A key driver for managed services is the ongoing migration to SD-WAN. Despite vendor promises, SD-WAN is significantly more complex than a “plug-and-play” solution. This has led to significant growth in managed SD-WAN services. According to Gartner, nearly two-thirds of organizations prefer managed SD-WAN over the DIY approach.
Gartner predicts enterprise spending on managed SD-WAN services will grow over 76% in 2023. They predict 40% of global enterprise SD-WAN initiatives will source some or all of their underlying WAN transport from SD-WAN managed service providers. Frost & Sullivan reports that an estimated 80% of enterprises are choosing managed SD-WAN services.
Global network infrastructure is complicated, time-consuming and resource-intensive. When SD-WAN is purchased as a separate product, it comes with substantial long-term costs and resource burdens.
SD-WAN DIY implementations require enterprise IT teams to handle the complicated process of designing and engineering a new architecture that fits with an existing network, either in parallel, or as a replacement.
There are many time and cost burdens for internal IT and other business units. It requires negotiating carrier contracts with multiple vendors, provisioning and deploying circuits, coordinating multiple NOC support organizations, and keeping track of a quagmire of billing issues.