2019 – The Year for SD-Digital Platform (SDDP)

This Industry Viewpoint was contributed by David W. Wang

At the dawn of 2019, either you are a CEO/CTO/CFO of a firm facing your board of trustees, or a manager of network operations & IT facing your firm’s executive management team, you may run into similar million-dollar questions like: “How are we doing with SDDP? When can we move to SDDP?”

If your immediate response is “Just a moment, what is SDDP?”, then you may want to keep on reading this article.

SDDP stands for Software Defined Digital Platform, which is made of core and edge computing & applications, SD-WAN bonded and virtualization powered networking, and service chaining security solutions. Together they forge an integrated, intelligent, agile, secured, and cost-effective Digital Transformation (DX) stack for modern enterprises and institutions.

Here I attempt to highlight a few key features of SDDP which may also be deemed as next-gen IT/networking trends in 2019.

First, one may wonder how big the SDDP market is, or say what’s its total market value? Based on CenturyLink and Statista’s forecast, the global cloud computing market is projected to reach $411 Billion by 2020, with its revenues continuing to grow by 25%. The global edge computing market size, on the other hand, is initializing up to 1% of the $411 Billion, but expanding at a phenomenal CAGR of 41.0% according to Grand View Research, Inc.

Plus, the global data center colocation business which is getting more software defined and popular in enabling edge computing in dispersed geographies, is expected to reach $47.34 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 10.85%, according to Orbis Research. While the global WAN market is worth about $40 Billion, the global managed security service (MSS) market size is expected to grow to $47.65 Billion by 2023, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.7%.

Hence in total, the global SDDP market value, driven by cloud computing, SD-WAN, and DX, approximates $700 Billion in next five years.

Second, Internet and the incoming wireless 5G, because of SD-WAN, will become mainstream of enterprise WAN solutions ongoing basis. SD-WAN now can take care of most concerns from legacy Internet and wireless services such as lack of control on performance, reliability and security. SD-WAN will make Internet and 5G as the underlay network, and bring about SLA, policy based intelligent routing, direct multi-cloud access, and application aware performance across its overlay fabric.  Cost wise, SD-WAN typically fares 30-50% cheaper than MPLS.

The legacy MPLS services, while won’t completely go away soon, will be shrinking and declining. In 2019 we can expect massive migration from MPLS to SD-WAN from enterprises across the world. As the result, the global demand for public IP bandwidth and capacity will be booming exponentially, and the wireless 5G buildout and deployment will definitely accelerate.

Finally, very attractive to most organizations with global and diverse branch offices & operations, SDDP can bring the firm’s digital performance, communications and security status onto one single centralized dashboard, assisted by real time reports and in-depth analysis from AI and machine learning. This provides the enterprises with a better sense of control and management, and fast responding capabilities for scale changes, cost adjustment, and security tackling.

In a nutshell, SDDP bundles system integration, next-gen technologies, and key application features for the DX process.  SDDP will enable an enterprise to piece all DX puzzles together, select qualified service partners or vendors accordingly, and strive for DX successes in 2019 and beyond.

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