Compare the SD-WAN Market

SD WAN Services

Compare DIY, Co-Managed & Fully Managed SD WAN across 100+ vendors and service providers with Netify

  • Find out which service providers match your needs
  • Get the advice you need from our research team
  • For North American and UK National and Multinational companies

Compare The SD WAN Market

Managed SD WAN Services Marketplace

Our shortlist comparison tool compares the latest SD WAN managed services and SASE/SSE Cybersecurity options with features which include optimization, bonding, management tools, SASE security, reporting and more. IT teams are challenged to understand how their specific Enterprise requirements map to the vendor and service provider managed services and solutions market. Use the Netify assessment to save your IT team time.

Resources

Compare DIY & Managed SD WAN in 3 easy steps

It takes just few minutes to find DIY & Managed SD WAN services that fit your specific needs across Medium to Large National and Multinational businesses.

Comparison

Managed Services Options

The following details the different options which exist for IT teams considering managed services.

Managed Service Provider

Service Providers offer traditional managed service options which incudes both the underlay (connectivity - DIA or MPLS) and overlay (vendor technology) together with other options across cloud and voice.

  • Offers end to end outsourced capability from billing to support
  • Consolidate both underlay and overlay in one single capability
  • Often offer complete managed service portfolio including security, CDN, voice and cloud
  • Selecting providers offer connectivity to tier-1 backbones with robust latency and jitter SLA's

Vendor

The majority of SD WAN vendors do not sell directly to end clients preferring to use distributers and partners. There are a select few vendors that offer direct fully managed services which differ from the traditional service provider market.

  • Highly focussed capability often with support for underlay, gateways and private backbone connectivity
  • Solutions are generally focussed on SD WAN and Security which narrows their capability
  • Often require involvement from partners which are an unknown quantity

Partner

SD WAN Partners are perhaps the hardest solutions to evaluate which is in part due the numerous companies and solutions which are saturating the market. Leading vendors such as Cisco offer global partners which span thousands of options.

  • Huge range of partners to choose from on a global basis
  • Some vendors do not sell direct to customers which means you must select a trusted partner
  • Partner capability varies with accreditations pointing to their expertise
  • Partner selection is one of the biggest managed services challenges

Resources

DIY & Managed SD WAN Service Components

IT teams should consider the following components when comparing SD WAN services.

Summary

Why should you choose DIY vs Managed SD WAN?

What is DIY SD WAN?

DIY SD WAN offers complete control of your solution with every aspect managed by your IT team. The typical organization will already understand and posses accreditations with staff to ensure in-country and global coverage. Responsibilities include deployment, configuration, change requests, monitoring and support.

What is Managed SD WAN?

Managed SD WAN provides an as-a-service capability with out of the box configuration based on your specific needs. Managed services include deployment, setup, 24*7 monitoring and support with optional service management throughout contract.

In both respects, it is critical to understand your requirements today but also into the near future as selecting the wrong capability could be detrimental to your Enterprise.

What are the use cases for Managed SD WAN?

Companies which opt to outsource their WAN typically lack the resources within IT to configure, deploy, maintain and monitor services. The capability to manage their network infrastructure is not viable or of core interest to the business.

Where requirements are simple and changes do not occur on a regular basis, managed services are an ideal way for businesses to concentrate on their day to day value without worrying about the service and security of their WAN.

What are the use cases for DIY SD WAN?

DIY SD WAN is often adopted by small businesses where the infrastructure does not warrant paying additional costs for management or large global Enterprise organizations with complex requirements.

With the right IT team, accreditations and training, DIY SD WAN is the most agile option to quickly react to changes and deal with bespoke and complex requirements.

What is the best deployment option for your business?

The best deployment option for your business is dependent on analysis of needs. Netify recommends understanding:

  • What technical expertise does your business have internally
  • Does your business have the resource to staff SD WAN on a 365/24/7 basis
  • What value is added by opting to manage your WAN internally
  • How complex are your requirements
  • Do you need to react quickly to issues and problems
  • Does your business need to outsource other telecoms services including SASE security, cloud and voice
  • How much control does your business need
  • Does the business have full awareness of regulations and frameworks
  • Can your business offer an internal workable SLA (Service Level Agreement)

Managed SASE Security is also one of the critical areas your business should consider. The management of SD WAN is only one component of an overall security strategy to ensure services such as Advanced Threat Protection, Secure Web Gateway, Cloud Access Security Broker, Next Generation Firewall, Zero Trust Network Access and more are considered.

The majority of managed service providers also offer management of security as a core component of their SD WAN offering. By 2025, as a result of digital business projects, 75% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the traditional, centralized data center or cloud.

What are the Pros of Managed SD WAN?

Managed SD WAN Pros & Cons

Consider the items below when creating your vendor shortlist.

Pros

  • As-service-approach allows your business to totally outsource all SD WAN elements
  • Expertise across your selected vendors which is constantly kept up to date
  • Leverage other products which include Cloud (AWS, Azure, Google) and Voice services
  • Cost savings are achieved by consolidation of SD WAN overlay and underlay

Cons

  • Depending on the provider or vendor, change requests may require validation which creates delay
  • Service options vary across solution offerings
  • Configuration options are often standard and lack flexibility and agility
Statistics

Managed SD WAN market worth

 

Managed SASE sector spend

(based on 2021 stats)
2021$2.9B
2027$5.36B

(measured in billions USD)

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