Nearly four months into the pandemic, businesses are beginning to question the suitability of SD-WAN solutions for the remote workforce. According to a new report from Accelerate, half of UK companies see technology as "less relevant".
Instead, companies are turning to SASE's unique cloud service model, which combines SD-WAN functionality with cloud-based security. According to Accelerate, enterprises find that WAN optimization works quite well and would prefer to opt for centralized security and a single public point of entry.
Disadvantages of SD-WAN
Respondents who were not considering implementing SD-WAN stated that it does not support worker access (although most organizations using SD-WAN say it does exactly that) and that it is too difficult to find a suitable technology partner or qualified individuals to hire. .
Commenting on the results, Accelerate CTO Darran Clare said the shift in focus toward SASE architectures is "natural."
“We also see concrete evidence that WAN optimization is far from dead, and such services can play a key role in improving the performance of cloud-hosted applications where latency is the underlying issue,” he stated.
"While most SD WAN and SASE vendors will advertise WAN Op's capabilities, these claims should not be taken at face value as the scale and depth of application optimization can vary widely."
For most companies interviewed for the report, top challenges include performance management and support for remote workers. Nearly half reported issues with bandwidth, infrastructure capacity, and an increase in the number of scattered and unmanaged devices.