By Charuhas Ghatge, Nuage Networks, a Nokia Company
Enterprises worldwide have embraced the concept of SD-WAN, with leading telecommunications research firm IDC forecasting the worldwide market for SD-WAN to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40% from $830 million in 2017 to more than $4.5 billion in 2022. Clearly, SD-WAN is here to stay.
SD-WAN 1.0 solutions have tried to solve the connectivity and automation challenges of branch offices, which have been underserved by the IP-VPN services. SD-WAN 1.0 also has been successful in reducing the bandwidth costs by offloading non-mission critical applications from the expensive MPLS to the cost effective internet.
The new challenges for the enterprises are stemming from their quest and pursuit of Digital Transformation. The digital transformation almost mandates them to a multi-cloud strategy- from on premises data centers to IaaS and SaaS public clouds and out directly to the branch offices and remote locations that constitute the intelligent edge.
With SD-WAN 2.0’s reach from the branches to the DCs to the public clouds, security and governance become even more important as the attack surface increases, and hence the need for an end-to-end security model that is enterprise-wide: across hybrid-cloud, data center and branch network.
SD-WAN collapsed the functionality of a typical branch network, where many separate physical devices were needed to provide NAT, firewall, load balancers etc. into just one physical platform and many of these functionalities provided as VNFs. With the availability of this generic and powerful platform, the SD-WAN 2.0 must evolve this physical platform to deploy and manage Value Added Services including VoIP, Next Generation Firewall IoT and Wi-Fi access.