First, market integration in the update
Just when you thought the news SD-WAN while reducing, Oracle acquired Talari. Prior to this, VMware acquired VeloCloud, Riverbed and Cisco acquired Viptela acquisition Ocedo. Because they can not maintain the existing large suppliers in the market, predicted there will be more next SD-WAN vendors were acquired or face closure, we will see at least one service provider to acquire SD-WAN suppliers in 2019, only SD-WAN consolidate its ownership of the goods. In addition to the acquisition of vendors, some service providers will join the competition and with an integrated strategy, this integration strategy will be successful if it? Is another matter.
Two, MPLS will be eroded
You may have seen statistics show that the customer has not disappeared MPLS, and MPLS income has not been the arrival of SD-WAN is compromised. But remember, we are at the beginning of SD-WAN trend, many early adopters SD-WAN MPLS will only put in place, while the SD-WAN stratification. As suppliers to adopt similar MPLS performance and the use of multiple broadband links 4G / LTE backed improve service level agreements will result in price erosion of MPLS link, or to reduce the MPLS newly installed, or both this trend will soon react in the data.
Third, some service providers will effectively sell and deploy SD-WAN
Service providers will continue to face such a dilemma: hug SD-WAN, SD-WAN, or both, after taking into account the push. This NFV suppliers, to hedge their bets by giving oral function and virtual network services are no different, these functions may be effective but not very good, but they are still pushing their own proprietary hardware that currently may appear now better price and performance. In any case, it is clear that enterprise WAN is very interested, and business and competitive pressures make companies have to upgrade their WAN.
Some of the early addition of SD-WAN competing service providers face the challenge of marketing services, they were aware of the following points:
• Their sales teams are accustomed to selling basic connectivity services, it may not be good at sales SD-WAN value-added services.
• Their run-time service operations team also encountered similar problems in its SD-WAN cloud infrastructure.
• Due to the strategic importance of SD-WAN, and their point of contact in the enterprise has just expanded from WAN engineers to IT director or CIO.
Lack of operating experience may lead manufacturers to provide white label or tag with the service provider jointly hosted or turnkey solutions. Recently announced Netcracker Business Cloud products fall into this category, on behalf of the vendor hosting service provider operations turnkey solutions. If this model is successful, there will be more manufacturers or system integrators to provide the same service.
Fourth, service providers need to improve their ability to cooperate
One of the principles SD-WAN solution is provided by the multi-link redundancy. In order to make this capability effectively, service providers need independence as much as possible to promote the link path and ensure that these cloud point SD-WAN links have sufficient redundancy. This means that a single provider should not provide all of the "last mile" infrastructure. In addition, many SD-WAN implementation will use the 4G / LTE link, if the service provider is not the mobile operator, you need to work with mobile providers.
At the same time, service providers will be forced to provide quick connections to popular public cloud, as part of its SD-WAN products. This means that they are either, Digital Realty and other providers to exchange points with Equinix, they must either directly with major public cloud negotiated transactions.
This means service providers need to increase the ability to cooperate, and their sales teams need to be good at selling bundled link, not just the typical ××× -L2 or L3 product. This also means that service providers need in the cloud connectivity solutions more intelligent so popular public cloud convert it to a virtual private cloud. Sales and operations teams of education and training will be a key factor in the success of the SD-WAN.
Fifth, system integrators will rise
System integrators are expected to accelerate in 2019, and management of SD-WAN products to market. In addition to some large companies may choose to run their own SD-WAN global services, many small and medium companies want to get hosting services. System integrators can also provide cross-service provider of products and create the required specific enterprise custom portal and workflow.
Since it is considered a service provider agnostic, some companies may prefer to system integrators, rather than a single service provider. System integrators the flexibility to choose the best connectivity options from multiple service providers, while building SP-agnostic infrastructure for cloud-based management systems. They will also have more software developers to customize or extend the functionality of SD-WAN gateway necessary to meet specific business needs.
Another aspect in favor of systems integrators is that they can provide services for enterprises outside the scope of the WAN. Given the SD-WAN tend to branch across infrastructure, enterprise security and cloud development platform, it may make a slight advantage over systems integrators now many do not have the level of knowledge in the field of service providers.
Fundamentally, nothing prevents service providers to expand their service. In fact, some service providers do in hosting the branch, managed security and even private cloud hosting providing value-added services. However, many companies are not used to sell products to companies outside of the connector. Challenges faced by these companies is that they are accustomed to insist on sales of products, improve efficiency, or make the necessary investments to upgrade to become more comprehensive service provider, and bear all risks attendant. This decision must be made at the beginning of 2019, because SD-WAN land battle on a global scale has reached its climax.
Fortunately, favor the brave, also favored wise pragmatist, then in the end it will be which one do?