Mushroom Networks’ Eight Predictions for SD-WAN in 2017

SAN DIEGO, Dec. 06, 2016 -- Mushroom Networks, innovator in Broadband-Bonding™ and Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) platforms, today published its 2017 predictions for the SD-WAN market. Key themes for the coming year included interoperability with legacy systems, the continued march towards a complete SDN architecture, and the ability to create custom WANs on demand.

“The most compelling change in the era of distributed computing and the software-defined data center is that the WAN will be recognized for the performance bottleneck it is, particularly for cloud services,” said Cahit Akin, founder and CEO of Mushroom Networks. “This was already a driver for SD-WANs incredible success as a technology, but as this concept takes hold industry-wide, IT organizations will continue to push vendors to create even more compelling in-roads to virtual network functions that will enable businesses to alleviate this performance burden.”

Mushroom Networks’ market predictions for SD-WAN include:

Interoperability with legacy systems will remain the biggest barrier to SD-WAN adoption
While many enterprises have easily overcome this issue to drive SD-WAN’s massive growth, this will continue to be the biggest barrier for more conservative businesses in terms of adoption. Those vendors that provide mechanisms for more seamless integration will have an advantage over those that expect this burden to fall on their enterprise customers.

SD-WAN’s focus will shift from control-plane optimization only to control-plan plus data-plane optimization
For many, SD-WAN’s initial purchases were driven by its ability to provide lower costs and simpler configurations than traditional WANs. Now, as the technology has matured, IT organizations understand the potential for dramatic improvements in performance and reliability via advanced SD-WAN technology. Market leaders with the ability to harness SD-WANs for greater performance (such as Broadband-bonding) will have an advantage in 2017.

Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) will drive the transformation of SD-WAN from simple cost reduction to full WAN performance management
SD-WAN is taking the next step from a “software-defined” architecture standpoint and making VNFs available on an "a la carte" basis for firms to mix and match to create their ideal custom WAN to support their enterprise cloud services. The level of flexibility provided is vast.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) with multi-carrier service portfolios will have an edge over single carrier service providers
The ability to blend various types of WAN technologies to enable unique redundancy and performance arbitration will deliver a major advantage over single carrier-based WAN offerings.

SD-WAN architectures optimized for hybrid clouds will dominate market share in 2017
We expect architectures with connectivity optimization to hybrid clouds to take center stage, as many businesses, including larger enterprises are adopting hybrid cloud strategies. As a result, the performance and connectivity between these joint private and public clouds are one of the most critical factors for success of those projects.

Essential business applications will drive SD-WAN’s adoption
Inline with hybrid cloud connectivity, essential business applications such as voice and video, as well as industry specific applications that rely on SaaS, or self hosted cloud applications specific to the industry, will be the major driver for SD-WAN tech.

MPLS will stick around, but continue its dramatic decline in relevance and cost
As VNF technologies within SD-WAN solutions provide more and more advanced performance benefits, the price gap between MPLS-only vs hybrid WAN (with or without MPLS in the mix) need to shrink for MPLS to stay competitive.

Advanced machine learning technologies will begin a long transition to integration with SD-WAN networks
Although this process will likely extend far beyond 2017, as more and more intelligence is infused with software-defined networks, it is inevitable that AI and machine learning will begin to make inroads as well. The potential here for true cognitive networks capable of self-optimization across a host of applications is enormous.

Available today, you can learn more about the Mushroom Networks’, its product portfolio, and its VNF Design Studio at https://www.mushroomnetworks.com

About Mushroom Networks
Mushroom Networks, Inc., is a privately held company based in San Diego, CA, providing patent pending Broadband Bonding solutions to a range of Internet connection applications. The company’s flagship product line serves SMBs, enterprises, multi-tenant buildings, and broadband service providers and bonds dissimilar broadband access technologies forming a single highly reliable broadband pipe that can easily scale based on needs. Mushroom Networks was the winner of the 2015 Most Innovative Product award by CONNECT, finalist for the coveted 2012 San Diego Business Journal Innovation Award, winner of the XCHANGE Tech Innovators Xcellence Award, and winner of the 2008 CONNECT® ‘Most Innovative New Product’ award, Network World’s "top technology trend of 2008" award. For more information, please visit https://www.mushroomnetworks.com or call (858) 366-9255.

Media Contact:
Jay Nichols
Mushroom Networks, Inc.
[email protected]
Tel: (858) 366-9255 ext 6039