SD-WAN is moving from a DIY affair to a cloud service, presenting new challenges and opportunities for service providers and their enterprise customers, says Sunil Khandekar, founder and CEO of Nokia's Nuage business unit, which specializes in SD-WAN.

Khandekar makes his second appearance on the Light Reading podcast to brief Light Reading's Kelsey Ziser and Mitch Wagner about SD-WAN developments to look forward to in the new year. As enterprises move from DIY to managed services, SD-WAN makes the transition from a cost-savings tool to foundation for digital transformation. Khandekar also explains the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and its potential to replace SD-WAN.

Also, Kelsey and Mitch nerd out about coffee.

Learn more about how SD-WAN is transforming service providers at Light Reading's SD-WAN content channel.

"We expect service providers to be beneficiaries as a result [of the transition from DIY to SD-WAN-as-a-service], because service providers are transforming their portfolios from MPLS to SD-WAN and they see SD-WAN as a big opportunity not only in their existing installed base but other markets as well," says the Nuage man.

SD-WAN is transitioning from tactical cost savings, connecting platforms, to becoming a network innovation platform for the enterprise, providing multi-cloud connectivity, end-to-end micro segmentation and application analytics using SD-WAN for network governance, Khandekar told us.

You can also listen to Khandekar's earlier appearance on the pod, where he talked more about 2020 market direction and the potential impact of standards.

Nuage was a finalist for Light Reading's 2019 Leading Lights award in the category Most Innovative SD-WAN Product Strategy (Vendor).

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— Mitch Wagner Executive Editor, Light Reading