WAN Manager Survey | Q1 2023

TeleGeography's WAN Manager Survey has recently been updated and now includes data collected throughout 2022.

Throughout 2022, TeleGeography again surveyed IT professionals whose daily role includes managing and sourcing wide area networks for major corporations around the world. We put special emphasis on finding decision makers who oversaw U.S. national, regional, and global corporate wide area networks.

Our laser focus led us to around 60 top-tier respondents who shared their unique experiences in network management, specifically as it relates to:

Current network configuration, such as geographic extent, services used, typical capacities, and preferred suppliers. We compare long-term trends in MPLS, DIA, and broadband.

SD-WAN, including adoption rates, deployment times, management levels, and specific vendor usage. We compare how SD-WAN strategies have advanced since 2018.

Cloud/NaaS, including cloud provider usage, IaaS connection methods, data center locations, and Naas/middle mile adoption rates. We compare trends in multi- cloud solutions and provide insight into the newest WAN technologies.

Survey Highlights

• MPLS usage paused its decline, flattening after several years of decreasing.
• DIA and MPLS usage rates are not far from converging—only 3 percentage points away from one another.
• SD-WAN installation rates are lower than expected, only growing 4% since 2020, which is largely due to longer rollout periods.
• All 2022 respondents reported at least one IaaS provider and nearly 80% had more than one. Cloud adoption is clearly fairly ubiquitous at this point and multi-cloud is a strong majority. 

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