The global SD-WAN infrastructure industry is large and growing, and revenue exceeded $5.13 billion in 2023 at a year-over-year (YoY) growth of 42.2%. The industry is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.3% from 2023 to 2028, mainly driven by accelerated digital transformation, more complex network environments, and massive amounts of traffic generated from the cloud. To deal with network demands, businesses are replacing existing branch hardware (routers, firewalls, and WAN optimization devices), wherever applicable, with SD-WAN appliances that can deliver multiple functions.

Moreover, SD-WAN technologies placed at customers’ edge locations facilitate the convergence of networks and security to meet rapidly changing business needs without compromising on operational performance. SD-WAN is the first step toward secure access service edge (SASE), that is, the integration of SD-WAN with a range of security functionalities, including secure web gateways, zero-trust network access (ZTNA), cloud access security brokers, and firewall-as-a-service. All these functionalities can be centrally managed through software, simplifying deployments, optimizing network costs, and improving application performance.

Globally, businesses continue to prefer managed SD-WAN solutions. This trend is pushing SD-WAN vendors to build partnerships that will help tap the industry’s potential. The SD-WAN vendor partner channel typically includes network or managed service providers (NSPs/MSPs), system integrators, application service providers, and value-added resellers (VARs).

Author: Leandro Agion