Vertical Systems Group’s SD-WAN Leaderboard remained mostly stable through the end of last year. AT&T, Hughes, Verizon, CenturyLink, Windstream, Aryaka and Comcast each have at least a 2% SD-WAN market share, counting installed and billable carrier-managed customer sites in the U.S.
The firm says that the top three companies on the list—AT&T, Hughes and Verizon— were unchanged from the previous Leaderboard. The changes are that CenturyLink moved up to the fourth position, Windstream dropped to fifth and Fusion moved from the Leaderboard to the Challenge Tier.
Five companies were in the Challenge Tier. These companies controlled between 1% and 2% of the market. In alphabetical order, they are Fusion, GTT, Masergy, Meriplex and TPx.
The year was solid, though the path ahead is unclear. “The U.S.-managed SD-WAN market expanded rapidly in 2019 as backlogged orders from the prior year were fulfilled by key service providers,” Rick Malone, principal of Vertical Systems Group, said in a press release. “While the duration and depth of the coronavirus economic collapse is unknown, we expect resiliency across bandwidth intensive VPN markets, but acute vulnerability for the SD-WAN networks supporting the retail and travel verticals.”
SD-WAN Market Share
Many companies were in the Market Tier of VSG’s assessment. These providers had market share below 1%. Some of these – also in alphabetical order – are AireSpring, Bigleaf, BT, CBTS, Cincinnati Bell, Cogent, Colt, Consolidated Communications, Cox, DQE Communications, FirstLight, Frontier, Intelsat, MetTel, Neutrona, NTT, Orange Business, PCCW Global, PS Lightwave, RCN Business, SES, SDN Communications, Segra, SingTel, Spectrum Enterprise, Sprint, Syringa, T-Systems, Tata, Telefonica, Telia Carrier, Veracity Networks, Virgin Media Business, Vodafone and Zayo. This group includes international companies that manage U.S. sites.
VSG also provided insight into SD-WAN market share and other 2019 U.S. market dynamics:
- Billable installations of Carrier Managed SD-WAN Services increased 89%. Large businesses and enterprises are increasingly relying on service providers to help configure, implement and manage their SD-WAN deployments.
- Bigleaf and Sprint, which were both cited in the 2018 Challenge Tier, dropped into the 2019 Market Player tier.
- Comcast is the only service provider on the Leaderboard that attained MEF 3.0 SD-WAN Services certification. This market differentiator assures compliance with the MEF 70 global standard for SD-WAN managed services.
- Five leading technologies being offered are VMware by VeloCloud, Cisco vEdge (Viptela), Cisco Meraki MX, Fortinet and Versa. Several SD-WAN providers utilize internally developed technologies. Versa is the only supplier that has achieved MEF 3.0 SD-WAN Technology certification.
VSG last looked at the SD-WAN sector in May 2019. The Leaderboard, which looked at year-end 2018 results, was comprised of AT&T, Hughes, Verizon, Windstream, CenturyLink, Aryaka, Fusion and Comcast.
