With the increased use of cloud and digital services, traditional wide area network (WAN) can no longer handle enterprise network requirements, such as on-demand scaling, centralized traffic management, network visibility, and security. Organizations are increasingly adopting software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) services to replace or support their existing WAN infrastructure. In this scenario, service providers are playing a pivotal role in helping companies implement managed SD-WAN services to transform their network infrastructure and drive the overall digital transformation agenda.

These trends, and others, are covered in our SD-WAN Managed Services 2021-2022 RadarView™ . The report is a comprehensive study of SD-WAN managed service providers, including the top trends, analysis, recommendations, and a close look at the market’s leaders, innovators, disruptors, and challengers.

We evaluated over 40 service providers across three dimensions: practice maturity, partner ecosystem, and investments and innovation. Of those over 40 providers, we recognized 25 that have brought the most value to the market during the past 12 months.

The report recognizes service providers in four categories:

• • Leaders: AT&T, HCL, IBM, Orange Business Services, TCS, Tata Communications, and Wipro
  • Innovators: BT, Infosys, Lumen, NTT, Tech Mahindra, Telefonica, and Verizon
  • Disruptors: Aryaka Networks, GTT, Masergy, Microland, Mphasis, Telstra, and Zensar
  • Challengers: Cato Networks, Deutsche Telekom, Hughes Communications, and Windstream

Figure 1 from the full report illustrates these categories:

“SD-WAN adoption has risen sharply among enterprises in the last couple of years”, said Mark Gaffney, director at Avasant, “There is a need for organizations to leverage SD-WAN to transform their network infrastructure and collaborate with service providers to be able to realize maximum value out of their digital transformation initiatives.”

Some of the findings from the full report include the following:

1. Choose a value-driven business case for migration to SD-WAN.
   • Businesses should choose SD-WAN to lay a foundation for business sustainability and transformation and not think of it merely as a cost-saving technology.
   • SD-WAN solutions meet the challenges and address the growing need for cloud-based applications. As software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications are designed to be much nimbler and have more efficient consumption methods, they need a modern internet-centric network solution, SD-WAN, to truly shine.
2. Evaluate SD-WAN platforms and managed services providers.
   • With numerous SD-WAN platform vendors in the market, enterprises need to evaluate critical features such as zero-touch provisioning and application awareness before selecting the right SD-WAN platform for their businesses.
   • Ability to offer end-to-end managed services, ease of deployment, and flexible pricing are the top three factors to consider when selecting a managed services provider.
3. Choose the right deployment model based on cost and control trade-off.
   • As SD-WAN solutions vary widely in terms of their architecture and the way they interoperate with the existing infrastructure, enterprises should select the deployment model based on their needs and criteria such as reliability, optimization, security, and cost.
   • Organizations can select one or more available deployment models, including do it yourself (DIY), comanaged, fully managed, and SD-WAN as a service.

“Enterprises should not allow the inability of traditional WAN infrastructure in handling increased network requirements to obstruct business growth and agility. SD-WAN adoption can help address complex network challenges and enhance overall performance”, said Abhishek Nayak, senior research analyst at Avasant.

The full report also features detailed RadarView profiles of the 25 service providers, along with their solutions, offerings, and experience for enabling workplace transformation.

This Research Byte is a brief overview of the SD-WAN Managed Services 2021-2022 RadarView™ (click for pricing).