The future of SD‑WAN: Challenges, opportunities, security

June 25, 2024

Guest blog post by Praveen Datta, Research Director, Canadian Communications Markets and Strategies, sponsored by Bell, June 2024

Challenges facing the IT professional landscape

The many network and IT environment challenges that businesses face today will only intensify in the future. In a recent IDC poll of IT or WAN decision makers(IDC's US Enterprise Communications Survey, August 2022), the most significant challenges reported were security threats (37%), network reliability and quality (30%), and the modernization and automation of IT management (25%). Compounding these technical complexities are budget, skill and time constraints.

The move to SD-WAN

To overcome these challenges, a growing number of businesses are adopting SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) technology. As many of you know, SD-WAN helps businesses optimize application performance, streamline cloud access and improve efficiency for critical cloud-based operations.

In Canada, 29% of businesses currently use an SD-WAN solution, with another 56% planning to use one in the future. In a recent study, IDC surveyed 272 Canadian IT decision makers and found that SD-WAN has mainly been adopted by bigger businesses, with 40% of large companies (500–999 employees) and 39% of very large companies (1,000+ employees) using the solution. In the next two years, IDC expects that smaller organizations will begin to catch up with their larger peers based on reported adoption intentions (IDC's Canadian Enterprise Communications Survey, July 2023).

Key SD-WAN features for businesses:

SD-WAN technology is adopted for a number of reasons. Key amongst those are:

Improving security by reducing a company’s attack surface and isolating attacks when they do occur. SD-WAN allows for network segmentation from the branch to the cloud, based across all enterprise applications. This reduces network congestion and isolates traffic
Flexibility, agility and saving time through dynamic path optimization, which avoids manual route definition and improves the application user experience via application-defined network policy.
Accelerating access to applications through direct internet access for cloud apps – all while reducing the security threat.
Ensuring a quality user experience with application performance monitoring and visibility across all links. This allows for easier identification and troubleshooting of any degradations.
Increasing the speed and reducing the cost of deployment by allowing for zero-touch deployment of new sites and apps, SD-WAN solutions remove the need for IT departments to intervene manually.

Return on investment with SD-WAN

According to a sponsored business value study conducted by IDC, businesses implementing SD-WAN themselves are seeing five-year returns on investment of over 400% driven by:

Superior network management optimizing performance by 38%
Increasing network capacity by 167%
Reducing network degradation incidents by 77%
Reducing unplanned downtime for end users relying on networked applications by 94%

Decreased network infrastructure requirements, reducing CAPEX by 38% and OPEX by 39%

Managed SD-WAN

Most businesses adopting SD-WAN, regardless of industry, prefer a managed SD-WAN service, according to IDC's US Enterprise Communications 2023 study. Businesses across all verticals indicated a preference for an integrated carrier-managed solution for both SD-WAN and transport. The industries with the highest adoption of an integrated managed SD-WAN service are manufacturing/resources, transport/utilities and healthcare.

Shifting to managed SD-WAN frees limited IT resources to focus on business-critical issues and innovation instead of troubleshooting network issues. In addition, businesses benefit from the managed provider supplying the expertise, installing the equipment, managing upgrade cycles, continually keeping services up to date with the latest technologies and integrating with public cloud services. IDC anticipates that the ROI of a managed SD-WAN service would exceed that of a self-implemented solution, depending on the pricing model of the managed service.

New advancements in security: SASE

The managed SD-WAN services market is evolving toward an integrated networking and security architectural framework known as secure access service edge (SASE). SASE provides a common architecture for addressing enterprise networking and security needs. Currently, the most common managed SD-WAN offer combines networking with an advanced firewall and secure cloud access. SASE integrates more comprehensive security services such as zero trust network architecture, a cloud access security broker and a secure web gateway.

SASE integrates networking and network security into a unified cloud service, reducing complexity and providing comprehensive protection against cybersecurity threats, as well as reducing training and operation time due to integration and single-pane-of-glass management. SASE builds on the current momentum of SD-WAN, as virtualized network architecture is the basis of network transformation.

What to look for when selecting a SD-WAN Partner

When choosing a managed SD-WAN provider, businesses should look for partners that can ensure a successful deployment journey and provide a future roadmap with plans for service innovation. Additional key considerations include the following:

Ability to de-risk an SD-WAN deployment with in-depth experience in planning, proof of concepts, design, configuration, implementation, and management.
A transparent service contract, particularly regarding service levels, support and cloud consumption models/pricing.
Capability to access reports, monitor and easily make configuration changes via an intuitive client portal.
Ability to provide a constantly evolving integrated security solution against increasing security threats, with the required breadth to protect the entire attack surface.
Coverage in the target geographies where their SD-WAN service needs to operate.