Global Study Reveals Increased SD-WAN Deployments, But Networking And Security Challenges Persist

Organizations in India with SD-WAN in their organization saving $1.15 million on MPLS and networking costs over 12 months.

Highlights:

• One-third (37%) in India have already deployed SD-WAN in most of their sites, and 40% are in the process of doing so or will in the next year.
• Seven in ten (70%) respondents in India believe that SD-WAN will replace MPLS
• 97% in India agree security should be the No. 1 priority when considering an SD-WAN solution.

Barracuda Networks, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-delivered security and data protection solutions today released key findings from a new global research report, “Security, Connectivity, and Control: The Challenges and Opportunities of SD-WAN.” Commissioned by Barracuda, the study surveyed IT leaders and networking and security professionals to learn how widespread SD-WAN deployments are, how organizations are deploying them, and what benefits and challenges they’re seeing.

The report includes data from more than 900 respondents in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Respondents come from companies ranging from 1,000 to more than 5,000 employees across multiple sectors, including healthcare, finance, education, manufacturing, public sector, and retail.

Overall, the study indicates that SD-WAN deployments are increasing to address networking challenges resulting from the explosive growth of WAN traffic due to high demand for cloud applications and services. Security remains a top concern for an overwhelming majority of IT leaders as they consider upgrading to an SD-WAN solution.

Highlights include:

• Networking challenges are common with current WAN setups.
  • Top three challenges in India are performance between locations (64%), rapid network expansion (60%), and complexity (55%).
• SD-WAN deployments are on the rise.
  • In India One-third (37%)have already deployed SD-WAN in most of their sites, and 40 percent are in the process of doing so or will in the next year.
  • 78percent of IT leaders in India said they experienced increased network security since deploying SD-Wan
• Security is a top priority when choosing an SD-WAN solution.
  • Over three quarters (78%) of respondents in India agree that they don’t need to invest in any other security as their SD-WAN solution contains everything required
  • SD-WAN offers improved security and lower costs.
    • Organizations in India with SD-WAN in their organization or in their sights estimate a saving of $1.15 million on MPLS and networking costs over 12 months, as a result of implementing SD-WAN

“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, VP, Network Security, Barracuda. “Barracuda meets those needs by offering a single solution combining advanced security and SD-WAN.”

With secure SD-WAN and advanced security, Barracuda CloudGen Firewalls are an all-in-one solution that can be deployed on premises as a physical or virtual appliance or in the cloud, redefining the role of a firewall and helping customers optimize distributed networks. – CT Bureau