When TeleGeography started tracking the SD-WAN market in 2017, we found dozens of vendors offering a service they called "SD-WAN." But are all of these services created equal? What does it take for your solution to qualify as SD-WAN?
Today, we pull back and discuss SD-WAN definitions and certification.
Greg aims to better understand the exact definition of SD-WAN and how related certifications can benefit end-users and managed service providers. For that, we're so glad to welcome Marc Cohn, principal technology strategist at Spirent, a true expert on this topic.
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Key Takeaways
The SD-WAN Market Experienced Rapid Proliferation of Vendors and Products, Which Highlighted the Need for Standardization
Initially, many vendors claimed to offer SD-WAN solutions without common standards or validation. This made it difficult for enterprises and operators to sort through the numerous offerings.
A survey indicated a trend away from fully DIY solutions toward co-managed or fully managed SD-WAN services, partly because enterprises struggled with the complexity. Recognizing this need, the MEF introduced the industry's first SD-WAN standard in mid-2019, aiming to restore some order and provide a common definition based on concepts like a routed infrastructure, application flows, policy-driven nature, and automation.
SD-WAN Certification is Essential
Certification goes beyond the theoretical definition of a standard by verifying that vendors' products and services actually meet the requirements.
It offers enterprises the peace of mind that a certified solution provides a consistent set of basic SD-WAN capabilities common across different vendors, allowing them to focus on evaluating vendors' value-added and differentiating features.
For service providers, certification helps differentiate their offerings and streamline procurement processes. While this certification doesn't necessarily enable direct interoperability between different vendors' SD-WAN controllers and endpoints, it supports the concept of managing "islands" of different vendor solutions in a more orderly way, which is relevant for enterprises operating across different regions or through acquisitions.
The SD-WAN Landscape is Evolving, Driven by "Work From Anywhere," Network Virtualization, and Disaggregation
The global pandemic significantly accelerated the need to address secure remote connectivity, leading to increased discussion and adoption of concepts like SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) and Zero Trust. These new security architectures involve distributing security functions closer to the user and shifting focus from network perimeters to user identity, context, and applications.
Traditional network testing methods, focused on latency, throughput, and availability, are insufficient for validating application-level performance and the behavior of these new, distributed security functions.
Additionally, the increasing adoption of virtualized endpoints and white box implementations for network infrastructure presents new testing challenges that go beyond just the network into the compute and storage domains.
Greg Bryan
Greg is Senior Manager, Enterprise Research at TeleGeography. He's spent the last decade and a half at TeleGeography developing many of our pricing products and reports about enterprise networks. He is a frequent speaker at conferences about corporate wide area networks and enterprise telecom services. He also hosts our podcast, TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
