Eight SD-WAN products tested by NSS Labs surpassed the minimum quality of experience measurements used to calculate their performance in enterprise applications. The company, which tests security products and last issued a report on SD-WAN products in August 2018, also weighed each of the offerings based on a total cost of ownership model correlated to Mb/s.

Without rendering judgment on the complex naming conventions that are rampant in the SD-WAN space, NSS Labs tested these products:

• Barracuda Networks CloudGen Firewall F82 v7.2.3
• Citrix Systems SD-WAN 2100-1000-SE v10.0.0.6
• Forcepoint NGFW 1101 SMC 6.5.3 and Engine 6.5.2
• Fortinet FortiGate 61E v6.0.4 GA Build 0231
• Oracle Talari SD-WAN E1000 v7.3
• Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect EC-M VXOA 8.1.7
• Versa Networks FlexVNF V220 v16.1R2-S6
• VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud Edge 2000 v3.2.1

The test once again highlighted a wide disparity in pricing and total cost of ownership per Mb/s ranging from $4 to $37. All eight products met the use case for voice-over-IP (VoIP) and video on a quality of experience (QoE) scale ranging from one to five. The test average ranged from 4.36 to 4.41 for VoIP and 4.15 to 4.51 for video.

Results from NSS Labs latest test aren’t a direct comparison to its previous test because some vendors have been dropped from the study and replaced by others, but the conclusions drawn from empirical data shows that SD-WAN products are collectively improving.

“We saw impressive performance across the pack of technologies and NSS Labs is very pleased to see the progress made by vendors,” Mike Spanbauer, vice president of research strategy, told SDxCentral in a phone interview. “I’m impressed by the market so far and I think it will continue to impress many as well.”

Because the WAN edge has been “relatively static for two decades,” Spanbauer said he expects the SD-WAN market to continue growing for at least another decade. Considering the amount of on-premises legacy equipment that can be displaced by SD-WAN it’s going to take many years for that equipment to be retired and converted to SD-WAN, he explained.

And because the SD-WAN market is in such a high-growth phase and is emerging in many enterprise applications, Spanbauer said he expects consolidation activity will continue to rise during the next couple of years.

“Development is occurring at a rapid pace,” he said. “SD-WAN presents an incredible new approach to both simplifying operationally as well as addressing some of the economic elements that enterprises that have really never had an option to take on and look through a different lens at.”

Spanbauer also noted that performance isn’t necessarily the key measure that enterprises look at when considering options for SD-WAN. More important factors include operational integration, licensing structures, or management models that provide enterprises with different levels of flexibility, he explained. “Very rarely does a singular technology get deployed in isolation — it’s often within the context of partner adjacencies and other aspects.”

Pricing, of course, is another factor but Spanbauer said enterprises also have to make determinations based on more complex and nuanced issues. Total cost of ownership through a three-year period (based on NSS Labs’ model) range from $138,408 to nearly $2.4 million. That’s a difference of 1,632% between Fortinet, which came in as the most affordable product, and Silver Peak, which came in at the top end of pricing.