Morgan noted that the startups have designed their own technology with the intent to disrupt the LAN equipment market.
“The LAN-as-a-Utility offers are designed to take share from incumbent equipment vendors,” she said. “However, with their innovative technology and business model, it is also possible for vendors to develop new use-cases which will grow the overall IT market.”
Not surprisingly, the startups tend to agree with Morgan’s analysis. Nile, Meter and Ramen Networks all have plans to continue to accelerate growth moving forward as well.
“We are building a NaaS solution for the uncarpeted enterprise,” Partho Mishra, CEO of Ramen Networks, told Network World. “We continued to see rapid growth in customer deployments.”
Rishit Lakhani, solutions engineering leader at Nile, said his company is seeing strong demand across at least 14 distinct industries. He added that security has been a critical element in driving interest in campus NaaS.
“We already deliver significantly improved zero-trust capabilities through the segmentation of users and devices, as well as the elimination of VLANs,” Lakhani said. “However, in the very near term, you can expect to see a new service offering paired with leading technology partnerships that will deliver world-class zero-trust security to any size enterprise without needing a complex set of solutions or spending staff time managing that complexity.”
