SD-WAN Roundup: VMware, Silver Peak Lead Latest Gartner Rankings as CloudGenix, Fortinet Rise

Written by James Anderson
December 6, 2019

North American companies prefer do-it-yourself SD-WAN, according to Gartner, but that trend is shifting.

… listed on the leaderboard.

“It’s exciting to see that Gartner agrees with our cloud-first as-a-service approach to networking and it is also a testament to our customers who embarked on this journey with us some 10 years ago. Allowing our customers to focus on business intent rather than on painstakingly planning, operating and constantly troubleshooting their do-it-yourself infrastructures has been our vision since the company’s inception.”

Read our 2018 recap of Gartner’s first WAN Edge Magic Quadrant.

CloudGenix

The San Jose, California-based vendor rose in the Visionary Quadrant this year. CEO Kumar Ramachandran pointed to a few reasons why the company has met the “meaty” requirements that Fortune 1000 enterprises bring to the table.

CloudGenix’s Kumar Ramachandran

Ramachandran said the company has developed its architecture to provide a “true, autonomous networking” experience. A recent innovation is its CloudBlades platform, which allows customers to use the cloud clean up hardware sprawl at their branch locations and remain flexible with vendor selection.

“[Previously] if you wanted best-of-breed, it was a nightmare,” Ramachandran said.

He said CloudGenix has benefited from its channel relationships, which include VARs, system integrators and several master agents. One factor for channel success, he said, is the ability to offer carrier-neutral managed service options.

Quick Hits:

Juniper Networks this week expanded its SD-WAN solution to include SD-LAN. Read our story at Channel Futures.
Multiple vendors, including Silver Peak and Citrix now offer support for the AWS Transit Gateway network manager. SDxCentral has the story.
If you’re looking for a headline, check out SDxCentral’s recap of Aviatrix CEO Steve Mullaney’s comments. Mullaney projected the SD-WAN to lose traction as AWS announces more offerings like its Transit Gateway that make branch connectivity easier: “That [SD-WAN] market is on the decline because more and more the center of gravity goes into the cloud.”