1 © 2017 SevOne

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The State of SD-WAN Adoption in 2017TM [ eBook ]

The State of SD-WAN Adoption in 2017

2 © 2017 SevOne

TM

The State of SD-WAN Adoption in 2017

SD-WAN is an undeniably hot topic among IT professionals. Traditional branch connectivity used to be straightforward: Teams set requirements for reliable connectivity and once approved, installed a combination of less-expensive broadband paths and faster, costlier MPLS links. Once connectivity was ensured, they touched nothing unless they absolutely had to.

The introduction of software-defined WANs (SD-WAN) offers teams the ability to centrally configure and manage branch connectivity as well as prioritize application traffic based on policy and link performance with software, rather than hardware, and do it all with integrated security. It promises flexibility, cost-savings, automation, and a better user experience than traditional strategies—and who wouldn’t want that?

SD-WAN sounds great—but transitioning to SD-WAN amid an already complex ecosystem is admittedly riskier. Many teams are weary of the unknown and do not want to risk costly downtime if a problem persists during the transition.

We wanted to get a better understanding of the state of SD-WAN adoption in 2017, so we surveyed 225 IT professionals across a wealth of industries, including finance, healthcare, education, and government, to hear their perspectives on where their organizations are with SD-WAN adoption, what they perceive to be the pros and cons, and their plans for 2017 and beyond. Read on to see what they had to say.

3 © 2017 SevOne | The State of SD-WAN Adoption in 2017

The Rate of SD-WAN AdoptionA recent Gartner report predicted that cost-savings and performance improvements will drive more than 30% of companies to adopt SD-WAN by 2019. We asked IT professionals where they are today.

• 66% of respondents reported they already have at least somepercentage of their WAN software-defined.

• Almost 50% of respondents have active SD-WAN projects.

• Over 75% of respondents have or plan to have remote siteswith a link in the next 12-18 months.

• 17% will connect 100 or more remote sites.

When it comes to transitioning to SD-WAN, many said they plan to use a hybrid strategy to alleviate potential risk or implement SD-WAN with brand new offerings.

• “SD-WAN deployment will be more of a layering technology and not a full WAN refresh.”

• “[Deploying] In stages—starting with data centers.”

• “We’re using a primary MPLS and a backup broadband with Cisco IWAN.”

• “[We’ll use them in parallel then decommission.”

• “No Migration—[SD-WAN] will be an integral part of our new services offering which didn’t exist before.”

• “[We will use] it for new services initially.”

4 © 2017 SevOne | The State of SD-WAN Adoption in 2017

The Pros of SD-WAN AdoptionThere are many benefits to implementing SD-WAN and IT professionals are looking forward to the flexibility and cost-savings it will bring. When asked about the most compelling benefits, the answers ranked:

The Cons of SD-WAN AdoptionBut as discussed, many IT pros worry about the risk associated with SD-WAN adoption. When asked about their concerns regarding SD-WAN, the answers ranked:

Other Concerns

1. Ability to meet application needs with dynamic capacity

2. Ease of deployment

3. Faster time to market for new services

1. New skill requirements for staff

2. The “unknown” factor

3. Complexity of the technology

4. Migrating to SD-WAN

5. Monitoring and troubleshooting SD-WAN performance issues

• “Interaction with underlying network issues”

• “Scalability and performance”

4. Self-policing and automation based on policy

5. OPEX reduction

6. CAPEX reduction

6. Financial investment/ROI

7. Achieving end-to-end visibility

8. Being able to optimize policies to maximize value

• “Legacy hardware elements”

• “Compliance”

5 © 2017 SevOne | The State of SD-WAN Adoption in 2017

How prepared are teams for SD-WAN? Teams understand the pros and cons, but when it comes to actually managing and monitoring an SD-WAN deployment, teams feel they aren’t ready right now.

Only 8% feel completely prepared for monitoring and managing the success of their SD-WAN deployment. Almost 30% don’t feel prepared at all.

The reasons are many:• “Limited resources and funds.”

• “Still stuck with legacy tools.”

• “Learning curve of a new technology.”

• “Too little time to train and learn the new skills.”

• “Because we currently do not have a platform for monitoring SD-WAN.”

• “We need to understand what more can be done to effectively monitor SD-WAN to ensure proactive assurance for our customers.”

• “Not many monitoring tools providers have solutions to match monitoring needs of a routing overlay technology like SD-WAN. If you rely on SNMP Traps and ICMP data sets, then you’re really only monitoring the underlying routing gear and transport, and not the overlay services.”

Planning for new SD-WAN policies

based on historical data collection

Single dashboard of my existing MPLS-

based WAN and my new SD-WAN

Validating that the policies set by the SD-WAN are

working/effective

The ability to troubleshoot

SD-WANs

6 © 2017 SevOne | The State of SD-WAN Adoption in 2017

Monitoring and managing SD-WAN deploymentsMany note that monitoring their SD-WAN deployment is critical to their success but they haven’t yet solved the monitoring issue. When it comes to the capabilities of their monitoring tools, IT pros stressed the need for:

But when it comes to their current system, less than 10% have complete visibility of their SD-WAN deployment with their current network monitoring tools.

The biggest challenges in managing SD-WAN deployments with existing network monitoring tools are:

In order to monitor and manage network performance holistically in a heterogeneous network environment, teams require a platform capable of integrating with and gathering performance data across the entire WAN infrastructure.

LACK OF END-TO-END VISIBILITY 1TROUBLESHOOTING AND PROBLEM RESOLUTION2PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION3APPLICATION PERFORMANCE4USER EXPERIENCE5

7 © 2017 SevOne | The State of SD-WAN Adoption in 2017

About SevOne.SevOne provides the world’s largest CSPs, MSPs and Enterprises with the most comprehensive technology portfolio to collect, analyze and visualize network & infrastructure performance data to deliver actionable insights to compete and win in the connected world. SevOne serves organizations that are looking to complex, dynamic next-generation infrastructure such as software defined networks, orchestrated containers and cloud technologies to support their business goals.

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The SevOne SD-WAN Monitoring Solution provides unified operational insight across mixed legacy and SD-WAN deployments for enterprises. It leverages SevOne’s advanced network and infrastructure monitoring capabilities and is designed specifically to address visibility gaps that organizations experience in infrastructure transitions.

The SevOne SD-WAN Monitoring Solution collects and monitors key performance indicators with unmatched speed and unlimited scalability. Regardless of an organization’s size, it can deliver cost-effective, real-time, end-to-end performance visibility across the most complex networks, including those containing multiple WAN types. It achieves this visibility without sacrificing the speed required to effectively troubleshoot service-impacting events.

DOWNLOAD OUR SOLUTION GUIDE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SEVONE SD-WAN MONITORING SOLUTION.