Cisco is tracking ahead of VMware in the latest SD-WAN market share report.

Dell’Oro Group just revealed its SD-WAN Quarterly Report, which points to consolidation in the industry. For example, Dell’Oro said the top five vendors held two-thirds of all revenue share. Cisco beat out VMware, Fortinet, Versa and HPE (which bought Silver Peak last year).

The rankings remained largely the same from the third-quarter report, except that Cisco moved past VMware into the top spot. It’s no surprise to see Cisco and VMware duking it out for SD-WAN market leadership, as we’ve seen the same top two in IHS Markit and IDC studies, although a recent Gartner study showcased the rise of their competitors.

State of the SD-WAN Market

More importantly, the global SD-WAN market showed significant signs of growth in the fourth quarter of last year. The market grew 50% over where it was in 2019’s fourth quarter.

Dell’Oro Group vice president Shin Umeda said the market grew 32% over the course of 2020 — approximately half of the 2019 rate. However, the market finished strong in the fourth quarter, despite a difficult business landscape. Umeda and Dell’Oro have noted before that COVID-19 significantly hampered deployment growth last year.

Dell’Oro’s Shin Umeda

“The combination of pent-up demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and an acceleration away from legacy technologies created a surge in SD-WAN adoption during the fourth quarter,” Umeda said.

Dell’Oro also concluded that security is playing a bigger role than ever in differentiating SD-WAN providers. You should check out Dell’Oro’s coverage of the Secure Access Service Edge market to learn more about the convergence of security and networking.

Vertical Systems Group last week noted that SD-WAN has actually disrupted the Ethernet services market.