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Thanks to the 2 year-plus global pandemic, the many challenges that go with managing company websites and networks have triggered lots of businesses and organizations to place a delay on their Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) deployments. However, there are new trends now occurring in the post-COVID 19 world that could “jump-start” SD-WAN in 2022 and beyond.

But if you’re still wondering just what exactly SD-WAN is, Flexiwan, an open source coding operation, defines it as a network that’s centrally managed and that allows organizations and enterprises to use lower cost, and different WAN interfaces like wireless networks and broadband. This is said to create an “enterprise network” in both a customizable and agile manner.

But what can you expect of SD-WAN going forward? According to a new report, as the new post-pandemic world begins to come together, network professionals need to pay strict attention to these new SD-WAN trends:  

SD-WAN as an Important Service 

Many early adopters were burdened with hard-to-solve issues deployed by do-it-yourself (DIY) SD-WAN. The approach is said to have worked well enough to improve service delivery while reducing management burdens.

But newer organizations that have experienced fewer issues have “followed along on the backs of DIY SD-WAN pioneers” with new products that have evolved rapidly. At some point, organizations with outsourced WANs started to demand identical improvements to their service, plus some freedom to mimic and match connectivity situations. As a result, service providers began to realize higher profit margins that were gained from far easier management.

Say the experts, SD-WAN migration looked like a rather logical place for IT shops to “flip the outsourcing switch,” so to speak, and abandon the WAN business altogether. This meant that SD-WAN deployments spiked rapidly over the course of 36 months. For example, they accounted for fewer than 8 percent of deployments in 2017 and by 2020, nearly half.

SD-WAN as a Secure Remote Access Service

According to coding and IT experts, SD-WAN functionality is directly related to the “hot market category” of Secure Access Service Edge or SASE. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a few SD-WAN providers pushed to install SD-WAN endpoints in homes and businesses as software or physical alliances. Other secure remote secure remote access providers would also offer options such as a cloud-based model.

Rather than enterprises managing two or three VPV appliances at a data center that would enable secure remote access directly to services, they would purchase the secure connectivity as a service in itself. The users would make a connection to the closest point of presence and communicate to a cloud provider PoP or a data center PoP. All communications would occur via a secure, “private middle mile.”

That said, two major trends will become more visible in 2022 and beyond: the combination of SD-WAN and secure remote access tech, while replacing SD-WAN with more secure remote access.

AI Enters SD-WAN

Artificial Intelligence is said to be coming to SD-WAN very soon. At the very least, IT will make its way to SD-WAN in their marketing efforts and materials in a big way. You can expect to see AI-infused SD-WAN products that come from vendors and service providers.

They will not only provide optimized traffic path selection, but the AI will make it possible for making better policy definitions, smarter performance, troubleshooting assistance, and above all, security monitoring.

It is said that it will be up to the network professionals to judge whether an AI application can simplify network management for managers and users when compared to former software designs that used to manage these functions. Time will tell, in other words.

WWAN and SD-WAN

Experts agree you can expect to see major increases in the usage of wireless links for “last-mile connectivity with an SD-WAN.” It is said that thanks to SD-WAN tech, 4G and 5G services are finally maturing. A few of the drivers for SD-WAN and WWAN include but are not limited to the following: 

–Implemented path diversity with the same carrier utilized for wired links. 

–The creation of carrier diversity. 

–The replacement of badly wired plants. 

–Avoidance of the cost associated with having to good links pulled to brand new sites.

During situations where WWAN is not the only connectivity choice, SD-WAN can enable a policy based control on how to utilize the WWAN service. But in situations where WWAN is the only choice, SD-WAN can be used to balance the traffic across multiple providers. It can also move traffic from services that are overloaded to less loaded ones which means better traffic performance and therefore improved quality of service.