Aryaka Networks, a leader in Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN), has reached a major milestone in becoming the largest independent SD-WAN vendor in the world, capturing 18% market share and generating $21.3M in Q3-2017, according to IHS Data Center Network Equipment Market Tracker. While VeloCloud led the SD-WAN market with 22% share of Q3 revenue, we don’t consider them independent since VMware announced its intent to acquire Velocloud.
Of the fourteen companies on the list, Aryaka has the most innovative business model because its platform is built on a private cloud-native global network that runs a highly optimized SD-WAN software stack. The majority of the other SD-WAN vendors on the list are providing point solutions, in that they provide WAN services and little else. Aryaka provides a comprehensive portfolio of value added services, which are complementary to SD-WAN, including:
- Application Acceleration
- WAN Optimization
- Clientless VPN Acceleration
- Network Performance Monitoring
- Cloud Firewall
- Office Link Aggregation
- CDN Services
The market trends shaping the infrastructure industry for the next few years are also working in Aryaka’s favor. One of the most disruptive trends occurring in the market today is network convergence, defined as the collapse of the WAN, cloud security, network security, VPN and CDN markets. By owning its network, Aryaka has greater control over its technology stack and product development efforts than those that don’t have that same ownership. In addition, similarly to Google Espresso and Facebook Open/R, Aryaka has packet level control, which means that they can improve performance and security once that traffic enters their own cloud.
Aryaka Networks has come a long way since its founding in 2009. Its evangelization efforts have paid off and its global SD-WAN has taken over the enterprise, allowing its partner companies to communicate across branches more effectively and cheaply than at any time in the past. Besides that, the Aryaka service is easy to set up and its fees are based on a monthly subscription model.
Having reached close to $100M in annual revenue in 2017 according to our estimates, the next step for Aryaka is IPO. We expect Aryaka to stay in the top tier on the IHS report next quarter since its business is based on the monthly recurring revenue model, which means that the revenue streams are secured over the long term, thus the only way to go is up.