The SD-WAN and SASE markets are two of the hottest in revenue growth and activity, but both face challenges that impact market efficiencies and growth, according to research from MEF. 

The organization surveyed 36 service provider experts from across the globe and the results showed that the top SD-WAN challenges are focused on coping with operating a multi-vendor environment. Specifically, dealing with the complexity of operating and managing multi-vendor SD-WAN, integrating security options and defining end-to-end service level agreements (SLAs) are the top three challenges.

In comparison, the top secure access service edge (SASE) challenges focus more on education and standardization. Specifically, the top challenges service providers face with SASE are the lack of industry standards, customer education and migration, vendors not offering a complete solution and operating in a multi-vendor environment.

MEF’s research also shows that both SD-WAN and SASE markets are on track to hit analyst expectations. "The global SD-WAN services market should hit double-digit revenue growth in 2022, while most providers who offered SASE in 2021 expect 50%-plus revenue growth in 2022 due to a significant uptick in rollout of SASE services and features," MEF Principal Analyst Stan Hubbard told SDxCentral via email.

All service providers surveyed already have elements of a SASE offering or plan to introduce a SASE solution in 2022, according to the research.

“The top SD-WAN and SASE service provider challenges are in line with expectations for the different stages of these markets,” Hubbard said.

“On the SD-WAN front, one of the biggest aggravations for providers is the complexity of operating a multivendor environment, which is primarily due to the absence of interoperability among SD-WAN technology vendors. Providers have told us that their need to develop and maintain expertise on various SD-WAN vendor solutions increases skills and training burdens, creates operational inefficiencies, and adds costs. The situation is made worse today because the terminology, architectures, performance metrics, etc., of vendors differ since they do not all adhere to common standards,” he wrote.

“The SASE services market is in its very early days, confusing, and full of a host of challenges related to customer education, customer migration, lack of industry standards, the lack of complete SASE vendor solutions and more. Multiple service providers agreed the organizational challenge of integrating networking and security is ‘huge’ for customers migrating to a SASE solution. As a large provider stated, “SASE will be a failure without organizational change” within both customers and service providers,” Hubbard added.