In the current era of digitalization, all companies are charged with implementing digital transformation. This process has been hastened by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has accelerated all sectors to transform as soon as possible.
Digiserve by Telkom Indonesia with Telkom Group conducted the SD-WAN Webinar Series: “Empower Your Business Through Total Managed SD-WAN Services” on March 9, 2022, which took place virtually. This webinar invited a number of speakers competent in the field, including Azis Sidqi, Deputy EVP, Enterprise Service Division at PT Telkom Indonesia Tbk, Ahmad Hartono (President Director Digiserve) and Djauhari Nurachman (VP Sales & Customer Management, Digiserve). Others present included Mevira Munindra (Country Manager, IDC Indonesia), Onno W Purbo (IT Expert Indonesia), Hendro Suyanto (Network & Security, VMware), Andris Masengi (Sales Director, CISCO Indonesia) and Johanes Setiyabudi (IT Technology Operation Head, Maybank Indonesia).
In this webinar, it was revealed that one of the main points in the transformation process currently required for all companies is platform modernization. The aim is for a company to be increasingly competitive, to increase corporate business performance.
It is important to undertake this, bearing in mind the high risk of potential threats in cyberspace, which mean that a company requires integrated networks and security, both in head office and branch locations, so that the internet can be accessed anywhere, anytime.
To accommodate the need in the digital era to make a company increasingly agile (dynamic), certified technology capable of supporting platform modernization is required. SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network)technology can provide a solution in creating a network which is increasingly flexible, measurable, consistent and safe in operation.
SD-WAN technology is also able to facilitate and simplify long-distance connectivity management through real-time application at a more efficient cost. This is, of course, an important point in making many companies switch to using SD-WAN technology. Telkom Group has joined the SD-WAN market through Digiserve, which is the only provider of Total Managed SD-WAN services in Indonesia.
Digiserve is committed to providing the best service to all industry actors, predominantly through SD-WAN. This commitment is evidenced through the excellence of Digiserve human resources who currently hold 219 international certificates. This forms a guarantee to provide an extremely satisfactory service to our customers.
These qualified human resources are aimed to accommodate a continually growing enterprise market, wherein 2022 the enterprise market is predicted to reach US$ 8,571 thousand or Rp 111 trillion. Meanwhile, the SD-WAN market will keep growing over the next 5 years, and in 2022 it is estimated that the value of the SD-WAN market will reach Rp 500 billion (US$ 37 million) with a CAGR of 25.6%.
This market growth is in line with the increasingly huge digital transformation process in Indonesia. Enterprises in Indonesia will also increase massively with the implementation of a Digital Connected Ecosystem, thus being in line with connectivity services in supporting more agile businesses, operations, and customers.
SD-WAN technology is very accommodative of company needs, particularly in the midst of a pandemic which has led to the popularity of flexible working arrangements, including ‘working from home’ (WFH).
By utilizing SD-WAN, a company can use bandwidth efficiently to overcome high operational costs as well as facilitate installation and regulation in each organizational entity — even in hard-to-reach branches.
SD-WAN has Faster Problem Resolution in the form of a 24/7 service desk for handling disruption, proactive incident notifications, online disruption reporting with a single point of contact. In addition, services give complete IT control, simplify branch networks, optimize apps performance, and deliver branch agility, which accommodates various connections, devices and services to be operated with existing solutions, and is able to reduce costs.
As a result, SD-WAN is known as one of the modern technology platforms at the current time. Telkom Group as a Managed Services Provider (MSP) provides the only Managed SD-WAN solution in Indonesia capable of providing the four main values for users, namely Total Connectivity, Total Technology, Total Service support, and finally, Total Business.
The high demand for this modern platform was predicted by IDC. This is supported by the increasing need for new functionality. According to a survey undertaken by IDC, 65% of organizations will aggressively modernize their old systems by investing in more extensive new technology platforms until 2023.
IDC data also shows that in 2023, 1 out of 3 companies will earn more than 30% of their income from digital products and services. This is an increase from 1 out of 5 companies in 2020.
Another IDC prediction is that in 2022, the digital economy will become mainstream. At least 50% of the Asia Pacific GDP will come from digital products and services. This shows that there is a recovery horizon in the midst of this ongoing pandemic, particularly in the economic sector.
This recovery process is ongoing in stages, marked by conditions in the Southeast Asia region. In the last quarter (Q4 2021), the country seemed more optimistic about the post-COVID-19 pandemic recovery process. Around 90% of Indonesian companies hope to have the same IT expenditure, most of which is focused on the cloud, analytics, security and productivity/communication apps, and connectivity solutions.
Based on IDC Black Book 2021 data, the ICT spending of companies in Indonesia is estimated to reach Rp 119 trillion in 2022, a 7.6% growth on 2021. It is also estimated that in the next five years, the market will grow by 9.2% (CAGR 2020-2025), reaching Rp 171 trillion, pushed by services and software in line with organizational digital transformation.
So far, SD-WAN technology use has been dominated by industry leaders, such as banks and financial services, followed by the manufacturing, retail and distribution sectors, and then the government sector through e-Government or digital government, and finally, the resources sector.
SD-WAN technology is a solution to make companies more agile. Companies can invest by purchasing a system and managing it themselves. This will, of course, require work for the company. However, for those who don’t want the hassle, they can trust the management to a vendor who will manage the system well and with higher security guarantees.
For Digiserve, SD-WAN is not something new. In 2019 Digiserve was already working in partnership with one of the biggest retail companies in Indonesia. At that time, Digiserve was asked to renew network technology after migrating 10,000 stores and 30 branches from all over Indonesia to the cloud. Through this project, Digiserve was able to evidence SD-WAN network development completion in only 15 months from the stipulated target of 18 months, undertaken in pandemic conditions.
Maybank became the next Digiserve customer, requiring TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) efficiency for 342 branches throughout Indonesia. Digiserve provided a service which complied with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DCC) for banking. In this case, Maybank was the first bank in Indonesia to apply SD-WAN for all branches throughout Indonesia.
This change was able to reduce operational costs, particularly for banking transactions in branch offices. Transaction processes became straightforward, effective and efficient. The digital transition process in all branches ran as expected.
After using SD-WAN, there was positive change, predominantly form the IT infrastructure, starting from modernization of the Branch Network Infrastructure and centralized management. Security of banking transaction traffic increased, company performance increased, with more flexible control, scalable for the increased traffic, and most importantly, cost effectivity.
At that time, VMware SASE was able to optimize and secure connectivity through the cloud. In traditional enterprise operations, everything is centralized in a data center at head office. Because of this, there is tight security around the enterprise data center. However, after the digitization era, this changed to become distributed enterprise. Users need to access any application from anywhere with any devices.
Now, VMware has three main products to pamper the customer. Firstly, VMware Carbon Black (cloud-native, endpoint protection). Secondly, WMware Workspace One (unified endpoint management and virtual apps, as well as dekstop delivery). Finally, VMware SAE (zero trust security and network performance management).
Alongside this is CISCO, which is one of the leading IT solutions providers in the world, predominantly for networking and security. CISCO is a global SD-WAN market leader based on Gartner WAN Edge Infrastructure Magic Quadrant Leader, 2021, and has the number one market share based on IDC. According to Dell, Oro and Gartner, 70% of Fortune 100 companies use CISCO SD-WAN solutions, and more than 40,000 companies use CISCO SD-WAN solutions.
CISCO offers two superior SD-WAN products, namely Viptela and Meraki, required by various industries facing a variety of conditions. Viptela is an on-premises solution for a mature and sophisticated IT environment, while Meraki is a lean and integrated SD-WAN solution.