SD-WAN market revenue skyrocketed to $639.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, more than doubling from the $364.5 million during the same period in 2018, according to Omdia’s latest Data Center Network Equipment Market Tracker.

The report says SD-WAN revenue grew 90% for the full year, reaching $2 billion, up from $1.1 billion in 2018. Omdia forecasts revenue will hit $4.8 billion in 2024.

Meanwhile, managed services topped the list of SD-WAN appliance and control and management software market drivers in the fourth quarter of 2019. That piece of the SD-WAN market surged by 75% largely because of service providers acting as sales channels for SD-WAN vendors and distributing SD-WAN technology as a managed service bundled with other technologies.

The report also cited MEF’s plan to standardize SD-WAN managed services as another factor driving growth. It aims to ensure consistency of SD-WAN policy and security orchestrated across multiple provider networks.

“The SD-WAN market is moving toward larger scale and globalized deployments,” said Cliff Grossner, senior research director for Omdia's cloud and data center practice. “In the fourth quarter, vendors released new SD-WAN features designed to support deployment at scale, allowing multi-tenancy where enterprises can define sub-regions for their WANs that are to be managed independently.”

VMware scored another point against competitor Cisco, according to Omdia's latest numbers. The report indicates that VMware continues to lead the worldwide SD-WAN market with the highest revenue share (16.3%), followed by Cisco (13%), and Fortinet (12.3%).  

Following last week’s match between the two heavyweights, Omdia's report further substantiates VMware’s claim that it's the No. 1 SD-WAN vendor. VMware bases this on IHS Markit’s fourth-quarter 2019 SD-WAN market report, Frost and Sullivan’s 2019 data, and Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure.

VMware and Cisco have consistently jockeyed for the top SD-WAN vendor title since purchasing VeloCloud and Viptela, respectively, in 2017. VMware paid $449 million for VeloCloud, and Cisco paid $610 million for Viptela.