Member Article

Half of UK businesses back SD-WAN as the solution of choice for cloud security

49 per cent of UK business decision makers have deployed software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) to secure public cloud deployments, or expect to do so within the next 12 months. Barracuda Networks, a leading provider of cloud-enabled security solutions, released these findings in a report launched today, titled Secure SD-WAN: The Launch Pad into the Cloud.

The research, conducted by independent market researcher Vanson Bourne, surveyed global IT decision makers across a broad range of sectors in EMEA, APAC and the US about their attitude to SD-WAN. Put simply, an SD-WAN is an application of software-defined networking (SDN) technology that provides software-based control over wide area network connections.

The survey revealed that SD-WAN is being used by over a quarter (27 per cent) of UK decision makers who have added security to their public cloud, and 33 per cent back SD-WAN as their preferred additional security solution to add to the public cloud.

When asked about the benefits of SD-WAN, 48 per cent of UK respondents agreed that it improved overall connectivity, 45 per cent said it increased network flexibility and agility, and no one claimed that they had not seen any achievements since deploying SD-WAN

Construction and property has the most SD-WAN adoption in EMEA, with 80 per cent of respondents claiming they have already deployed it, or expect to in the next 12 months. Similarly, 76 per cent of decision makers in IT, technology and telecoms industries are in the process of, or have already deployed SD-WAN.

The public sector has the lowest amount of SD-WAN deployment – zero public sector organisations in EMEA have reported deploying SD-WAN, although 35 per cent are in the

process, or expect to do so in the next year. This rises to 7 per cent and 36 per cent respectively, when comparing to the average of global responses.

In terms of SD-WAN providers, Microsoft Azure is the preferred public-cloud platform, as it’s 50 per cent more favoured by global respondents than Amazon AWS and 125 per cent more preferred than Google GCP. Responses indicate that Azure is perceived to be more secure and more user friendly than AWS and GCP.

Klaus Gheri, VP, Network Security, Barracuda commented: “As more organizations move to the public cloud, SD-WAN technology is a critical part of securing these cloud deployments. By deploying an all-in-one, secure SD-WAN solution natively built into the public cloud network, organizations can reap the full benefits of public cloud.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Nick Till .