SD-WAN & Hybrid-WAN Solutions for CSPs
CSPs who are moving into SD-WAN say that their motivation for doing so has been driven primarily by customer demand. “Customers are undergoing rapid digital transformation and they need agile, efficient and high-performing network solutions like SD-WAN to keep pace,” Dave Siegel, vice president of product management for Level 3, told Pipeline. Level 3—which as of November 1 is part of CenturyLink—is another CSP that has leaned hard into SD-WAN.
Siegel cites a number of benefits that SD-WAN offers to customers: policy and performance-based routing by network segment, site-to-site encryption, direct internet connectivity for access to public clouds and SaaS applications, a single point of contact for broadband aggregation and billing, and visibility and control through a central dashboard. And all these benefits are available irrespective of access technology or backbone type. For enterprise customers whose WAN consists of a miss-mash of branch office DSL, cable, fiber, MPLS, LTE, etcetera; that’s the key.
Don Briscoe, product marketing manager for Sprint Business, told Pipeline that the benefits for Sprint customers comes down to reduced operational complexity and cost savings. He notes that enterprise customers are seeing “bandwidth increases of 30 percent per year, but their IP budgets aren’t increasing,” so these enterprises are tasked with doing more with the same or less.
But it’s not just about cost. Briscoe also emphasizes the simplified management, increased security, improved visibility, and enhanced quality of service. “Our SD-WAN integrates with our Compass portal, so customers can see it all through a single pane of glass,” he said.
And the benefits for the service providers are evident as well, as pervasive network visibility and reduced complexity is as helpful for the CSP as it is for the customer.
One of the concerns around SD-WAN in the past has been the lack of standardization, and that proprietary systems have taken the place of open protocols. In answer, more industry organizations are wading into the efforts to standardize SD-WAN. This past summer, MEF announced its efforts to define, orchestrate, and standardize SD-WAN in the context of its Lifecycle Service Orchestration Reference Architecture and Framework.
“Businesses are demanding WAN flexibility to control costs as they migrate applications to the cloud and see SD-WAN as an option to address this,” said MEF CTO Pascal Menezes in a statement. “To meet these demands and remain competitive, service providers need to integrate SD-WAN into a portfolio of orchestrated services delivered in a seamless, automated fashion. MEF is uniquely positioned to bring together managed service providers (MSPs), orchestration experts, and SD-WAN vendors to address this challenge and accelerate SD-WAN managed service deployments on behalf of the enterprises.”
This effort, combined with other standards pushes and the general maturation of SD-WAN as a technology will help move this technology forward and enhance customer comfort with and understanding of SD-WAN. Vendors in the space are also consolidating (see Cisco’s purchase of Viptela for $610 million back in May), likely adding to the consistency of the solutions in the field.
And it’s clear that some of the world’s most prominent CSPs are on board with the technology. The big question is, what comes next? Will SD-WAN continue to enhance existing offerings in the enterprise space? Will bundling continue to be a major strategy? Will SD-WAN eventually compete with or supplant MPLS for some providers? These questions remain, but regardless of the answers, the potential SD-WAN presents for CSPs, vendors, and subscribers remains compelling.
