Johannesburg, 04 Jul 2019
Global market research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan has recently announced the findings of a global end-user market survey, sponsored by leading software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solution provider, Silver Peak. The survey offers insights into enterprise IT decision makers’ thoughts on SD-WAN market trends and their influence on enterprise WAN architectures12.
Anton Jacobsz, managing director at Networks Unlimited, the distributor for Silver Peak for Sub-Saharan Africa, comments: “When businesses look to cut the high costs of running a wide area network (WAN), SD-WAN can help to save on money by augmenting high-cost private MPLS networks with economical broadband Internet connections. At the same time, SD-WAN also enables businesses to embrace the cloud, connecting users to applications wherever they reside, while assuring the highest levels of network and application performance.
"The Silver Peak-sponsored survey, which was Web-based and included responses from 850 individual companies across five industries from eight key countries3, has revealed some interesting findings as SD-WAN continues to come into its own.”
John Vincenzo, senior vice-president and CMO at Silver Peak, says: "As global companies adopt SD-WAN technology, they are shifting from a device-centric WAN model towards a business-first networking model that ensures resilience and business continuity while delivering superior WAN and application performance.
"This global survey confirms that enterprises are seeking not only to integrate network functions at the WAN edge, but that they are also demanding centralised, cloud-based network management from their SD-WAN vendor.4”
Highlights from the global SD-WAN survey include:
- 33% of enterprises surveyed have deployed, or are in the process of deploying SD-WAN.
- 61% intend to deploy SD-WAN within the next two years. Those that do not plan to deploy SD-WAN in this time frame say it’s because of an existing maintenance contract.
- 69% of US respondents intend to replace their existing CPE routers with an SD-WAN appliance with integrated routing. Jacobsz says this is consistent with a blog written previously by Silver Peak's founder and CEO, David Hughes.
- 67% of US IT decision makers want WAN optimisation as an integrated function with SD-WAN.
- 75% of US and 58% of global enterprises indicated that cloud-based network management is their top criterion during the SD-WAN vendor selection process. Again, notes Jacobsz, this is as predicted by Silver Peak's Hughes. With SD-WAN, enterprises have the choice to deploy the network management/orchestration tool in their own data centre or host it in the cloud.
“According to the survey respondents, SD-WAN emerged as a top three technology priority in the next 12 to 24 months, along with hybrid cloud services and network and application security. Reasons for embracing SD-WAN include benefits such as ensuring resilience and business continuity of network and applications; enforcing granular security policies to applications and users; and achieving superior application and WAN performance,” concludes Jacobsz.
Download the complimentary eBook with the survey results here. For more information, please contact Anton Jacobsz at anton.jacobsz@nu.co.za
2 https://www.silver-peak.com/sd-wan-edge-survey
3 https://www.silver-peak.com/sd-wan-edge-survey
Share
Silver Peak
Silver Peak, the global SD-WAN leader, delivers the transformational promise of the cloud with a business-first networking model. The Unity EdgeConnect™ self-driving wide area network platform liberates enterprises from conventional WAN approaches to transform the network from a constraint to a business accelerant. Thousands of globally distributed enterprises have deployed Silver Peak WAN solutions across 100 countries. Learn more at silver-peak.com.
Networks Unlimited Africa
Networks Unlimited Africa is a value-added distributor, offering the best and latest solutions within the converged technology, data centre, networking, and security landscapes. The company distributes best-of-breed products, including Attivo Networks, Cofense, Carbon Black, Fortinet, F5, Hypergrid, Mellanox Technologies, NETSCOUT, NETSCOUT ARBOR, ProLabs, RSA, Rubrik, SevOne, Silver Peak, Thales and Uplogix. The product portfolio provides solutions from the edge to the data centre, and addresses key areas such as cloud networking and integration, WAN optimisation, application performance management, application delivery networking, Wi-Fi-, mobile- and networking security, load balancing, data centre in-a-box, and storage for virtual machines.
Since its formation in 1994, Networks Unlimited Africa has continually adapted to today's progressively competitive and evolving marketplace, and has reaped the benefits by being a leading value-added distributor (VAD) within the Sub-Saharan Africa market.