IDC TECHNOLOGY SPOTLIGHT Sponsored by: Riverbed

Crossing the Chasm: What Makes SD-WAN Enterprise Grade June 2021

Written by: Brandon Butler, Senior Research Analyst, Enterprise Networks

Introduction The rise of software-defined WANs (SD-WANs) has been arguably the most significant advancement in the networking industry in recent years. Organizations around the globe are looking to digitally transform themselves and take advantage of important technologies such as relying on cloud computing for increasingly mission-critical tasks and providing ubiquitous connectivity for employees, partners, and customers around the globe. The network continues to increase in importance as a critical enabler of these technologies for enterprises.

The network has also never been under so much pressure. The 2020 global pandemic brought into focus the importance of connectivity, and specifically assuring user experiences and application performance. Even before COVID-19, enterprise applications were more distributed than ever – hosted in a variety of on and off-premises locations and clouds. COVID-19 ushered in a new era where users accessing those applications became distributed too. According to IDC research, these hybrid work models will remain: More than half of respondents to a December 2020 survey said they expect to work remotely either part of the time or full time in the future. The same survey found that more than 70% of respondents reported performance issues with business-critical apps daily or at least multiple times per week. In this new environment, enterprises are looking to not just provide connectivity, but do so securely while ensuring high-quality user experiences and application performance.

Traditional WANs typically do not provide the level of agility, speed, and capacity that enterprises need today. MPLS connections that enterprises have historically relied on are secure and effective, but costly and are not optimized for remote workers. Simply adding a new connection type (e.g., broadband or LTE) doesn't solve the problem either. In fact, managing hybrid WANs with conventional routers can amplify the operational challenges associated with device-centric and CLI-based management paradigms. What's required is a centralized and policy-based platform for dynamically managing application traffic across links to provide the agility and cost effectiveness that organizations desire. SD-WAN, a technology that disaggregates the WAN control plane from the underlying connections, efficiently and elegantly solves these problems. SD-WAN offers companies the following benefits:

» Reduced WAN costs, with the ability to integrate multiple connection types (including MPLS, broadband, and LTE).

Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) remains an important and fast-growing market. But as enterprises look to scale out their deployments, the need for assuring application performance and end-user experience to cloud-hosted applications is rising in priority.

KEY STATS »Despite SD-WAN investments temporarily

slowing during the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020, IDC data shows the SD-WAN Infrastructure market grew 18.5%, remaining one of the fastest growing segments of the networking market.

» By 2025, the market will grow to reach more than $7 billion, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.9%.

AT A GLANCE

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IDC TECHNOLOGY SPOTLIGHT Crossing the Chasm: What Makes SD-WAN Enterprise Grade

» Agile operations, with a centralized policy-based controller that manages how applications and traffic traverse links based on performance SLAs, cost constraints, and/or security requirements.

» Improved network reliability and quality of service, with dynamic path selection to automatically route and reroute traffic to maintain application service levels.

Given these benefits, SD-WAN adoption is growing fast. An IDC worldwide survey found that in November 2019, more than 40% of WAN decision makers had deployed SD-WAN in some form. Another 52% said they planned to do so within the next two years. Only 5% of respondents said they would not deploy SD-WAN. Other IDC research conducted in December 2020 shows that while SD-WAN investments temporarily slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises pointed to SD-WAN as one of the top areas of investment in 2021 and beyond. So, what factors will drive the next wave of enterprise-grade SD-WAN adoption?

SD-WAN for Enterprises: Beyond Connectivity For SD-WAN to continue its rapid growth, this technology must evolve to reflect the new reality of enterprise wide area networks. Key components enterprises are looking for in SD-WAN platforms include security, visibility into application and network performance, as well as WAN optimization, which topped the list of WAN network services most important to enterprises (see Figure 1).

FIGURE 1: Top Criteria for SD-WAN Q Which of the following SD-WAN components would you consider the most important for

selecting a SD-WAN solution?

n = 1,223

Source: IDC's Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Survey, November 2019

15.9

19.2

20.2

20.8

21.1

22.4

24.6

25.3

26.0

28.6

35.0

0 10 20 30 40

Integrated routing

Application-policy based dynamic path selection

Control of latency, jitter, performance for voice/UC apps

Application visibility

Automated provisioning and zero-touch provisioning (ZTP)

Integration with existing network management tools

Ability to provide localized internet access/local breakout, securely

Transport agnostic (overlay over multiple Internet, MPLS or 4G/LTEexisting or new connection options)

WAN optimization

Analytics, including network monitoring, dynamic SLA management,and reporting

Security: application and network

(% of respondents)

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IDC TECHNOLOGY SPOTLIGHT Crossing the Chasm: What Makes SD-WAN Enterprise Grade

SD-WAN platforms are rapidly evolving to address these issues. Modern SD-WANs should go beyond basic hybrid WAN routing and dynamic application policy control. Direct connections to IaaS and SaaS platforms are important, as well as an ability to seamlessly integrate with existing enterprise management and security systems. Having visibility and insights into user and application experiences; and the ability to improve those experiences and assure application optimization are important too. Security, either natively integrated into the platform, or through third-party tools, is another critical component. Areas where SD-WANs will continue to evolve include:

» Multi-domain management to ensure that SD-WANs fit within enterprises' broader network and security management platforms. Integrations between SD-WAN and LAN (local area network) management tools are becoming increasingly important.

» Applying ML/AI enhancements to SD-WAN management, such as recent advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence platforms, to allow SD-WAN platforms to not just find performance problems faster, but fix them more rapidly, too.

» Native integration of security features, including cloud-based security services such as a secure web gateway or cloud-access security broker.

» Application optimization and acceleration, such as deduplication, compression, and SSL/HTTPS connections to IaaS and SaaS providers.

» Advanced orchestration and management features (zero touch provisioning, templates, configuration APIs, and detailed visibility and analytics), including the ability to roll SD-WANs and cloud gateways to remote employees.

The Importance of Acceleration for SaaS and IaaS-hosted Applications The world is a different place after the COVID-19 pandemic. There will be a higher percentage of workers connecting from remote locations and enterprises will continue to increase their reliance on cloud-based services for mission-critical tasks across SaaS and IaaS providers. This distribution of users, and the applications they're accessing, makes ensuring optimal performance of WAN traffic a critical function for enterprises.

An IDC survey question asked respondents what the most important changes to their network operations were in 2020 that will become permanent changes. More integrated security, improved support for remote workers, and ensuring visibility, analytics and automation were the top three responses (see Figure 2). Modern, enterprise-grade SD-WAN platforms should provide this functionality natively.

Keys to enterprise-grade SD-WAN are natively integrated security and assuring user and application experiences.

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IDC TECHNOLOGY SPOTLIGHT Crossing the Chasm: What Makes SD-WAN Enterprise Grade

FIGURE 2: How COVID-19 Permanently Changed Networking

Q What are the most important changes to your network operations in 2020 in response to COVID that will become permanent changes to your organization?

n = 250

Source: IDC's Enterprise Networking: Emergence of The New Normal Survey, December 2020

The Value of Network Visibility and Analytics The ability to assure user and application experiences in this modern environment is a critical challenge, and opportunity. A key to assuring experiences is having visibility and analytics into what those experiences are and having ways to improve them if necessary. Meanwhile, SD-WAN solutions that have integrated performance visibility and analytics not only can help ensure performance but also can be a security benefit. Spikes or dips in traffic can be the sign of potentially nefarious activity on the network. This traffic can be flagged, making visibility and analytics solutions an important line of defense against unwanted traffic on the network. Solutions that retain a rich history of packet-, flow-, and device-centric telemetry can help identify the root cause of such attacks.

Considering Riverbed SteelConnect EX SD-WAN Riverbed's SteelConnect EX is a flexible, full-stack enterprise-grade SD-WAN offering that combines enterprise-class routing capabilities, advanced SD-WAN, and security features natively within the platform. Integrated with WAN optimization and application acceleration and deployed as a 1-box or 2-box implementation, Riverbed SD-WAN can optimize and accelerate SaaS, Cloud and On-prem applications. SteelConnect EX's advanced security features include a next-generation firewall, IDS/IPS, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) prevention, URL filtering, malware protection, and antivirus, and also provides the ability to "service chain" packet flows with third-party security services resident on-premises or in the cloud.

SteelConnect EX can be run on a dedicated physical appliance, run as a virtual instance in the branch or datacenter, or deployed in the cloud. Riverbed offers a variety of appliances, including options for small branch offices, large branch offices, and datacenter hubs.

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Increased use of cloud applications (IaaS & SaaS)

Shifting to more flexible consumption/Network as a Service models

Improved network management tools for automation,visibility, analytics

Improved support for remote/work from home employees

More integrated network and security management

(% of respondents)

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IDC TECHNOLOGY SPOTLIGHT Crossing the Chasm: What Makes SD-WAN Enterprise Grade

Within the Riverbed family, SteelConnect EX runs in conjunction with SteelConnect Director, allowing for centralized policy-based management, including API-enabled configuration templates and workflow automation. SteelConnect Analytics provides deep levels of visibility and actionable insights gathering real-time data, visualization, and analysis of telemetry. SteelConnect Analytics can be deployed on prem or in the cloud.

Challenges

Riverbed is one of many enterprise networking vendors with an offering in the competitive SD-WAN market. Riverbed must look to differentiate its SD-WAN offering, which it is doing through integration with its application acceleration to boost the performance of SaaS, cloud, and on-premises applications and through integration with its network performance management (NPM) offerings, creating a unified platform for managing application and network performance.

Conclusion The SD-WAN market is at an inflection point as deployments of this important technology continue to ramp. In 2021 and beyond, organizations have a new set of priorities: Providing ubiquitous and secure connectivity to all points in the network; assuring high-quality user and application experiences; and being agile enough to digitally transform in a rapidly evolving market. SD-WAN is an important technology for enabling this secure connectivity between users and applications, no matter where they are. Fundamental to this is having visibility and analytics into the user and application performance, and tools to optimize connectivity. These are among the qualities that will drive the next wave of SD-WAN adoption in the enterprise.

About the Analyst

Brandon Butler, Senior Research Analyst, Enterprise Networks Brandon's work in IDC's Network Infrastructure group includes monitoring market and technology trends, building forecasts, and providing competitive analysis in Network Management, Ethernet switching, routing, wireless LAN, SDN, and SD-WAN.

The content in this paper was adapted from existing IDC research published on www.idc.com.

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