In today's episode of the WAN Manager Podcast, Greg is joined by Analyst Elizabeth Thorne to dig into our latest WAN Manager Survey data.
From SD-WAN adoption stats to network configuration preferences and MPLS trends, the pair covers a lot of ground.If you want to learn more about the survey, the people who take it, how we run it, and what the top-level findings are from our newest batch of data, punch that play button.
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Key Takeaways
MPLS Usage is Declining
While MPLS remains prominent, running on 70% of sites on average in the amalgamated 2018-2020 data, TeleGeography's time series analysis shows a significant drop.
For the specific cohort tracked over time, MPLS represented 82% of sites in 2018, falling to 58% in 2020. This was a surprising result! MPLS also tends to skew toward lower bandwidth ports, often limited by local access or cost, whereas DIA is more prominent at higher bandwidth levels, suggesting cost savings are a driver for leaving MPLS, especially for larger ports.
SD-WAN Adoption Increased Between 2018 and 2020
This is highlighted as the key takeaway from the 2020 survey.
As of the survey data collected in Q2 and Q3 2020, 43% of enterprise respondents had installed SD-WAN, a significant jump from just 18% in 2018. Respondents had more confidence regarding their SD-WAN deployments, with many planning much faster rollouts (80% to 100% of sites in the first year) compared to the more conservative plans (10% to 20% in the first year) reported in 2018. Industrials, in particular, were significantly ahead in adoption (83%) potentially due to alternative access needs in remote locations and the requirement for high resiliency for operational technology and IoT.
Companies That Decided Against SD-WAN Had the Lowest Percentage of Sites Running MPLS
This could be because these companies aren't necessarily staying on MPLS, but rather pursuing more radical approaches like shifting entirely to public cloud connectivity with VPNs or focusing on a mobile workforce, effectively choosing not to have a traditional WAN at all.
This contrasts with the expectation that those adopting SD-WAN to move away from MPLS would have the lowest MPLS percentage. This could be connected to digital transformation trends, such as increased SaaS adoption, which led some companies to implement local internet breakouts even before SD-WAN was widely on their radar.
