What Major Contributions Can be Expected From SD-WAN in 2020?
Network Infrastructure

What Major Contributions Can be Expected From SD-WAN in 2020?

Network Infrastructure Magazine | Friday, January 31, 2020

Undoubtedly, SD-WAN played a significant role in 2019. However, what major transformation it is going to bring in 2020.

FREMONT, CA: Over the last few years, the software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) market is rising exponentially. The recent forecast of IDC says that SD-WAN infrastructure’s sales have increased by approximately 65 percent in 2018 to $1.4 billion.

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Undoubtedly, SD-WAN is on its way to becoming the default WAN connectivity option for businesses. The following are four major predictions for 2020.

SD-WAN will become more global

Until now, the U.S. market for primarily driving SD-WAN. However, it is expected to go worldwide in 2020. In Europe, particularly large and mid-market businesses will be searching for WAN solutions to support their growing usage of the cloud. The customers will look for hybrid solutions that will introduce SD-WAN’s benefits, without any requirement of colossal change or disruptions to existing infrastructures.

5G network slicing and SD-WAN will go parallel

One of the grandest innovations being expected this year is 5G network slicing. Primarily, mobile operators will be splitting up their radio access networks (RANs) into different virtual networks. Each will be tuned to a particular type of traffic or application. Thus, 5G mobile networks will be more synergistic with the kind of application operating on them. In the majority of cases, the routing decisions based on applications for those networks will be coming from SD-WAN-like capabilities sitting behind the RAN.

With the digital edge moving out to endpoints on the RAN’s end, operators will require to harmonize the quality-of-service (QoS) capabilities for a given network slice with the application requirements that are identified by the SD-WAN environment.

SD-WAN will be turning up in new places

One popular trend that will be noticeable in 2020 is the digital edge moving towards where products and services are consumed. Across healthcare, automotive, retail, and many other verticals, enterprises are pushing core applications and organization processes out to the edge. For this, they require a new kind of edge intelligence. This is where SD-WAN comes in the frame.

Intelligent edge devices will need enterprises to expand the similar quality of experience (QoE) that they are delivering presently in the business world out to the IoT. In order to answer this call, organizations should look for SD-WAN capabilities for getting micro-sized, incorporated in all kinds of IoT devices and applications.

Application Intelligence will become SD-WAN’s central capability

Application experience is expected to become the top priority for IT, and legacy approaches to layer-3 routing will not be sufficient to guarantee it. Rather, enterprises will require networks that will be able to make routing decisions based on understanding precisely what is being done by an application and what does it require, even within an individual session. SD-WAN vendors who have solutions that are geared toward application QoE, and that are offering the best capabilities for managing it will be surpassing those that don’t.

The bottom line 

It is hard to predict the future; however, the majority of the trends in 2020 point to one conclusion that user experience will be the one playing a significant role in determining IT investments over the next few years.

See Also: Top IoT Solution Companies

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