CP List Revisited: 20 Top SD-WAN Providers for 2019

A lot can happen in a year, especially if you’re in the highly competitive and ever-changing field of SD-WAN.

Last March, our second “CP List” focused on SD-WAN with analysts, members of the Channel Partners Editorial Advisory Board and other industry experts sharing their views with us on what it now takes to succeed in SD-WAN. We’re back with an updated list and fresh views on changes in the competitive landscape during the past year.

Brian Washburn, practice leader of network transformation and cloud service for Ovum, said in the context of SD-WAN, there is still a confusion of vendor and service providers, each with their own, and sometimes conflicting, messages.

Ovum’s Brian Washburn

“We’ve seen an increase in customers that have started SD-WAN trials or small deployments,” he said. “Those enterprises learn that whether or not SD-WAN itself is ‘easy,’ the technology triggers more work and decisions that end up becoming a bigger, more complicated network transformation.”

Bryan Reynolds, TBI‘s director of sales operations and editorial advisory board member, said last year it was the “big three V’s (VeloCloud, Versa, Viptela).”

“The field has certainly opened up, now including CloudGenix more regularly, along with Fortinet SD-WAN, Cato Networks, BigLeaf, Ecessa and others,” he said. “It’s no longer, ‘Oh you are a Cisco show, you must want Viptela’ or ‘You have [an] AWS environment, you must want VeloCloud,’ It is all about the business needs and applications.”

TBI’s Bryan Reynolds

Expectations are higher now, said Matthew Toth, founder and lead consultant of Collaborative Communications Consulting (C3).

“It’s not treated as ‘new technology’ now,” he said. “The space became hypercompetitive so quickly that products matured quickly to keep up with the inflow of new providers and fast-evolving existing providers. If I’m Cisco, I’m nervous. I don’t need Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts (CCIEs) or even Cisco Certified Network Associates (CCNAs) to run my WAN anymore.”

Harry Paparizos, Clarify360‘s vice president of engineering, said it’s an interesting time in the SD-WAN market.

“We’ve seen some acquisitions occurring as established tech providers look to jump into the SD-WAN market quickly, for example Oracle’s purchase of Talari in late 2018, VMware’s purchase of Velocloud in early 2018 and Cisco’s purchase of Viptela in 2017,” he said. “We’re also starting to see partnerships form like C3 and VeloCloud and PanTerra Networks joining forces with Bigleaf. Interoperability with hyperscale cloud providers is also a client expectation. We’re seeing more attention to a multicloud approach from many of the providers.”

Based on feedback from analysts, experts and recent news reports, we’ve compiled a list, in alphabetical order, of 20 top SD-WAN providers that are making the most of the current competitive landscape and charting success. The list offers a mix of well-known providers as well as lesser-known companies that are making big strides in SD-WAN.

Adaptiv

Paparizos cites Adaptiv Networks as a company that provides solutions for specific client use cases and advantages.

“Customer expectations are changing in today’s SD-WAN environment, driving cutting-edge solutions to be delivered by providers,” said Kelly Ratcliff, Clarify360’s CEO. “Today it’s not only the initial migration to SD-WAN, but next steps in their technology road map as cloud-based apps and critical business systems are being driven to branch offices with the same needs and capabilities that headquarters has. As in any network, the last mile is critical and with gigabit and Metro Ethernet connections being delivered, finding the optimal solution of price and performance is easier.”

Aryaka

Paparizos also cited Aryaka as one that provides solutions for specific client use cases and advantages. Aryaka and Next Dimension have initiated a partnership to provide Aryaka’s global SD-WAN service to multi-national enterprise customers that have a presence in Canada.

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