What's driving enterprise use and purchase of SD-WAN?

A new study from IDC titled Worldwide SD-WAN Survey Special Report, has examined current and future enterprise plans for SD-WAN infrastructure services. This includes their relationship to enterprise applications, cloud applications and services and WAN management.

The survey reached 600+ enterprises (Mid-market to Enterprise) in the USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Japan, China, India and Australia.

So how does this affect you?

The findings from IDC show that consistent security, price, and reduced complexity will be the main drivers in enterprise use/purchase of SD-WAN.

According to the special report, software-defined networking is taking the next evolutionary step as SD-WAN becomes an increasingly viable option within the enterprise.

The results put a specific emphasis on the three motivators mentioned earlier (security, price, and reduced complexity). IDC believes this increased confidence in and acceptance of SD-WAN will push revenues to $6 billion by 2020.

Rohi Mehra, vice president, Network Infrastructure, says that given the ongoing transition to cloud-based applications and services, the enterprise WAN is under acute pressure to adapt.

"Understanding and adapting to the needs of enterprise IT is critical to achieving success in this evolving market, both for service providers as well as for technology solution providers," says Mehra.

Additional findings from the special study include the following:

• Faster deployment and optimisation of WAN bandwidth also scored high as motivational factors for enterprises considering SD-WAN deployments.
• There will be a significant shift to Hybrid WAN, often a precursor of SD-WAN, in the next 12-18 months.
• Key SD-WAN components include Security, WAN Optimisation, Policy Control, and Automation.
• Top SD-WAN use cases include multiple WAN providers, increased reliability, and direct SaaS provider access.