Firms prefer to work with managed service providers for SD-WAN migration: IDC

With an increase in the number of enterprises migrating to cloud-based applications as part of their digital journeys and requiring a reliable network infrastructure to support the same, a recent report by International Data Corporation’s (IDC) shows that nearly half (45%) of Indian enterprises said that they would prefer working with managed service providers (MSPs) or systems integrators (SIs) to implement migration to SD-WAN, and nearly 36% of Indian enterprises will work with technology vendors for the same.

As many enterprises are looking to modernise their application infrastructure by adopting software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and transitioning on-premises workloads to public/private clouds, cloud managed SD-WAN services adoption is set to increase, said Sakshi Grover, Research Manager, Future of Trust and Future of Work, IDC India.

A June 2022 report by the analyst showed that 16% of Indian enterprises have a communication service provider deliver a comprehensive solution for all their WAN network and security services, however, this is set to increase in the future. Grover said that “cloud services and network security will act as drivers to establish Edge, SD-WAN and content delivery networks”.

She added that enterprises in India plan to leverage content delivery network (CDN), network functions virtualisation (NFV), SD-WAN, edge services, and Internet of Things (IoT) over the next two years as they build their connected enterprise architecture.

The report further showed that 34% of Indian enterprises already have SD-WAN installed and in-use, and 32% of Indian enterprises plan to migrate their existing WAN/network connections to an SD-WAN alternative within the next 2 years.

 “Organisations must ensure their network architectures are built efficiently while anticipating increasing bandwidth, security concerns, and connected endpoints," said Neha Gupta, Senior Research Manager at IDC.

A February outlook on the IT market by research firm GlobalData said, the enterprise spending opportunity for SD-WAN in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 25.6% between 2020 and 2025. Also, as per the GlobalData’s IT decision maker survey carried out in mid-2021, around 73.5% of the respondents in India confirmed their plans to invest on SD-WAN over next two years and as a result, it said, many are with a managed IT service provider or a systems integrator, while choosing an SD-WAN vendor to implement migration.