Tag: SD-Wan

Customers are ready for SD-WAN

Posted on July 26, 2019 by - News

Beancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and concluded that customers are keen on the much-hyped SD-WAN tech.

The analyst house is expecting impressive growth in the SD-WAN infrastructure market with the enterprise segment of the networking market growing at a 30.8 percent compound annual growth rate between 2018 and 2023 to hit revenues of $5.25 billion.

IDC’s Network Infrastructure expert Rohit Mehra said that SD-WAN is one of the fastest-growing segments of the network infrastructure market and several factors were driving the growth. Traditional WANs were failing to meet the needs of digital businesses, “especially as it relates to supporting SaaS apps and multi- and hybrid-cloud usage”.

UK business fear the SD-WAN myths

Posted on June 25, 2019 by - News

Businesses in the UK are holding back on SD-WAN deployment because of unfounded myths surrounding the technology, according to a new study by Cogeco Peer 1.

The main myths identified are security concerns (42 per cent ), cost concerns (38 per cent ) and a fear of disruption to day-to-day business (35 per cent ). This is followed by worry about a lack of skills to implement (34 per cent ) and being worried about a lack of understanding around the technology (26 per cent ).

The study, questioned 300 UK based IT decision-makers across the education, financial services, and retail sectors, found that the education sector (47 per cent ) is the most concerned about security issues, followed by retail (43 per cent ) and financial services (36 per cent ).

For IT decision-makers, the following priorities were revealed for the next 12 months:

  • Network security 61 per cent
  • Improving cloud performance 44 per cent
  • Improving application performance (44 per cent )
  • Increasing network agility (41 per cent )

The study found that businesses understand the role SD-WAN can play in their digital transformation, with 74 per cent  of respondents believing the technology is crucial to enabling the process. It is also seen as the future of connectivity, with 77 per cent  of respondents believing it will ultimately take over the WAN landscape in the future.

Tom Adams, Director of Product Marketing at Cogeco Peer 1, said: “There are clearly a number of perceived risks around SD-WAN that are preventing UK businesses from realising its benefits. It is time for the technology industry to come together and educate UK businesses about the potential SD-WAN brings. If the industry doesn’t unite, there is a danger that businesses will be left behind and unable to remain competitive.”

Dave Tracey, EMEA channel sales manager at Cogeco Peer 1, said: “The technology industry is often seen as at the cutting edge in delivering future benefits and implementing new ideas. However, the myths surrounding SD-WAN are stifling UK business growth and harming their chances of success. Vendors and channel partners must work together to prove these myths wrong and educate organisations on the technology’s benefits. It is also clear that SD-WAN packages need to come with consultancy and support to unlock the technology’s potential.”

Channel needs to educate on SD-WAN

Posted on February 14, 2019 by - News

SD-WAN is supposed to be a big disruption for businesses, but the technology will hit the rocks unless the channel educates  users about it.

Research from Cogeco Peer-1 has indicated that 72 percent of customers do not fully understand SD-WAN and a third worry it will disrupt their business and not far off half concerned about the security issues.

Director of product at Cogeco Peer 1 Tom Adams said that those who have gone down the software defined route have seen OPEX, cost and efficiency savings and the channel will need to get more customers over the hurdle of hesitation to the adoption stage.

SD-WAN will continue to evolve towards automation next year

Posted on December 18, 2018 by - News

SD-WAN will continue to evolve towards automation in 2019 predicts Dr Klaus Gheri, Vice President & General Manager of Network Security at Barracuda Networks.

Amongst his predictions for next year, Gheri said that migration to the cloud has become a megatrend. This has led to new requirements in terms of securing services and the required infrastructure.

“Star-shaped WAN topologies with central Internet access must be redesigned with regard to their compatibility with increasing use of cloud services – keyword SD-WAN”, he said.

Security is the reason for SW-WAN interest

Posted on December 10, 2018 by - News

While the channel thinks cost saving is the primary sales point for SD-WAN it might be better off pitching sales on security issues.

TechTarget research suggests that improving security posture and reducing risk is the number one driver for firms looking at the SD-WAN.

Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research, said the findings of the research showed that the WAN had not fundamentally changed in decades and SD-WAN came with the promise of lower cost and more agility.

Silver Peak appoints three new executives

Posted on December 5, 2018 by - Moving People, News

Global SD-WAN contender Silver Peak announced three new senior executive appointments as part of its future plans.

The new appointments include Ken Laversin, Chief Revenue Officer, Kathleen Swift, Senior Vice President, Human Resources and Rick Valentine, Chief Customer Officer.

A company spokesperson said the executive appointments, which follow a series of regional and channel leadership appointments, will enable Silver Peak to

SD-WAN technology could be great for the channel

Posted on November 30, 2018 by - News

SD-WAN technology could be an excellent channel opportunity according to, SVP international, Barracuda Networks’ Chris Ross.

Ross said his outfit had been researching networking technology for the cloud – specifically, software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN).

While speaking to end-users, Barracuda found some interesting insights into the EMEA channel community. There seems to be an increasing opportunity, as businesses in EMEA overwhelmingly turn to SD-WAN, despite a lack of education and skill.

Oracle snaps up Talari

Posted on November 19, 2018 by - News

It seems everyone wants a slice of SD-WAN – now Oracle has bought Talari to spruce up its offering.

For those who came in late the SD-WAN market has become one of those spaces that have the analysts predicting great growth. Now Oracle has acquired Talari. Talari has been actively pitching itself as a channel-friendly SD-WAN option, initially working with networking specialists but then attracting more activity with resellers with unified comms specialisms.Douglas Suriano, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications Global Business Unit, said that the deal would combine the SD-WAN technology with its network management offering.

“Talari’s Failsafe SD-WAN solution complements Oracle’s enterprise communications portfolio by delivering high availability and Quality-of-Experience connectivity and cloud application access across any IP network with the reliability and predictability of private networks,” he said.

CEO of Talari Networks, Patrick Sweeney said that SD-WAN played a significant role in digital transformation projects and it came to Oracle with a 500 enterprise strong customer base across 40 countries.

“When the transaction closes, we’ll serve a vastly expanded landscape with Oracle, Both company’s customers will be the beneficiaries of this transaction.”

Cisco spruces up its SD-WAN

Posted on November 14, 2018 by - News

Cisco is unifying its security and software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technologies to help organisations embrace the cloud faster with choice and confidence.

Scott Harrell, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Networking at Cisco said the WAN is undergoing a radical transformation. Today, organisations host their applications in multiple clouds – public, private and SaaS.

EMEA businesses turn to SD-WAN despite a lack of education

Posted on October 26, 2018 by - News

Barracuda Networks has warned that EMEA business is boosting investment in cloud-friendly networking technologies, despite a lack of education and skill.

VP and general manager, network security, Dr Klaus Gheri’s comments are based on the findings of a study of 410 IT and networking professionals released today by Barracuda Networks.

The study found that 89 percent of EMEA organisations were either already using software defined wide area networking (SD-WAN), a technology that helps users access the cloud quickly and securely, or are considering it

The biggest driver for implementing SD-WAN is to improve application performance between locations. The IT C-suite handles the most (28 percent) SD-WAN projects.

Eight out of ten EMEA organisations think that their SD-WAN solution has lived up to expectations.

The study also showed that EMEA lags behind the rest of the world in SD-WAN knowledge: only 32.7 percent fully understand SD-WAN, compared to a global average of 41 percent.

Generally, EMEA thinks SD-WAN has been overhyped, with over half of organisations thinking it is a buzzword and won’t revolutionise networking. This is higher than the US and APAC.

The number one issue for a third of those who have deployed SD-WAN was a lack of internal skill and understanding.

More than 40 percent think SD-WAN will replace MPLS. Almost two-thirds believe there’s currently not enough SD-WAN training in their organisation.

Gheri said that despite its success, SD-WAN education in the EMEA region leaves a lot to be desired.

Less than a third felt that they understood SD-WAN, falling far behind the US (57 percent ) and APAC (41 percent).

“While this may be more to do with hubris than reality, it’s leading to a lack of internal skill and understanding to deploy SD-WAN, which is highlighted by more than a third (34 per cent) of EMEA respondents as the main issue following its deployment,” Gheri said.

This research clearly shows that the new European data regulation has helped organisations in EMEA wake up to the reality of cyber threats, with many taking the plunge into SD-WAN as a result, Gheri said.

“It’s comforting to see that for many organisations, cybersecurity has become not only the number one focus for IT teams, but has also risen to a CEO level issue.”

Flogging SD-WAN could be worth loadsamoney

Posted on July 31, 2017 by - News

PF-loadsamoney_2177214kBeancounters at IDC have been adding up some numbers and decided that SD-Wan could be a money-spinner over the next five years.

Of course SD-WAN vendors have been telling resellers that it is a technology that the channel needs to get involved with as it starts to ramp up for a year or so, but it looks like now they have the backing of IDC.

IDC is expecting SD-WAN infrastructure and services revenues will see a compound annual growth rate of 69.6 percent to hit $8.05 billion by 2021.

The buzz-phrase of digital transformation is behind the move along with a rise of cloud-based SaaS business applications and a wider acceptance of SDN in general.

IDC’s vice prez of infrastructure Rohit Mehra said that “SD-WAN is not a solution in search of a problem.

“Traditional WANs were not designed for the cloud and are also poorly suited to the security requirements associated with distributed and cloud-based applications. And, while hybrid WAN emerged to meet some of these next-generation connectivity challenges, SD-WAN builds on hybrid WAN to offer a more complete solution.”