Intro: Year 2020 – The Year of Change
It’s the fourth year of the annual Futuriom Software-defined Wide-area networking (SD-WAN) Infrastructure Growth report — and an interesting year it’s been. As the world grapples with the business and technology challenges of the response to COVID-19 pandemic, cloud technology and cybersecurity have come to the fore. The evolution of the health crisis and its economic impact have had an effect on the SD-WAN market, as the companies involved adjust their product and business approaches to respond to the changing conditions of the world.
Cloud-delivered SD-WAN is a growing technology domain that enables enterprises and organizations to set up and manage secure WAN connections using cloud software deployment and management approaches. It has an increasing role to speed up and secure cloud connectivity and has become a dominant growth area for enterprise communications services. Enterprises are buying SD-WAN to reduce the complexity in configuring branch-office devices, routing schemes, and network addresses. With SD-WAN, many of these functions can be abstracted into the cloud and managed by the service provider or an enterprise manager using a cloud interface, rather than using proprietary networking equipment.
For many years, Futuriom has correctly predicted high growth in the SD-WAN market, with an approximated 34% annual growth rate for SD-WAN platform services, as measured by the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of hardware sales and software annual recurring revenue (ARR). Speaking with market participants, the market may have paused slightly in the 1H of this year from restrictions imposed to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, but we believe this growth trajectory will start re-accelerating in the 2H of 2020 as SD-WAN’s strategic position as an enterprise networking and cloud networking platform expands.
“The bottom line is that the current business environment is driving IT and networking departments to look at more efficient ways to deliver secure and efficient cloud connectivity, a challenge that SD-WAN technology solves. As a result, SD-WAN is likely to be key to managing networking, cloud connectivity, and security for the foreseeable future.”
