ISG Launches Study on Rapidly Growing SDN Market

Upcoming ISG Provider Lens report will examine the provider market for SDN, SD-WAN, 5G and related technologies

STAMFORD, Conn., Feb. 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a leading global technology research and advisory firm, has launched a research study examining software-defined networking (SDN) providers and the services they offer across the globe.

The study results will be published in a comprehensive ISG Provider Lens report, called Network – Software Defined Solutions and Service Partners, scheduled to be released in July. The report will cover global network offerings related to software-defined networking, including SD-WAN and mobile technologies.

Enterprise buyers will be able to use information from the report to evaluate their current vendor relationships, potential new engagements and available offerings, while ISG advisors use the information to recommend providers to the firm’s buy-side clients.

The new report examines the fast-growing SDN and SD-WAN networking market, said Jan Erik Aase, director and global leader, ISG Provider Lens Research. “The SDN and SD-WAN segments are evolving and rapidly increasing in market share and presence, as are several other related network services,” he said. “Across the globe, enterprises are looking to these new networking technologies to increase their agility and flexibility, boost customer satisfaction and decrease overall network costs.”

ISG has distributed surveys to more than 110 networking and SDN technology and service providers. Working in collaboration with ISG’s global advisors, the research team will produce six quadrants representing the services and products the typical enterprise client is buying in the networking and SDN space, based on ISG’s experience working with its clients. The six quadrants that will be covered are:

• Managed WAN Services, covering the features and functionality that carriers offer in their wide-area networks (WANs) and at the customer point of demarcation. They are a collection of value-added services that include monitoring and reporting, security and outsourced customer premises equipment functions. Many enterprises perceive managed WAN services as a means to outsource IT functions, and they purchase them along with consulting and professional services to assess, design and implement their enterprise networks.

• Managed SD-WAN Services, providing the benefits of SDN technology over traditional hardware-based networking. These services offer an overlay architecture with a networking foundation that is much easier to manage than legacy WANs, essentially moving the control layer to the cloud and in the process, centralizing and simplifying network management. This overlay design abstracts software from hardware, enabling network virtualization and making the network more elastic.

• SDN Transformation Services (Consulting & Implementation), offering SDN technology over traditional hardware-based networking. Suppliers have been increasingly active as advisors or consultants in this area and are also working as implementation enactors, supplying complete or partial solutions to enterprises. Consulting companies, large vendors and managed network services providers have also been actively involved in offering SD-WAN packages in this area.

• SD-WAN Equipment and Service Suppliers (DIY), focusing on suppliers that have been active in directly selling SD-WAN solutions to enterprises for their DIY implementations. These suppliers are increasingly partnering with licensed telco and service providers in their delivery packages in this space.

• Network Technologies Suppliers (Core to Mobile), focusing on the SD technology networking approach that eliminates the complex and static nature of legacy distributed network architectures by using a standards-based software abstraction between the network control plane and underlying data forwarding plane, including both physical and virtual devices. It enables improvements in network agility and automation while substantially reducing the cost of network operations when compared with traditional network deployments.

• Mobile Network (4G/5G) Additional (non-core) Services, focusing on fifth-generation, or 5G, mobile networks, which are designed to provide higher capacity than the current 4G, allowing a greater density of mobile broadband users at higher transfer speeds and supporting more device-to-device, reliable and massive machine communications. It is also aimed at lower latency and battery consumption than 4G equipment and is targeted for use with mobile high-speed data and the Internet of Things (IoT). This segment covers specific mobility-targeted services or solutions, applications, management systems and methods, end-device control and management and related services.

The report will cover the global networking and SDN market and examine products and services available in the U.S., Germany, the U.K. and the Nordic countries. ISG analysts Kenn Walters, Ron Exler and Avimanyu Basu will serve as authors of the report.