Research by analytics company GlobalData reveals that nearly 60% of IT enterprises in Australia with more than 200 employees have already deployed SD-WAN and one in three are considering implementing it in the next 12 months.
But, GlobalData says that as the market is highly competitive companies need to have a long-term network strategy to adapt swiftly to the evolving traffic patterns.
Siow Meng Soh, Senior Technology Analyst at GlobalData, says: “While cost saving has been part of the motivation to adopt SD-WAN, better security and network management is also a key benefit.”
GlobalData says that together with wireless connectivity, SD-WAN supports remote working in terms of agility, employee wellbeing and business continuity considerations, and SD-WAN over Internet (especially through 5G) can deliver a better work-from-home experience.
But GlobalData cautions that the market is highly fragmented with many technology vendors offering their products in Australia.
GlobalData’s research shows Cisco and VMware neck and neck, ahead of the pack; but Aryaka, Silver Peak and Fortinet are also popular with each having over 10% of market share in Australia.
According to GlobalData, SD-WAN has changed the competitive landscape of the WAN market in Australia and opened up the playing field, and several system integrators see ‘corporate networking’ as a natural adjacency to their cloud, IT, security or professional services business.
“With several SD-WAN vendors trying to gain market share, they are working with different channel partners including system integrators, value-added resellers and local providers. Expanded choice is changing buying behavior,” Soh said.
GlobalData’s research also finds that nearly 10% of the enterprises are interested in buying SD-WAN directly from the vendor and nearly 20% indicated the telecom operator as their preferred option.
“It is evident that potentially 80% of the enterprises are considering SD-WAN as an over-the-top (OTT) solution. This comes at a time when the network has taken a new importance in the current work-from-home environment,” Soh said.
“As businesses accelerate the migration of IT to the cloud, the underlying network will play an increasingly more important role in connecting applications and data to the end-users.
“SD-WAN has a bigger role to play as businesses look to simplify branch networking, increase the use of cloud-based services and adopt remote working. As a result, companies need to also have a long-term network strategy instead of treating SD-WAN as a standalone solution which delivers quick fixes,” Soh concluded.