11 October 2018

Increasing pressure on both resources and budgets as IT teams look after more complex network infrastructures is driving companies to examine SD-WAN’s potential, says Teneo.

In a survey carried out on its behalf by Sapio Research, Teneo questioned 200 senior IT and networking managers in the UK and US at companies with worldwide operations and revenues ranging from £100m to £30bn in size.

It found that one-in-five has deployed an initial SD-WAN project with 48 per cent investigating the technology in a limited form, such as a proof of concept at some sites.

When respondents were asked why they were considering SD-WAN, 36 per cent cited the increasing complexity of network infrastructure and performance tasks, closely followed by 34 per cent who said they were driven by the need to cut network costs, and another 34 per cent who are looking for better management of network infrastructures.

Teneo CTO Marc Sollars says network managers are looking at SD-WAN strategies to run multiple networking environments in standardised ways.

Half of those questioned said that deploying and managing networking infrastructure is time consuming, and others estimated that these upkeep tasks consume 36 per cent of their overall IT budget. A third said that they had used Xaas models from external providers to keep on top of maintenance tasks.

Researchers also found that companies are blending connectivity options to get necessary bandwidth: 38 per cent want to add more MPLS; 22 per cent want more internet connectivity; while 20 per cent want to add a combination of both of these. Less than one in five said their needs were satisfied. However, the study also revealed that just under a third of interviewees has yet to examine SD-WAN’s potential, although 27 per cent say they might do so at some point in the future.

Teneo CTO Marc Sollars adds that while many firms are putting a toe in the water on SD-WAN, it’s still very hard to say when this test phase will start to translate into enterprise-level implementations. He says: “In many ways, the broad range of choice that SD-WAN brings is what’s causing companies to hesitate over their decisions.”