WAN platforms may provide additional advanced capabilities that are needed by various enterprises. Nevertheless, in our research, we have found the discussed capabilities to be present in most of the SD-WAN solutions on the market today.

Organizations Migrating to SD-WAN Below, we highlight some key verticals that are actively evaluating and deploying SD-WAN solution to understand the value that SD-WAN provides in their respective businesses. We believe these three verticals have unique business and IT challenges that can offer valuable lessons to other enterprise verticals.

SD-WANs that can provide sophisticated policies for segmentation or micro-segmentation can add significant value to healthcare organizations, as can SD-WANs with visibility and security analytics to help detect breaches.

Retail Stores

Retail stores have unique needs around compliance and scalability. From a compliance standpoint, retail store locations need to address PCI (Payment Card Initiative) compliance to protect customers’ credit card information. This implies both encryption of traffic as well as network segmentation (or micro-segmentation) to ensure that only the right systems and people have access to credit-card-information-carrying networks. Other security capabilities, including malware and breach detection, are also necessary given the recent debacles at large retail chains where key customer information was compromised.

From a location requirement, retail stores vary from large warehouse locations for home improvement stores to pop-up retail establishments within unconventional physical locations. These pop-up scenarios, which may be seasonal (holidays at the end of the year), require fast and secure SD-WAN deployment. SD-WANs, through flexible use of direct Internet access and 3G/4G backhaul options can



provide the quick provisioning needed by these often seasonal businesses.

Further, advanced SD-WAN capabilities like application prioritization can help ensure that revenue capture and key customer-experience applications run with an appropriate quality of experience (QoE). For instance, payment card transactions should be given the highest priority across the WAN. And any type of self-help applications or store credit-card application kiosks should be provided with good quality of experience as well. QoS/QoE prioritization can also ensure that real-time purchase data or customer in-store interactions is fed upstream to enable real-time omni-channel tracking and adaptive retail solutions.

One key point is that MPLS and SD-WAN are not exclusive. MPLS is a network transport while SD-WAN is a solution that can utilize MPLS as well as other transports to build a more robust and cost-effective WAN with improved performance and rich set of capabilities.

Healthcare

For healthcare organizations, SD-WAN can provide value across both clinical and research operations. There is a trend towards healthcare systems becoming more distributed to improve access for patients. With the decentralization of many healthcare facilities, network is increasingly becoming the bottleneck as new healthcare applications drive higher bandwidth utilization.

Today, large file transfers for radiology and electronic health records (EHR) require timely access to available network bandwidth between disparate locations. In addition, increasing use of IoT (Internet of Things) devices, such as smart monitors, smart carts, and smart medical devices also add to the bandwidth demands on both the LAN and the WAN. The same networks also carry business-critical traffic for patient scheduling, payments and other key functions.

At the same time, these networks need to comply with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and need to encrypt and segment key patient

information, as well as provide the necessary security capabilities to monitor against breaches. Again, SD-WANs that can provide sophisticated policies for segmentation or micro-segmentation can add significant value here, as can SD-WANs with visibility and security analytics to help detect breaches.

As for ensuring that IoT traffic, business applications and EHRs get to their destination in a timely manner, application prioritization and QoS capabilities on SD-WAN platforms can lend a helping hand.

In the future, as we move to telemedicine, where remote surgery or remote diagnostics become part of the overall healthcare offering, security, reliability and prioritization that SD-WAN platforms can provide will be critical to the success of these initiatives.

Financials and Insurance

Financial institutions in general represent an enterprise vertical well-known for adopting new networking capabilities that can offer them a competitive edge. Financial institutions are usually interested in platforms that can provide increased reliability and security with a lower total cost of ownership. SD-WAN provides these institutions, many of which have local branches, with

a solution that can provide for improved bandwidth, reliability and quality of experience across the diverse transport types that may exist in different local offices. Improved bandwidth management can translate into an overall better quality of experience for their customers. SD-WAN can also provide these benefits while reducing overall capital and operational expenditures by leveraging cost-effective direct Internet access.

At the same time, SD-WAN provides for improved security with fine-grained policy and segmentation rules. These rules can be used to segregate different lines of businesses, ensuring compliance and privacy.

Likewise, insurance companies are similar in that they have many diverse locations, with a need to ensure security across local offices with a diversity of connectivity types. With the ability to use direct Internet access with 3G/4G backup, SD-WAN allows new agent and broker locations to be set up faster with more reliability than traditional solutions.



Steps towards SD-WAN deployment - Survey Analysis While the examples depicted cover a select set of enterprise market verticals, many other verticals will see benefits that are unique to their lines of business. In general, SD-WAN will offer most enterprises with lower cost, improved quality of experience, better reliability and improved security as compared with traditional alternatives.

To get a better handle on SD-WAN in the real-world, we turn to the analysis of our recent survey on SD-WAN. We will take a look first at the key participants involved in making the SD-WAN decision, followed by business reasons for moving to SD-WAN and the types of connectivity support required. We will also examine the barriers to SD-WAN adoption and look at the realized benefits of SD-WAN before wrapping up with what our

survey participants have to say about the future of SD-WAN.

Note: In the following analysis, we have bundled those who deployed hybrid-WAN with those that have deployed SD-WAN as we believe that hybrid-WAN deployment is in many instances a prelude to SD-WAN deployment.

Current State of WAN Connectivity

We look at the current state of WAN connectivity across the survey takers (we have only included the data slice that shows enterprise end-users).

About 55% of respondents have either a hybrid WAN or an SD-WAN deployed; 27% have MPLS or other private line alone, while 18% have Internet broadband only. One key point is that MPLS and SD-WAN are not exclusive (despite the way some vendors position one versus the

What would best describe your current enterprise network WAN connectivity?

Hybrid WAN (combination of Internet + MPLS)

43%

MPLS or Other Private Line

27%

Internet/Broadband

18%

SD-WAN12%

sdxcentral.com



other). MPLS is a network transport while SD-WAN is a solution that can utilize MPLS as well as other transports to build a more robust and cost-effective WAN with improved performance and rich set of capabilities.

The 55% number in our survey is likely higher than the general enterprise population since the readers of SDxCentral tend to skew towards early adopter and early majority in technology adoption. It does show that SD-WAN is well on its way to cross the chasm, if it hasn’t already.

Organization Roles of the Participants in the SD-WAN Decision

In terms of the key stakeholders involved in the SD-WAN decision, the majority are network and infrastructure architects, as well as network managers and engineers. It comes as no surprise that 80% of the stakeholders involved have an operational role since they stand to benefit the most from a successful SD-WAN deployment (or conversely have the most to lose if it fails). In some

respects, the data also mirrors the distribution of personnel in most IT organizations, with about 80% operational and 20% in management. Having said that, 5% of survey takers in a CIO role are likely an over-representation of CIOs numbers-wise.

As we enter the next wave of SD-WAN deployments, we expect to see more businesses requiring multi-cloud support across the major public cloud providers as well as private cloud. Likewise, we expect improved support for multi-service provider networks across disparate geographic regions and diverse transport options.

An important element is that a wide set of constituents are involved in the SD-WAN decision. The other aspect that is not quite captured in the survey data is the role of the security team. In conversations with end users, we find that the security team has strong influence

Which of the following most closely represents your primary job title?

VP of IT/CTO/Director of IT

13%

CIO5%

Network or Infrastructure

Architect44%

Network Manager or

Network Engineer

38%

sdxcentral.com



over the SD-WAN security requirements and play a key part in evaluating SD-WAN platforms. They have requirements for the built-in security capabilities of the SD-WAN platform and dictate the security solutions (eg. next-gen firewall network functions) that have to be service-chained as part of the SD-WAN roll-out. As such, security teams need to be a part of the overall set of key stakeholders in any SD-WAN platform selection process.

Understanding Business Reasons for Adopting SD-WAN

While we have discussed many key business drivers for SD-WAN, the survey sheds more light on the most compelling drivers. The results below compare two sets of data from the enterprise-end-user data slice (and we will use the same data slice for the remainder of our analysis). About half of the survey participants are yet to deploy SD-WAN, and the graph indicates the key drivers pushing them to evaluate and deploy SD-WAN. The other half have deployed SD-WAN, and the graphs capture their reasons to adopt SD-WAN or hybrid-WAN.

The survey shows that the primary drivers for SD-WAN deployment are cost reduction, management and a need for network agility. However, those enterprises that are yet to deploy SD-WAN favor network agility as an argument for deployment. Those that have already deployed SD-WAN view cost and improved network management and automation as the primary drivers. We believe these divergent opinions reflect the fact that early adopters were ahead of their peers in adoption of automation and likely used automation as a justification to deploy SD-WAN (to achieve improved operational and capital cost-savings).

We expect the SD-WAN market to shift towards more of a managed model, with enterprises either turning to service providers they already trust to take on the overall headaches for them, or turning to third-party system integrators.

Cost Reduction and Management

Improved Network Management and Foundation for Automation

Need for Network Agility

Need for Security, Compliance, Governance, and Visibility

Support Rapid Growth of Globally Dispersed Organization

What would be (was) a compelling reason to adopt SD-WAN?

0 40%30% 50% 60% 70% 80%10% 20%

No SD-WANSD-WAN/Hybrid WAN

sdxcentral.com

68%

68%

58%

59%

55%

71%

35%

26%

50%

35%



Connectivity Needs for SD-WAN

When we move on to look at what sites SD-WANs need to connect, we see the usual remote and branch locations leading the pack regardless of whether the survey participant has already deployed or not.

Security teams need to be a part of the overall set of key stakeholders in any SD-WAN platform selection process.

However, for enterprises that have deployed SD-WAN, there is a higher need for private cloud connectivity (than public cloud) as compared with those that have yet to deploy. The same pattern holds for remote and branch offices and regional and office locations. The bias to connect to more private locations makes sense since the early SD-WAN solutions did not accommodate

public cloud connectivity and had limited options for mobile workers and pop-up locations. As a result, enterprises that did not need multi-cloud/public-cloud connectivity immediately or support for these pop-up locations and mobile workers were able to successfully meet their business requirements with the first-generation of SD-WAN solutions.

As we enter the next wave of SD-WAN deployments, we expect to see more businesses requiring multi-cloud support across major public cloud providers as well as private cloud. Likewise, we expect improved support for multi-service provider networks across disparate geographic regions and diverse transport options.

Eventually, we anticipate a need to support regional clouds (e.g. Asia-Pacific region, or even country-specific clouds for data sovereignty reasons) as businesses seek to drive SD-WAN technologies into every geographic region of their business.

Remote and Branch Locations

Regional and Central Office Locations

Private Data Centers (Private Clouds)

Public Clouds

Home Offices and Mobile Workers

Partner Locations

Pop-up and Temporary Offices

In your SD-WAN implementation, what elements do (did) you need to connect?

100%0 40%30% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%10% 20%


sdxcentral.com

68%

68%88%

79%

83%

62%

60%

50%

50%

65%

40%

47%

33%

21%

20%

41%



Barriers to Adopting SD-WAN

The following data comes from enterprise survey participants who have not yet adopted SD-WAN or hybrid WAN.

Looking just at these enterprises, it appears there is still significant confusion about the different vendor SD-WAN offerings and their benefits. Beyond that, there is fear that SD-WAN implementation will not return value proportionate to investment required. Unsurprisingly, there are concerns around lack of skilled IT professionals who can lead the charge to deploy SD-WAN solutions.

This confusion is likely due to the large number of vendors with competing positions in the market. This factor is not conducive to the overall growth of the SD-WAN market. It is especially true for enterprises that are leaning towards a DIY (do-it-yourself) approach to deploying an SD-WAN. To sort through a myriad of vendors is a significant challenge, not to mention

figuring out the right local broadband or 3G/4G mobile provider in different geographic regions and management of a global SD-WAN roll out.

As a result, we expect the SD-WAN market to shift towards a managed model, with enterprises either turning to their trusted service providers to manage SD-WAN deployments (thereby picking from one or more pre-approved and integrated vendors chosen by the service provider, or to third-party system integrators (SIs).

We see opportunity for these SIs to work closely with enterprises to understand their needs and sort through the different solutions. For more complex cases, the SI may manage one or more SD-WAN solutions deployed across different service providers in different regions. This can be particularly valuable to multi-national organizations that need multiple carriers to mitigate infrastructure and business risk, or have many diverse geographic regions. Further, such more complex

Still Confused About Value of SD-WAN, Different Vendor Offerings

Manpower and Expertise Concerns

Time and Budget Concerns

Unsure About Achieving ROI

Unable to Find the Right Vendor or Partner

Security Concerns

Why have you not adopted SD-WAN yet?

0 30%20% 40% 50%10%

sdxcentral.com

41%

38%

35%

29%

21%

15%



organizations may have different divisions with different needs. An SD-WAN solution ideal for branch locations that provides SD-Branch type capabilities like WiFi may not be a fit for other parts

of the business that require more complex capabilities. In such scenarios an SI could step in to pull together a customized solution involving multiple vendors and carriers.

Today, the market outside the United States is leaning towards a managed services approach, and it is possible that in the long term, the whole “as-a-service” movement ends up driving the SD-WAN market globally, including the United States.

Challenges to Transitioning to an SD-WAN

Beyond the individual concerns in migrating to SD-WAN, we asked our survey participants about which aspect of

network transformation is most challenging.

What we found was consistent with the earlier point about vendor confusion. For those yet to deploy an SD-WAN solution, selecting a vendor or partner in network transformation (including SD-WAN) is viewed as particularly challenging. In fact, vendor selection is viewed as a significant challenge even by those enterprises that have already begun their SD-WAN journey.

Beyond vendor or partner selection, design and implementation of new networks is a major concern for those yet to deploy. Unsurprisingly, this is less of a concern for those that have already taken the leap. This points again to the overwhelming number

of options in the market today, and to a lack of in-house talent and capable resources. Other elements such as strategy and planning, network security and monitoring

Vendor, Partner and Solution Selection

Design and Implementation

Strategy and Planning

Network Security

Monitoring and Management

Which of the following aspects of software-defined transformation to a new network architecture do you perceive to be the most challenging?

0 40%30% 50% 60% 70%10% 20%


sdxcentral.com

63%

50%

55%

41%

45%

32%

45%

41%

39%

41%



and management are also viewed as challenging.

Moving from abstract to concrete, the biggest hurdles for enterprises that have deployed SD-WAN is legacy device support followed by security and lack of in-house expertise.

The lack of in-house expertise is a significant issue, as it impacts the ability to choose the right vendor. These challenges point to the difficulty in taking the DIY approach. Even when enterprises employ in-house experts, there may be a sizable opportunity cost in applying in-house network talent to solve the SD-WAN problem when they could be applied to other more pressing issues within an organization. In other

conversations with enterprises, we have discovered that having in-house talent with experience in WAN transport and mobile networks (3G/4G fall-back), DevOps and cloud skill-sets are extremely rare, again lending weight to the managed services approach.

Even when enterprises employ in-house experts, there may be a sizable opportunity cost in applying in-house network talent to solve the SD-WAN problem when they could be applied to other more pressing issues within an organization.

Legacy Device or Connectivity (e.g. T-1) Support

Security Challenges

Lack of In-house Expertise

Challenges Picking Right Vendor or Suitable Partner

Issues with Multi-cloud or Hybrid Cloud Integration

Scalability of Solutions

Lack of Support for Brownfield Deployments

Lack of Feature-richness

What were the biggest hurdles you had to overcome in your SD-WAN or hybrid WAN deployment?

0 50%30% 40%20%10%

sdxcentral.com

45%

42%

34%

32%

26%

24%

21%

18%



Realized Benefits of SD-WAN

At the end of the day, the benefits of deploying SD-WAN outweigh the challenges. Let’s evaluate the expected benefits for those enterprises that have not deployed yet versus the realized benefits of those that have deployed SD-WAN.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that agility and flexibility are the most important drivers for SD-WAN roll-outs. However, the data tells a more mundane and obvious story. SD-WAN is expected to (and actually does) achieve cost savings in OpEx and bandwidth spend. The good news is that SD-WAN saves enterprises money– though cynics will point out that augmenting expensive private-line deployments with cheap Internet bandwidth in lieu of buying more private lines will almost always

save money. This view, however, does not account for savings on the OpEx side, which is extremely positive news for SD-WAN proponents.

After cost savings, we see agility and simplification as the next set of expected (and realized) benefits. Other benefits include multi-cloud support, improved security and better visibility. What is quite remarkable is the similarity in rankings between those enterprises that have deployed vs those that have yet to deploy. The strong correlation between these two groups provides strong justification for SD-WAN providers to make a case to enterprises to consider deploying SD-WAN as the benefits sought at pre-deployment appear to be achieved post-deployment.

Reduce Bandwidth Costs

Reduce Operational and Management Costs

Leverage Multiple WAN Connections from Multiple Service Providers

Improved Manageability Through Simplification of WAN Topologies

Improved Agility with FasterRemote Site Bring-up

Better Visibility andReporting of Remote Sites

Better Security, Governance Through Centralized Policy

Improved Application Security

Ability to Support Secure ConnectivityAcross Hybrid or Multi-clouds

If you were to adopt SD-WAN, what benefits would you be looking to achieve? If adopted SD-WAN, what benefits did you achieve?

0 40%30% 50% 60%10% 20%


sdxcentral.com

53%

42%44%

39%

28%

27%

27%

28%

21%19%

21%

28%

18%13%

15%25%

41%

52%



Quantification of SD-WAN Benefits

Although recognition of cost-savings certainly helps support moving to SD-WAN, we went a little further in our survey and asked survey participants to quantify these actual benefits. Let’s begin by examining the actual realized savings from those that deployed and compare them to the savings expectation of those who have not yet deployed.

Again, we see a remarkable correlation in terms of expected savings versus realized (especially in the

10-20% and > 20% bands). About 30% of the enterprise survey takers see a greater than 20% overall savings with a combined 65% experiencing savings of more than 10%. These results demonstrate a strong case for SD-WAN deployment.

Now, to inject a dose of reality, there’s 15% of enterprises that deployed and have seen no savings at all. This is likely due to the nature of early adopters that jumped in before the technology was sufficiently mature, or perhaps due to other factors such as internal organizational complexity, or perhaps lack of skills. The overall data, however, shows a credible case for moving to SD-WAN, especially since we expect that some of the early wrinkles in SD-WAN such as weak provisioning, interoperability and scalability issues will be ironed out going forward.

By More than 20%

By 10% to Less than 20%




By Less than 1%

No Savings

What types of savings needed to justify/What type of realized savings were achieved?

0 20%15% 25% 30% 35% 40%5% 10%


sdxcentral.com

30%

38%

36%

34%

12%

22%

3%

0%

3%

3%

0%

3%

15%

0%

About 30% of the enterprise survey takers see a greater than 20% overall savings with a combined 65% experiencing savings of more than 10%.



When we focus on network improvement, we see a decent case to be made for SD-WAN too.

Of the enterprise survey takers who had deployed SD-WAN, over 20% saw a 50% improvement in network performance while about 45% saw more than 25% improvement in performance. Nearly 80% of enterprises overall saw at least a 10% improvement. This is a

good indicator that SD-WAN will achieve its promise of improved network performance in the long run. While some enterprises have seen no improvement, it is possible that SD-WAN was a poor fit for these enterprises to begin with.

All-in-all the data shows that a vast majority of deployments have seen significant benefits.

By More than 50%




By Less than 5%

No Improvement

If you had to quantify the percentage improvement in your network performance from deploying SD-WAN or hybrid WAN, what would you pick?

0 25%15% 20% 30%10% 35% 40%5%

sdxcentral.com

38%

21%

21%

36%

12%

3%

6%



Analytics-driven Network Management (Including Predictive Fault Management)

Intent-driven, Self-driving Networks(AI-powered Optimizations)

Improved Security Capabilities (Detect Malware, Botnets)

Improved Multi-cloud Capabilities

Analytics-driven Insight into Business Performance

IoT Device Support

What are the top innovations you would be looking for on top of an SD-WAN implementation?

0 50%30% 40% 60%20% 70% 80%10%

sdxcentral.com

38%

21% 58%

58%

73%

48%

33%

24%

12%

Future of SD-WAN

As part of wrapping up the survey and looking to the future, we asked our survey takers for their top innovation expectations in the near term for SD-WAN.

The survey takers pointed to analytics-driven network management, predictive fault management and intent-based self-driving networks based on AI as the top innovations they will be looking for in SD-WAN evolution. Fundamentally, these innovations are related to ease of management and troubleshooting– two of the biggest challenges for IT departments with large WANs to manage.

While security add-ons are important services for SD-WANs today, it appears that most enterprises are content with simply integrating today’s security

capabilities (basic UTM, NGFW) for now. Advanced security capabilities to detect malware or botnets are less critical than the aforementioned AI-driven network management and fault prediction.

Other innovations include improved multi-cloud handling, tying WAN performance metrics into business performance and remote IoT device support. These features, however, are less favored than the top few mentioned above.

Survey takers pointed to analytics-driven network management, predictive fault management and intent-based self-driving networks based on AI as the top innovations they will be looking for in SD-WAN evolution.



ConclusionThere is certainly confusion surrounding the SD-WAN market, as evidenced by the survey data. In the near term, enterprises will likely turn to service providers they already trust for managed SD-WAN solutions or to third party SIs that can tie together multi-vendor, multi-SP, multi-region solutions as a managed service. This mitigates the overall challenges in picking the right vendor as well as the general lack of in-house resources and talent.

The overall good news is that a remarkable number of SD-WAN adopters have achieved benefits that enterprises are generally looking for from SD-WAN

deployments. SD_WAN has delivered across both cost metrics and network performance indicators, in some cases quite significantly. With realizable and quantifiable benefits, we expect SD-WAN to continue to flourish and to reach new heights, with SPs and SIs playing even larger roles in the overall SD-WAN ecosystem.

In the meantime, we are open to a discussion of our survey results and analysis and welcome your thoughts at [email protected].



IBM’s O’Connell and Currie Discuss How to Incorporate Automation in the WAN In today’s business model transformations, network services need to be consumed in a flexible, agile, optimized, and cost-effective way. With its Multi-Network WAN Service (MWS), IBM hopes that automation above and across various providers, edge technologies, and virtual functions will address those customer needs.

In this interview, IBM’s Brian O’Connell, Distinguished Engineer and Master Inventor, and Steve Currie, Distinguished Engineer, talk about IBM’s networking approach, which has a laser focus on the businesses and applications of its clients, rather than the traditional approach of focusing primarily on the network itself. According to IBM, SD-WAN is not just a new technology rollout but a means toward new consumption models.

SDxCentral: What are some of the challenges that enterprises are experiencing with the WAN?

Currie: I’ve been in networking for more than 30 years and software-defined networking (SDN) for the past 5 years, so I’ve seen a lot of market changes happening over time. What’s interesting is that the industry upheaval we’re seeing today is very much like what happened in the late 1990s, when technologies were changing rapidly and business models were evolving.

Today, our clients are saying: “We need to transform our business in a cost-effective way, and We need to do it with greater bandwidth because our applications are demanding it, and We need to do it all very securely.” So those kinds of changes in the marketplace are driving traditional players to adopt new models and technologies, and giving new players opportunity to cause disruption. Overall, our clients are pushing hard for flexibility, cost efficiency, and security.

O’Connell: Steve and I come from different backgrounds. I’m a software engineer by trade, and a lot of what I do focuses on automation. When it comes to the challenges that enterprises are facing in the WAN, I approach it from the application, software engineering and DevOps perspective. The challenge from the application perspective is that, historically, WAN and networking are often seen as something of an inhibitor. For example, you have app developers pushing changes out to production, working with site reliability engineers to help accelerate changes and help businesses meet their goals, but the WAN and the networking are starting to catch up in terms of automation and orchestration to support rapid deployment and rapid changes to applications. The challenge among enterprise networking is to keep up with the rapid changes that developers are pushing out.

Currie: A lot of what Brian is talking about speaks to flexibility and the need to be much more responsive to



the application. The work he’s doing in orchestration and automation will bring applications more quickly to the WAN but also introduce greater demands on the network, and that leads to the need for greater capacity and greater security as these applications are pushing things out. When we look at the need for capacity, the questions are: “How can I scale bandwidth on demand more quickly using orchestration? How can I respond to these application needs?” IBM’s perspective is not necessarily, this is a new technology and you should use it, but rather, How do I enable our clients, their businesses, and their applications to meet our clients’ needs and objectives? It’s more of a top-down approach, considering the application going into the network. It’s a change in perspective. The application and the business are now able to drive the technology to where clients need it. It’s an exciting time!

What is IBM doing to solve some of the issues you’ve mentioned?

O’Connell: The difference is that IBM thinks of network transformation as more than just refreshing the network with new equipment. We see SD-WAN as a complete transformation of the network. We think about where we can drive automation and how we can integrate network automation into the broader orchestration and service automation goals that an organization might have.

The way I think about it is that customers don’t simply automate their network as an end goal. They automate the network to enable services and to reach their consumers. Whereas traditional providers might have a network end view, we take the application view. We think about the situation in such a way that the network is there to enable the application and to enable the experiences that our customers want their customers to have.

Currie: And this business model transformation that Brian is talking about opens up great possibilities for our clients as far as how they’re even able to account for the cost of a network. “Can I make it part of my facility cost for my branch? Can I make it part of my real estate cost?” Now, At IBM, we’re extracting the functionality that is valuable to the application and business, above the physical connectivity, and bringing in a new market and new business models so that the physical layer becomes part of the real estate and the physical needs.

We’re now able to use different technologies at the base level while having consistent delivery of functionality,

of security, and of capability at a higher level. The base transport will be a mix of traditional MPLS and broadband Internet using either business class or consumer grade based on the business requirements and the geographic locations. Our clients can obtain cost efficiencies in some parts of the world using consumer grade broadband with sufficient reliability and performance for their needs, while other areas need the stability of MPLS. Global clients are no longer locked into a restricted set of technologies by using SD-WAN solutions. The higher level capabilities brings in network functions virtualization (NFV) and how I’m able to deploy key functions at the right place in the network, functions like firewall, intrusion detection and prevention, optimization, and business specific functions.

Many enterprises are considering a hybrid cloud approach. How does IBM’s SD-WAN solution support a hybrid cloud environment?

Currie: At the connectivity level, within IBM SD-WAN, we’re utilizing the right transport and the right connectivity for specific applications and location types. A customer might be able to use Internet broadband, or one particular telecommunications provider for MPLS, or another carrier’s MPLS services—and they can mix different carriers together to achieve the optimal coverage. And this is particularly important for global companies. It aligns very nicely with same-country clients, but as we get into international and multinational corporations, having provider flexibility gives them cost optimization, and it gives them the best technical solution with the right coverage and the right service-level objectives. It gives them better control over their spend and their capabilities within the WAN. That’s one of the key features of what we’re doing with SD-WAN.

O’Connell: Our solution was built to support hybrid cloud from the very beginning. Our global network peering points (GNPP) with backbone and regional nodes really goes beyond supporting hybrid cloud. Our solution really supports multi-cloud. A lot of our customers are moving toward a multi-cloud approach, and one thing that’s great is how it leverages our global network peering points is that we can easily facilitate that multi-cloud.



What makes IBM’s SD-WAN solution different from other WAN offerings?

O’Connell: IBM is providing the ability to optimize between service providers in regions for a particular deployment. As far as price, historically it’s best to go with between three and five service providers per transport, for a particular deployment. Because IBM is transport provider–agnostic, it lets us work with our customers and deliver them the best value for the SD-WAN solution. And because the GNPP is co-located with cloud providers and telecommunications partners, we get optimized behavior with points of presence within the regions that our clients need. So, to me, that is the key differentiator: that transport provider–agnostic view of multi-network WAN services delivered with automation.

Currie: On top of that, we take these providers and present them as one service to our clients. So, they don’t face the challenge of managing multiple providers; we do that on their behalf. We’re doing all the service assurance for them, monitoring availability and capacity, and working with providers on the underlying transport to provide the right levels of service. Our clients don’t have to deal with all the complexity, so they experience a sense of comfort and efficiency. And that ties into how we’re driving automation into all aspects of the service. As we see opportunities for gaining efficiency with automation, we’re applying that rapidly in a DevOps model. It’s using a lot of what’s going on the industry, but doing it in a cross-carrier, cross-transport way rather than just within one specific infrastructure.

O’Connell: From my software engineering background, I view it as a transport provider abstraction in that we can deploy services across different transport provider implementations, but the experience is the same for the consumer. That’s a key differentiator—the experience, the billing, our ability to abstract working with those providers for those clients.

Describe some of the cost benefits that enterprises will experience if they migrate to IBM’s SD-WAN service.

Steve Currie: We talked about the ability to use the right technology for the right situation so that I can optimize based on who has the greatest presence and cost for our clients in a specific region, country, or town—and use

that to the advantage of our clients. It’s not always MPLS or traditional transport services; it’s also about who’s the best broadband provider. If the client has availability concerns and wants multiple providers or different types of technologies to provide greater assurance, we can do that in a very cost-efficient way because we can go to the right broadband provider and get the right solution there, as well as the right MPLS, and do a hybrid WAN solution effectively. It gives our clients a new negotiating point with the various providers because they can bring it together in one network for their enterprise that can be managed securely at the right service levels.

O’Connell: To me, it’s all about the ability to leverage broadband Internet connectivity; to balance the capacity, availability, and security requirements of specific applications; and to abstract that transport provider implementation from the customer so that we can go into various markets and look at different transport provider and choose the most cost-effective provider for that customer’s needs.

Any final thoughts?

Currie: This is a tremendous opportunity for our clients to take advantage of rapid developments in the WAN or networking space. This opportunity allows them to transform their IT business to drive technology to support them rather than shape them. Historically, networks shaped the way business operated, but today we can shift that perspective in such a way that the business can shape the network to best address its market and leverage different technologies and capabilities to meet their requirements. The result is greater flexibility, greater cost control, and an improved security posture. In this rapidly changing and strict regulatory environment, that security angle is essential to the business transformation.

O’Connell: This is the most exciting time in networking that I’ve experienced. The entire landscape is changing to software-defined—both LAN and WAN. It’s a great time for customers to reevaluate what they want their network to look like, and how their network can enable their company to meet the demands of their customers.

For more information, please visit the IBM Network Services page.

Documents

Real-World SD-WAN Deployment