Aryaka Declared a Managed SD-WAN Industry Leader by Vertical Systems Group

We’re honored to be recognized by Vertical Systems in their Carrier Managed SD-WAN Services Leaderboard, now for the third year in a row.  Looking at the other providers covered, it is true that we walk amongst giants, but as we all know, giants are not most limber of beings.  They are powerful, but single-mindedly slow and deliberate.  Inertia inevitably rules the movement and direction of a giant. Point giants in a direction and they’ll take off, but they will be slow to adjust course.

As Vertical Systems notes, “The managed SD-WAN market in the U.S. endured the pandemic as service providers installed hundreds of new networks in the extremely challenging conditions throughout the past year,” Rick Malone, principal of Vertical Systems Group said. “Businesses and enterprises accelerated the retirement of MPLS assets and made purchase decisions for SD-WAN solutions that enable more flexible access options and dynamic connectivity.”

They found that, even in the midst of deferred projects and belt-tightening, the SD-WAN market remained very resilient across bandwidth intensive markets as well as sectors that needed to invest in a hybrid workforce strategy. Harder hit verticals, like retail and travel, didn’t accelerate their digital initiatives due to obvious barriers to transformation.

The announcing of the 2020 U.S. Carrier Managed SD-WAN Services Vertical Systems Group LEADERBOARD comes on the heels of Aryaka’s fifth annual 2021 State of the WAN report. For this report, more than 1,350 enterprise companies were surveyed. The Aryaka 2021 State of the WAN report can be found here https://www.aryaka.com/blog/state-of-wan-2021/  It highlights:

• Accelerating fusion of networking and security planning, with almost a third of enterprises stating that they are already deploying what they consider to be a secure access service edge (SASE) architecture.
• A hybrid work environment that will persist after the pandemic recedes, with over 80% stating that they expect over a quarter of workers to remain remote, and over two-thirds desiring flexibility between on-premises and remote deployments.
• A move to managed services for WAN transformation, with over 70% planning to adopt this approach that integrates application optimization, SASE, transport, multi-cloud connectivity, last-mile management, and remote access.

These trends indicate that Aryaka is optimally positioned to continue its trajectory of growth in a market that clearly has started to demand dramatic simplification when it comes to the deployment of ever more complex network and security functions.

Let’s recall that, over a decade ago, the computing and applications world went through a similar transformation. IT practitioners simply realized that handling server installations stood in their way of business agility: upgrading CPUs, memory modules and hard drives, or patching/upgrading the operating system on every server… those time-consuming practices never added business value. Concepts like virtualization enabled could computing and obsoleted the in-house, hands-on server model.

Historically, some geographies have always been far more receptive to a managed services approach in networking. But the growing, universal appeal of managed network services indicates there is a tectonic shift underway, and that more and more enterprises are willing to normalize their network deployment around the same practices they have adopted for applications and computing.

As they do so, they are also increasingly discovering that there are 2 fundamentally different ways to consume managed network services:

1. The traditional network services approach from the trusted giants we alluded to before: a traditional service provider will team up with a DIY SD-WAN/SASE vendor. They will provide a monthly report on network operation. They will abstract every aspect of network ownership. The downside? A lack of agility that simply doesn’t address the needs of the digital age. In any Day 2 trouble-shooting environment, there will be an awkward triangulation between the enterprise customer, the network vendor providing the virtual overlay solution and expertise for that domain, and finally the service provider(s) supporting the physical underlay and the high level (not expert level) support for the combined solution. Slow response times when it comes to fixing user experience issues are well-documented and inevitable.
2. The emerging model of a vertically integrated solution with a global middle mile that guarantees end-to-end application performance and user experience. This has been the model Aryaka was founded on. It delivers a cloud-first approach to networking, simplifying network operations in Day 0-1-2 and providing complete network as well as application performance and visibility for immediate troubleshooting and optimization if issues ever arise. An approach that also delivers on the cloud economy practice of providing a marketplace with best-of-breed solutions that optimally address any enterprise’s architectural and regulatory requirements.

And that is the reason why Aryaka, as the nimble David, is increasingly winning the trust of enterprises against the managed services Goliaths. In a nutshell, it is about fast business outcomes: faster deployment, faster optimization, optimal hybrid could connectivity, optimally tailored security postures and always-on, consolidated visibility, vertically and horizontally.

We are glad to see this reflected as we are once again included in Vertical Systems’ Leaderboard for Managed SD-WAN Services.

Join us for a demo to see how Aryaka can help you transform your SD-WAN and deliver on a SASE solution truly tailored to your enterprise’s needs.