Global WAN Buyers: Benefiting from Disruptive Technologies

The IT industry has long been driven by innovation, but disruptive technologies like Software-Defined WAN are now considered to be more mainstream. With up to 95% of enterprises either adopting or planning SD-WAN deployments, the conversation has shifted from experimentation to optimization and scaling. 

• The IT industry has always been innovative, and market disruption almost always brings benefits once enterprises have time to adjust. However, as a global WAN manager, making disruptive changes to a 7 or 8-figure data network takes further consideration. It’s important to ask questions such as: Is the new technology sufficiently robust yet?  
• Are several credible global vendors implementing the technology with successful case studies proving the point?  
• Have industry peers been discussing their experience with the technology and are their views positive?  

Very few CTOs or CIOs want to be an ‘early adopter’ for something as mission-critical as the technology powering their global WAN. While MPLS has historically underpinned enterprise WANs, organizations are increasingly shifting toward hybrid and cloud-based architectures. In 2026, around 70% of enterprises prefer hybrid WAN models, combining broadband, LTE/5G, and cloud connectivity alongside or instead of MPLS. Solutions such as SD-WAN have now reached a point of robustness and early market penetration that they need to be seriously considered for any network refresh project. If not, then you could be missing out on the significant performance and functionality improvements that today’s applications are calling for.  

SD-WAN can be delivered by carriers as a bundled solution (albeit with significant commercial and operational limitations), or by a specialist vendor as an overlay above your existing (or new) network infrastructure. It’s this SD-WAN vendor model where smart enterprises can gain the biggest performance benefits.  

SD–WAN is incredibly dynamic (like cloud is to application hosting), as it allows network managers to accommodate for the changing requirements of the enterprise on-the-fly, while providing performance visibility that simply wasn’t there before. And this is all while greatly reducing the cost and timeframes for moves, adds, and changes. New sites can be activated in days rather than months, and you don’t have to try and mesh MPLS from multiple vendors located around the world.  

However, SD-WAN can’t be enacted without firstly preparing a thorough business case. SD-WAN and other new technologies might be ‘disruptive’, but without a detailed action plan, they will be disruptive for all the wrong reasons.  

If you’re in a position where your legacy telco contracts are heading towards a point of refresh (or your hardware layer has reached that point), it could be a good time to consider a change. But before calling vendors, it’s important to prepare a baseline comparison of your existing MPLS capabilities in your network are compared against any new alternatives.  

A transformation with new, disruptive network technology must deliver a significant upside to your enterprise (commercially, technically, and operationally). Tick those boxes first and it could well be worth the exercise and change.