The Top Disruptive Networking Technologies Heading Your Way in 2016

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2016 WAN Crystal Ball

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The networking software revolution will continue to progress in 2016 - some will refer to this as Software-Defined Networking, or SDN, but it includes much more. We are in the middle of a massive multi-year industry transition away from hardware delivery of networking solutions to software delivery of networking solutions. Adoption should get even stronger as more network stalwarts release software versions of their legacy products. Functions such as firewalls, routers, load balancers, and WAN optimizers are being deployed as virtual appliances running on commodity server infrastructure.

Companies on the leading edge of the network software revolution are shipping more than 75% of their products as software, and that adoption curve will continue. Forward-looking IT organizations that have adopted virtualization and solved the historic rigid partitioning of departments are poised to benefit greatly from this trend. Ultimately, software provides greater flexibility by decoupling the hardware upgrade cycle from the software upgrade cycle, and helps reduce the burden of costly hardware upgrades and end-of-life challenges.

Long Live the Network Software Revolution!

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In 2016, we will also see the emergence of new branch office architectures. Instead of deploying expensive, integrated services routers, which is basically a swiss-army knife, we envisage enterprises preferring a couple of new alternatives: one is a thin branch, and the other is a converged branch.

The Thin Branch: As services become more centralized and/or regionalized, the traditional networking footprint for small to medium branches can be replaced with a simple SD-WAN edge device. Instead of running heavy and complex voice or firewall services in the branch on the swiss-army knife router, you can run those centrally, in the cloud, or regionally to simply the branch. This works well for retail businesses.

The Hyper-Converged Branch: For larger branches, the right combination of compute, storage and networking running in the branch can provide local users with maximum performance and productivity. In this case, an SD-WAN appliance can run as a virtual machine on the converged platform. This architecture works well for organizations where there are very skilled users operating on large documents or design files, such as a law firm or engineering office.

A New Way of Approaching the Branch Office

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From an enterprise point-of-view, interest in SD-WAN has gone through the roof compared to last year. SD-WAN enables enterprises to flexibly connect users to applications over any combination of connectivity, including MPLS, Internet or wireless. It is a clean-slate re-think of wide area networking. Industry-wide, we are going to see SD-WAN deployments grow from hundreds of enterprises today to thousands of enterprises within the next 12 months. Leading analyst firm Gartner has predicted that by the end of 2019, 30% of enterprises will use SD-WAN products in all their branches1. We believe it will grow even faster based on two big drivers: 1) the widening gap between MPLS and consumer broadband costs, and 2) the shift of applications moving from the data center to the cloud.

With SD-WAN, enterprises can cost-effectively activate idle MPLS or Internet links, add broadband Internet as part of a hybrid (MPLS + Internet) WAN, or even move to an all-broadband branch. Key SD-WAN capabilities include Dynamic Path Control, zero-touch provisioning, and centralized business intent policies.

Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Goes Mainstream

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1 Gartner: Market Guide for Software-Defined WAN, December 1, 2015, Bjarne Munch, Sorell Slaymaker, Andrew Lerner, Neil Rickard

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In 2016, we will see more 4G LTE deployed in the branch, which will allow IT organizations to quickly deliver the bandwidth remote users need - either as part of a rapid, instant-on branch start-up, or as a secondary source of connectivity to help ensure uptime. This includes always-on access to business-critical applications in the event of a blackout or brownout on primary WAN links.

4G LTE can be an ideal solution for branch start-up or fallback link technology, although it can be costly and is typically based on usage.

More 4G LTE for the Branch

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Today, if we look at architectures for WANs and where to deploy advanced networking services like firewalls or universal communications, IT is either forced to 1) distribute these functions to the branches, which drives up branch complexity and increases management costs, or 2) implement those services centrally in a data center, simplifying management but often impacting user experience due to the backhaul involved in dragging the traffic to the central site.

Regionalized networking services can be deployed in private regional network hubs, owned and operated by the enterprise. In North America, enterprises may have four or five regional hubs. For global enterprises, there may be five to 20 regional hubs. For companies that would rather outsource this altogether we are seeing the emergence of security-as-a-service offerings such as Zscaler, or Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) offerings with the likes of Orange Business Services and others. We also see IT organizations rolling out network hubs with Equinix, or using Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings such as those delivered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure to deploy their own cloud-based regional hubs. This trend dovetails nicely with SD-WAN, which enables enterprises to build virtual WANs, which span physical locations, and also their cloud operations, be it IaaS, SaaS, or as we discuss here: XaaS. This will encourage more regionalized service deployment in 2016.

Regionalized Networking Services on the Rise

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While the industry continues to navigate its way through the deluge of varying SDN technologies and products, the adoption of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) within service providers and carriers will start to take off. This market is in the process of moving away from racks of custom hardware to more flexible software solutions – delivering easy-to-purchase, managed WAN and security services.

Service providers now realize they can virtualize network functions using software, and in 2016, we will see more NFV adoption, independent of SDN roll-outs.

Carrier NFV Roll-Outs Expected

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In 2016, as SD-WAN gains additional attention and momentum among enterprise IT organizations, we expect to see service providers more quickly augmenting their MPLS services with some form of a managed SD-WAN service offering.

Most carriers want to provide greater value to their customers. From a strategic point of view, they want to focus on customer needs for end-to-end solutions. As a result, SD-WAN is providing customers with the experience they need to effectively connect users to applications. This helps explain why the SD-WAN movement is a positive opportunity for carriers rather than what many perceive to be an industry threat.

The Possibility of an Outsourced SD-WAN

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Finally, as the amount of network health information collected increases, 2016 will see more powerful analytics and visibility techniques emerge. This will help IT teams to simultaneously identify broader usage trends, as well as be guided though the gigabytes of raw data to more easily find the “needle in the haystack” when troubleshooting network and application issues.

Troubleshooting tools that report on latency, loss and application usage data will prevail as automation brings together all this information and displays trouble spots across the network.

Identify IT = Control IT

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About Silver PeakSilver Peak gives enterprises and service providers the flexibility to securely connect their users to their applications via the most cost-effective source of connectivity available. Silver Peak customers can quickly migrate to an enterprise-grade WAN that leverages the Internet (often referred to as SD-WAN), while dramatically improving application performance and lowering networking costs.

For more information on Silver Peak SD-WAN solutions, visit www.silver-peak.com.

© Silver Peak Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. All other brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of, and are used to identify, products or services of their respective owners. SP020 01/16

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