The Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) and WAN Edge markets are growing quickly as organizations of all sizes realize that their business needs are better met by this technology. The Gartner SD-WAN forecast sees an 18% CAGR in SD-WAN equipment between 2020-2025 globally while the market for traditional enterprise routers is predicted to decline by 16.5%.1
Gartner SD-WAN Forecast Outlines Primary benefits of SD-WAN
Increased flexibility
Deploy networking solutions that are carrier and hardware agnostic and can connect any branch office, site, or even vehicle to any head office, data center, or cloud service in a private, secure, wide area network. SD-WAN solutions such as Turnium that can integrate into existing Layer 2 networks and with any cloud provider provide the ability to extend network reach and integrate cloud services into the business at every site, securely.
Increased visibility and control
See how the network is performing at any time with visibility to jitter, latency, packet loss, and flapping on all circuits in the network. For organizations, this ensures SLA is being met and better ROI on investments in the network. For service providers, this enables managed services like voice, video, unified communications, and other applications to be delivered with a better customer experience and fewer network-related trouble tickets. Turnium’s solution can be delivered to end-user organizations as a service, and as a software platform that can be deployed by enterprises with their own IP space and support teams, as well as by telecoms or other service provider organizations.
Simplified IT environments and management
By automating network programming and core/edge device configuration, SD-WAN solutions free up time for IT teams for more higher-value activities. Together with increased visibility and control, IT teams can move on from managing carrier contracts, renewals, and device programming to spending time on end-user needs for applications and data availability. Delivering site redundancy and failover is also automated, as this is inherent in SD-WAN, especially those platforms, like Turnium, that use packet-based distribution on the circuits at each site.
Cost and availability
SD-WAN solutions can often deliver superior price performance, as multiple local broadband connections can be bonded together in the SD-WAN at lower cost than dedicated carrier circuits. Backup circuits are inherently available in SD-WAN, making their ROI much higher and the ability to deliver multi-path converged wireline/wireless networks with SD-WAN means that wireless can be seamlessly integrated into site availability strategies. Turnium solutions deliver on this cost and availability promise.
- 65% of enterprises will have implemented SD-WAN, up from around 30% in 2020.
- 40% of enterprise locations will use only internet WAN transport.
In the same research, the Gartner SD-WAN forecast predicts that less than 30% of SD-WAN will be delivered on universal customer premises equipment (uCPE) due to performance, cost, and complexity. Turnium solutions are designed to make uCPE projects affordable, less complex to manage, and of similar performance to existing proprietary single-vendor platforms. Working with Intel, Red Hat®, and TietoEvry, Turnium container-based, and bare-metal deployments have been performance tested to be virtually identical.
In addition, Gartner predicts that SD-WAN deployments will grow by around 18% annually through 2024, with managed SD-WAN deployments reaching at least 60% of enterprise locations.3
In deploying managed SD-WAN, it is prudent to look for a solution that delivers delegated administration so that end customers can be provided with view-only, limited editing, or full-edit capabilities on their networks. This capability is often underappreciated at first, but for more mature business and enterprise customers, self-service or co-managed SD-WAN is an important capability (and something that Turnium provides, unsurprisingly). This makes change management and moves-add-changes-deletes (MACD) easier and faster, while also giving end-user IT staff visibility to network performance statistics.
1. Gartner, Inc. “IT Key Metrics Data 2022: Infrastructure Measure – Executive Summary.” December 2021.
2. Gartner Inc. “IT Key Metrics Data 2022: Industry Measures – Executive Summary.” December 2021.
3. Based on a survey of 651 organizations. Gartner Inc. “IT Key Metrics Data 2022: Industry Measures – Executive Summary.” December 2021.