Quadrant Knowledge Solutions announced today that it has named VMware as a 2021 technology leader in the SPARK Matrix analysis of the global Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) market.
The Quadrant Knowledge Solutions SPARK Matrix™ includes a detailed analysis of global SD-WAN market dynamics, major trends, vendor landscape, and competitive positioning. The study provides a competitive analysis and ranking of the leading SD-WAN vendors in the form of its SPARK Matrix, providing strategic information for users to evaluate different vendor capabilities, competitive differentiation, and market position.
The global trend towards the adoption of the cloud-first strategy, explosion of smart internet of things (IoT) devices in the enterprise networks, and growing investments in realizing digital transformation strategies – is creating an enormous demand for reliable and faster WAN connections. Enterprises with multiple branch offices often face challenges in managing their existing WAN and branch networks due to ever-growing bandwidth requirements, resulting in rising network complexities. Thus, enterprise WAN networks require agility, reliability, and uptime to ensure optimum and consistent application performance. In this regard, SD-WAN is increasingly being perceived as a next-generation networking technology to support enterprise digital transformation and cloud-first strategies by helping to streamline and simplify the network operations and management.
Driven by the impact of Covid-19 on the global economy, major industries across diversified areas are facing significant challenges and a negative growth rate. However, the market growth rate for SD-WAN shows a positive trend, moving ahead in the year 2021. This is because, Covid-19 has forced a substantial portion of the global employee population to work from home, causing a reduction on the load of the office campus network and a proportionate increase in the use of personal devices and private network connections. SD-WAN uses software-defined networking techniques in managing and controlling multiple WAN connections, such as broadband internet, wireless, MPLS, 4G, 5G, and others, which helps users to securely connect to, and prioritize key applications, thereby highlighting the increase in SD-WAN adoption.
The SD-WAN value proposition of – simplifying the WAN and branch networks, improving WAN and application performance, reducing capital and operational expenditure, improving the agility of WAN management, quick ROI, enhancing network visibility and security, and such others is well understood by organizations across industry sectors and geographical locations. Thereby, SD-WAN solutions are increasingly being accepted as a key enabler for the successful execution of enterprise IoT and digital transformation strategies. SD-WAN is currently seen as a transformational technology, and the first approach towards organizations’ journey in adopting software-defined networking (SDN) philosophies in creating self-adaptive and secure networking systems. SD-WAN vendors’ continued efforts in improving the awareness and overall value proposition in terms of enhanced integration with best-of-breed security and networking products, orchestration and automation of network processes, improved zero-touch deployment, advanced analytics and application visibility, along-with improvements in machine learning & artificial intelligence capabilities – to drive next-generation of SD-WAN solutions, will continue to contribute to the market growth in the future.
“VMware, with its industry-leading SD-WAN functionalities supporting multi-cloud architecture, comprehensive multi-layered security offerings, and robust competitive and growth strategies has received strong ratings across the parameters of technology excellence and customer impact. With highest overall ratings, VMware is positioned as the clear leader in the 2021 SPARK Matrix of the global SD-WAN market,” said Apoorva Dawalbhakta, Senior Analyst at Quadrant Knowledge Solutions. “VMware offers robust SD-WAN technology capabilities with key differentiations, including its proprietary Dynamic Multi-Path Optimization (DMPO) to optimize network and application performance, multi-tenant architecture for easy deployment of hybrid WAN, vendor-agnostic network intelligence, and a robust multi-layered security strategy with a cloud-native SASE architecture and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), amongst others,” adds Apoorva.
“Being recognized as the leader in Quadrant Solution’s SPARK Matrix for SD-WAN, three years in a row, is yet another validation of our continued leadership and ability to deliver a consistent and more secure user experience in a work from anywhere world,” said Abe Ankumah, senior director, marketing and partnerships, SD-WAN and SASE business, VMware. “VMware SD-WAN is a foundational component of the VMware SASE platform, enabling enterprises of all sizes to transition to a modern, flexible and more secure network.”
