More SD-WAN noise this morning from RapidScale with Citrix and Velocloud signing Star2Star. I guess SD-WAN is just table stakes today.
Every provider is announcing that they are leveraging the technology. Nitel, AireSpring, TPx, UCaaS providers, CLECs, ILECs, Comcast, everyone has incorporated SD-WAN into their portfolio. This despite the fact that actual sales of the technology are slim and slow coming.
It marks a huge win for 4G. Most of the hype mentions the fact that 4G is now a consideration for connectivity. I wonder if this occurred because 4G became so reliable or because dealing with cable companies has become such a mess (and the ILECs have lost the broadband battle).
At any rate, SD-WAN technology is now table stakes to be a service provider – VoIP or network or MSP. The major functions of SD-WAN – like fail-over, circuit bonding, application acceleration (or WAN optimization) and simpler WAN management – are being introduced to make user experience with cloud applications better.
It doesn’t matter if that cloud app is UCaaS, credit card authorization, CRM, Office365 or a proprietary app running on Azure or AWS, performance, security and cost of the network are being examined by the IT staff. Service Providers are leveraging SD-WAN to solve those 3 pain points for businesses.
It is slow adoption due to a number of considerations. For one, not all businesses want to be guinea pigs for new technology. For another, businesses are locked into current contracts for many WAN circuits. It isn’t just the circuits; it is also the CPE. Some replacement to SD-WAN may happen with a life-cycle hardware refresh. And when IT admins feel comfortable that betting on new technology from a service provider won’t cost them their job.