Current technology and business trends are transforming how distributed enterprises build and manage their wide-area networks (WANs) and deliver applications and services to remote users. Big data, the cloud, and the Internet of Things are just a few of the technologies that are forcing these changes. Meanwhile, enterprises are growing their WANs. They are adding more remote sites to their networks and connecting more endpoint devices to those remote sites.

This research report examines how enterprise network infrastructure teams responsible for planning, building, and managing the WAN are responding to all of these pressures. This report examines how networking professionals are using software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) and network functions virtualization. It also examines in detail the enterprise migration from WAN connectivity via private managed services to public internet and wireless WAN technologies. Finally, it identifies which tools enterprises are using to monitor and manage their evolving WANs.