Surveying the WANscape

This week, Season 4 of TeleGeography Explains the Internet ends on a high note with Junior Research Analyst Mei Harrison’s podcast debut. As one half of our dynamic enterprise duo, Mei is the perfect person to help me talk through results from our recently published WAN Manager Survey.

We highlight the key trends in multinational corporate networks around the world, covering MPLS vs. DIA use in the underlay, SD-WAN adoption, cloud connectivity, NaaS, and more.

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Key Takeaways

MPLS usage paused its decline and is nearly converging with DIA usage.

Previously, MPLS usage had generally declined over the past four or five years in favor of Direct Internet Access (DIA) and broadband, partly due to pricing trends and SD-WAN adoption.

However, in 2022, the survey observed MPLS usage flatten out, coming within about three percentage points of DIA. Reasons for this unexpected pause include the fact that large network transformation projects are taking longer than anticipated, especially post-COVID, and that in some geographic locations or situations, enterprises still find it difficult to replace MPLS, sometimes keeping it for security or as a backup for large data centers.

While the number of sites using MPLS may have remained similar, there was some pullback in usage as MPLS ports were smaller, often supplemented by larger DIA circuits.

SD-WAN adoption is high in intent but rollouts are slower than expected.

Although 86% of survey participants were in some stage of researching, piloting, or deploying SD-WAN solutions, the actual installation rate saw a smaller jump than anticipated, increasing by only four percentage points from the previous survey two years prior.

The survey found that most SD-WAN deployments take more than a year to complete. This slower pace is attributed to the reality that large network projects are inherently complex and time-consuming, potentially compounded by factors like supply chain issues or post-pandemic operational adjustments.

The Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider landscape saw a shift, and on-premise data center retention increased.

Among the cloud providers, Microsoft Azure topped the list for IaaS usage among the surveyed enterprises, surpassing Amazon AWS compared to a previous survey. Google Cloud was also used by a sizable chunk of respondents. Interestingly, there was an increase in the percentage of enterprises reporting that they still maintain some portion of their data on-premise data centers.

While a mix of cloud, neutral facilities, and on-prem is still the most common approach, the growth in on-premise retention suggests that some companies may be pulling back slightly from exclusively cloud-based strategies after potentially migrating too quickly.