SD-WAN and Technological Maturity
The most commonly selected “business priority” for respondents’ organizations was to become a data-driven business. That’s different from the second most popular priority: becoming a digital company. And IDC pointed to a significant diffierence between those two drivers.
“Data and digital are foundational initiatives: How companies will operate and grow in the future depends on them. However, although they are connected, they are not at the same level of maturity. In our survey, companies that are prioritizing digital tend to have ‘lagging’ characteristics.”
And those lagging characterstics include not planning to use SD-WAN or using a first-generation solution.
IDC wrote that data-focused companies have established a more mature technology posture and in more cases have completely migrated to SD-WAN (and an advanced version at that).
“In both cases, SD-WAN is a marker of technological maturity. We see this throughout the research: Organizations that are most advanced in their use of technology to solve business problems also tend to be more advanced in their use of SD-WAN,” they wrote.
C3 Technology Advisors lead consultant Matthew Toth agreed that a correlation exists between SD-WAN deployment and IT maturity.
“If a client hasn’t deployed SD WAN, it’s an almost easy assumption that they underinvest in IT generally. I figure that their office walls are also probably covered in fake wood panels,” Toth told Channel Futures.
