Gartner: SD-WAN, SASE biggest drivers of WAN edge infrastructure
The past several years have seen a large-scale shift from traditional MPLS-based customer edge routers to SD-WAN technology, according to Gartner’s 2021 Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure.
Overall spending on WAN edge will grow by 2.6% per year through 2025, according to the report. The increased sales of WAN edge technology in general is driven by SD-WAN equipment designed to support work-from-home and in-office environments are slightly dampened by the fact that sales of traditional branch office routers are sharply down as a consequence, Gartner says.
As the world shifts from working from home to working from anywhere, companies have begun to shift away from the VPN as the main tool for keeping remote workers secure, and towards more-fully featured SD-WAN technologies, with the idea of eventually implementing zero-trust network access for maximal security, Gartner’s report noted.