By CIOReview | Friday, August 16, 2024

A network-as-a-service (NaaS) option is the most advanced type of managed WAN. Most NaaS providers offer SD-WAN's core characteristics, such as redundancy and connectivity options, policy-driven optimized routes and traffic prioritization.

Fremont, CA: Technology does not necessarily evolve on its own. Customer preferences and introducing new technologies frequently propel the original technology ahead, generating new trends. A software-defined WAN is one example.

For example, early adopters of SD-WAN who faced complex WAN issues adopted DIY SD-WAN. However, this strategy has become less popular as corporations prefer managed SD-WAN implementations. Advances in AI, cloud, remote work, 5G, and wireless technologies have all contributed to SD-WAN growth.

SD-WAN is the current backbone of a distributed organization, but how it's delivered and used is changing. In the future, network experts should focus on the following SD-WAN trends:

SD-WAN as a Service

SD-WAN migration is a logical step for many IT shops to entirely exit the self-managed WAN industry. Over half of all SD-WAN deployments are managed rather than in-house.

Every managed network service provider offers many SD-WAN alternatives. The offers range from managed installations of DIY technology that a company may deploy on its own to carrier-specific offerings based on the carrier's network infrastructure and services.

A network-as-a-service (NaaS) option is the most advanced type of managed WAN. Most NaaS providers offer SD-WAN's core characteristics, such as redundancy and connectivity options, policy-driven optimized routes and traffic prioritization. Providers have long had similar control, optimization, and redundancy features in their middle-mile designs, so expanding the capabilities to customer sites was uncomplicated.

As part of the more significant, ongoing trend to anything-as-a-service purchasing, anticipate the appetite for SD-WAN as a service to drive broader adoption of complete NaaS services across industries and for businesses of all sizes.

AI in SD-WAN

Some SD-WAN systems now include artificial intelligence. AI will be incorporated into more SD-WAN services, both on-premises and service-based. In addition to employing AI to improve traffic path selection, SD-WAN services can help enterprises build better policy definitions, provide virtual assistant troubleshooting assistance, and produce smarter performance and security monitoring.

The promise, declared or inferred, is that AI applications would make network management more accessible for corporations and service providers. As they analyze and install services, network professionals must decide which products to use. Network professionals' faith in AI in network automation is anticipated to rise slower than the availability of AI-powered SD-WANs.