New rankings from Vertical Systems Group put AT&T, Hughes, Verizon, Windstream, CenturyLink, Aryaka, Fusion and Comcast, respectively atop its 2018 carrier managed SD-WAN leaderboard, which measures SD-WAN market share.
According to Vertical Systems Group, these companies had the highest market shares of installed carrier managed SD-WAN customer sites in the U.S. as of the end of last year.
Trailing the top eight firms, placing in what Vertical Systems Group calls its challenge tier, were, in alphabetical order: Bigleaf, GTT, Masergy, Meriplex, Sprint, and TPx.
Vertical Systems Group explains that SD-WAN is one of the three managed VPN segments that the company follows, the others being MPLS and site-to-site VPNs.
The company’s research shows that most of the current carrier managed SD-WAN service installations are hybrid configurations that include partial conversions of existing site-to-site and MPLS networks. Perhaps not surprisingly, the top five managed SD-WAN companies are also the leading providers of dedicated IP VPN services, including landline and satellite connectivity.
Companies use a selection of SDN-based technologies to deliver Carrier Managed SD-WAN services. The fourteen leaderboard and challenger companies use solutions from Cisco/Viptela, Silver Peak, Versa, and VMware/VeloCloud, or employ their own internally developed technologies. Several SD-WAN service providers offer multiple solutions.
For purposes of the rankings, Vertical Systems Group defines a carrier-managed SD-WAN Service as a carrier-grade offering for business customers managed by a network operator that uses an SDN architecture, enables dynamic customer edge site connectivity, and provides centralized network control and visibility end-to-end.
