SD-WAN infrastructure market to hit $4.5bn by 2022, says IDC

The software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) market continues to grow rapidly – and IDC is predicting the overall infrastructure market will be worth $4.5 billion (£3.53bn) by 2022.The figure, which appears in the analyst firm’s latest SD-WAN Infrastructure Forecast, takes into account the significant uptick in SD-WAN investment, with infrastructure revenues going up 83.3% in 2017 to reach $833 million.Another report, IDC’s Market Share – the first from the company for this category – sees Cisco and VMware at the top of the tree. The analysis notes the recent M&A activity around the market, with Cisco acquiring Viptela and VMware buying VeloCloud last year. The analysis includes both hardware and software used in SD-WAN deployments. IDC defines the technology as ‘an architecture that leverages a hybrid WAN using at least two or more connection types.’ This can include MPLS, broadband internet, 3G, 4G, and more.