VMware Atop Rapidly Growing Global SD-WAN Market In Q2

VMware smashed its foot into the software-defined WAN accelerator in the second quarter, putting space between itself and the other major vendors in the red-hot space and finishing the period with a nearly 20 percent share of the market, according to a recent report from research firm IHS Markit.

The market for SD-WAN solutions, including appliances and control and management software, exploded in the second quarter, crushing the year-ago period by 2X and surpassing Q1 by 25 percent, Englewood, Colo.-based IHS said.

Amid all that growth, VMware's performance in the market stood out. The Palo Alto, Calif., virtualization kingpin jumped into the burgeoning SD-WAN space late last year with the acquisition of market leader VeloCloud. In Q2, the company did $40.1 million in SD-WAN sales, beating the year-ago period by 27 percent and claiming an 18 percent share of the market, IHS said.

Although VMware dominated the SD-WAN market in the quarter, the period also saw the sector's major players – including VMware, Aryaka, Cisco and Silver Peak – putting space between themselves and the rest of the field.

Ben Johnson, CEO of Liberty Technology, a Griffin, Ga., solution provider that works with Cisco Meraki, said the vendor's SD-WAN business, including Meraki and Viptela, has its finger on the pulse of business customers concerned about uptime and outcomes.

"With the addition of LTE modems in the MX and Z lines, Cisco Meraki has upped their game on providing not just SD-WAN, but also seriously entering the IoT market," Johnson said.

Part of Liberty's success with Cisco's SD-WAN solutions is the availability of analytics platforms "that allow us to charge our clients based on actual LTE data usage versus them overpaying or underpaying," Johnson said. "We don't have to buy extra devices to add this as a service," Johnson said. "We're offering it as a value-add – it's an upgrade opportunity – to our existing client base. SD-WAN isn't just about optimizing costs. For the average SMB or branch, if the internet is down, they can't do business, and we're in the business of keeping people in business."

Global SD-WAN power Aryaka was second in IHS's Q2 ranking, pulling in nearly $33 million in revenue and claiming a 15 percent share of the market. A year prior, Aryaka did just over $29 million in SD-WAN sales, IHS said.

Cisco, which acquired Viptela about a year ago, was third in the IHS ranking with sales of $25.4 million in the second quarter, a total that represents growth of about 30 percent year-over-year and gives the networking behemoth a 12 percent share of the market.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Silver Peak bested its year-ago sales by 21 percent to finish the quarter on Cisco's heels with $24.4 in SD-WAN sales, IHS said.

The revenue totals of the remaining vendors in IHS's ranking are considerably smaller than those in the top four, but they also show some of strongest growth numbers. InfoVista, Citrix and Riverbed, for example, all grew SD-WAN revenue between 34- and 38 percent year-over-year, according to IHS, while market newcomer Huawei more than tripled its SD-WAN sales year-over-year.