Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018. Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Michael Wood, VP of Marketing, VeloCloud
10 Market Predictions Enabled by SD-WAN
Technology is constantly in a state of change, disruption, and evolution, but we're now in a particularly exciting time where things as we knew them are completely transforming. In this blog, VeloCloud provides ten predictions for 2018 that address how this transformation will continue.
1. IoT accelerates in adoption with higher reliability and better security across deployments.
IoT is moving past the marketing hype phase and real-world implementations are cropping up regularly for business. The combination of widespread education, networks that can support it via bandwidth and performance, and a guarantee of security will allow for the concept to truly gain traction.
2. Branch office deployments shift to vCPE implementations running one or multiple software VNFs.
As virtualization and cloud become even more ubiquitous, branch office network services based on virtualized software instances will also become commonplace. Former mission-specific, hardware-centric, boxed appliances will be unboxed and deployed as VNFs on virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE) to increase efficiencies, reduce the hardware footprint, and dramatically cut costs.
3. Security VNFs become deployed more often in branch offices.
Branch offices will begin to achieve exceptional security postures through the use of security VNFs running on vCPE devices in conjunction with cloud security services.
4. Cloud security reaches a tipping point for campus and branch deployments.
With speed of deployment for branch offices becoming key to business success, cloud security plays a much larger role. With increased confidence and dependence on the cloud, cloud security solutions become standard practice for agile, ubiquitous, and consistent protection across multiple branch sites.
5. Business traffic volume over the Internet for wide area network deployments surpasses that of private MPLS networks.
Due to its pervasive availability and now the ability to deliver high performance, reliability, and security, Enterprises will take full advantage of the benefits that Internet offers over MPLS to handle the majority of both business critical and noncritical network traffic.
6. Cloud applications, services, and compute adoption accelerates dramatically 2018 due to reliable connectivity using SD-WAN.
SD-WAN becomes the powerhouse that drives the increased reliance on cloud applications and services. With a software-defined networking base, it is uniquely designed to support all things cloud.
7. SD-WAN becomes the defacto standard for wide area networking and creates the bridge from MPLS while being the path to the future of Enterprise and Service Provider voice, video and data communications.
The transformative nature of SD-WAN is changing the way we all perceive WANs, offering an augmentation, migration or alternative to traditional MPLS. The reliance on unified communications, video and collaboration by the enterprise needs SD-WAN to make it a commonplace reality.
8. IT turns the corner from being a cost center to becoming a revenue and profit generator through deployment of Outcome-Driven Networking solutions like Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN.
With businesses spending 83% of their IT budgets just to "keep the lights on," shifting to outcome-driven network and SD-WAN will drive this percentage down, allowing IT to invest dollars on areas that drive revenue growth for the business.
9. 80% of Service Providers will offer SD-WAN or have a plan to offer SD-WAN as part of their portfolio.
As Service Providers fear becoming cannibalized, they will seek technologies that offer additional revenue streams and the ability to easily layer services, cloud, security, and applications. SD-WAN is that technology and will become a standard line item and business driver for this group in 2018.
10. More than 50% of System Integrators become true wide area networking competitors using SD-WAN.
SD-WAN allows system integrators to solve new use case issues for customers, extending their range of services, and in essence, acting as a service provider. System Integrators become the next big disruptors in the wide area networking market.
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About the Author
Michael Wood is vice president of marketing for VeloCloud Networks, responsible for worldwide marketing, revenue generation, channel and sales enablement and communications. He has more than 20 years of leadership and management experience in the networking industry. Prior to VeloCloud, Wood served as vice president of product management and marketing for Akamai Technologies' Cloud Networking Business Unit. He also was an executive in residence, and is currently an adviser, for Plug and Play Tech Center, a startup incubator and accelerator. Early in his career, Wood was with StrataCom as a senior member of the technical staff. After Cisco acquired StrataCom in 1996, Wood spent 15 years with Cisco in various positions, culminating in the director of product management and marketing role for the multibillion dollar branch office integrated services router business for enterprises and service providers. Wood has a bachelor's degree in industrial technology and a master's degree in electrical engineering from San Jose State University.