SD-WAN technology is seeing substantial growth, according to a new SD-WAN adoption study commissioned by IT security vendor Barracuda Networks, Inc. One third of enterprise IT professionals surveyed said they had deployed SD-WAN at most of their locations. Nearly half of respondents (49%) are in the process of doing so or will in the next year.
Researchers looked at the reasons for this growth, as well as key concerns about SD-WAN. The survey had more than 900 respondents at global enterprises.
SD-WAN Adoption Study
According to the research, enterprises are looking to SD-WAN technologies to help address the need for higher bandwidth, which is driven by high demand for cloud services and applications. Almost half of all respondents said they had cut their overall costs thanks to their investment in SD-WAN, with 36% citing reduced costs for MPLS services.
Among the SD-WAN adoption study’s other findings:
- Seven-in-10 IT leaders are concerned that they will risk losing a competitive advantage if they don’t update their WAN.
- Security is a top priority when choosing an SD-WAN solution.
- More than eight-in-10 (81%) said that advanced threat protection and centralized management were very important or crucial to their SD-WAN purchase.
“These findings show that as IT professionals increasingly turn to SD-WAN to address their networking challenges, they’re looking for solutions that provide security, simplicity, and cost savings,” said Klaus Gheri, Barracuda Networks Inc. vice president of network security, in a prepared statement.
