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Executive Overview
At Mplify’s Global NaaS Event (GNE) 2025, senior analysts from across the industry shared candid perspectives on the state of Network-as-a-Service (NaaS), SASE, automation, and AI-driven networking. Their collective insight points to a market clearly moving toward platform-based networking models, but one still challenged by uneven adoption, operational fragmentation, and a widening gap between long-term vision and near-term execution.
While large enterprises and multinational corporations continue to dominate near-term NaaS revenue, analysts agreed that sustainable growth will increasingly depend on automation, integration, and simplified consumption models. These capabilities are essential to extend NaaS adoption beyond the top tier of the enterprise market and into broader segments over time.
Several themes consistently emerged:
Analysts increasingly view NaaS not as a standalone product, but as a new operating and go-to-market model for enterprise networking; one that will eventually encompass most forms of connectivity. Within this model, automation has become the primary differentiator. The ability to automate the full-service lifecycle, from ordering and provisioning to assurance and billing, now outweighs the importance of raw bandwidth or expansive service catalogs.
SASE adoption remains fragmented. Despite strong demand and clear strategic intent, convergence between networking and security has yet to materialize fully across buying, deployment, and operations. AI is further reshaping network requirements, but not uniformly. Hyperscalers and a subset of advanced enterprises are driving massive capacity needs, while many organizations remain in early or experimental stages of AI adoption. Throughout all of this, integration with enterprise IT processes has emerged as a critical success factor. Enterprises want flexibility and cloud-like consumption, but not at the expense of stability, predictability, or alignment with existing workflows.
Analysts anticipate that roughly 80% of NaaS-related revenue will continue to come from large enterprises in the near term, though mid-market opportunities are expected to grow as platforms mature. Much of NaaS growth through 2027 will be substitutional, as customers migrate from legacy services to NaaS-based models. Fully outsourced network models are expected to remain dominant, particularly for SD-WAN and core SASE services. AI-driven traffic will grow rapidly but unevenly, with clearer ROI emerging from predictive AI and AIOps use cases than from generative AI alone. Platforms that fail to integrate cleanly with enterprise IT environments are likely to struggle to scale adoption.
Deep Dive Insights
Automation & AI
Analysts emphasized that automation rather than AI branding is what ultimately unlocks real value in NaaS. AI is already influencing networks through AIOps and predictive analytics that improve fault detection, performance optimization, and capacity planning. At the same time, early concepts around agentic AI are beginning to surface, where intelligent agents may dynamically request and allocate network resources in real time.
This shift is driving unprecedented demand for fiber, wavelengths, and high-capacity interconnects, particularly among hyperscalers. However, analysts cautioned against overbuilding short-lived infrastructure such as GPUs. Fiber investments benefit from long lifecycles, while GPU and AI architectures evolve rapidly, and future AI models may require significantly less computing intensity. As a result, automation-first network architectures provide the most flexibility, regardless of how AI workloads ultimately evolve.
Enterprise Demand Signals
Enterprise interest in NaaS continues to grow, but adoption today is shaped by a pragmatic, operations-first mindset. While flexibility and cloud-like consumption remain attractive, most organizations still prioritize stability, predictable performance and clear accountability, driving demand for fully managed service models rather than self-directed NaaS deployments.
At the same time, analysts noted that many enterprises are not yet structurally prepared to consume NaaS at scale. Legacy environments, entrenched operating models, and organizational silos often limit the ability to adopt more dynamic automated services. As a result, NaaS adoption challenges are often rooted less in technology limitations and more in the pace of organizational and process transformation.
Provider Priorities for 2025–2027
To remain competitive over the next several years, service providers will need to move beyond basic ordering automation toward true end-to-end service orchestration. API exposure and standards-based interoperability will be essential to scaling ecosystems and reducing friction. Integration with IT service management platforms will play a growing role in aligning NaaS with enterprise operational models.
In parallel, marketplace enablement is becoming increasingly important, allowing providers to bundle connectivity with adjacent services such as security, cloud connectivity, IoT, and voice. Commercial models will also need to strike a balance between pay-as-you-go flexibility and the long-term pricing predictability many enterprise buyers still expect. Providers that address these priorities will be better positioned to move beyond early adopters and drive broader market adoption.
What Comes Next for the NaaS Ecosystem
The analyst insights from GNE 2025 reinforce the importance of ecosystem-driven transformation. Interoperability is no longer optional, as fragmentation across vendors, providers, and platforms remains one of the biggest barriers to NaaS scale. Open APIs and common frameworks are essential to reducing this friction.
Automation also emerged as a critical enabler of growth without operational friction. Mplify members that invest in lifecycle automation can support higher transaction volumes, accelerate service delivery, and improve customer experience without proportionally increasing complexity. At the same time, NaaS success depends on integration rather than isolation. Platforms must connect seamlessly with enterprise IT systems, cloud environments, and partner ecosystems to deliver meaningful value.
Finally, analysts emphasized that AI should enhance platforms, not overshadow fundamentals. AI delivers the greatest impact when applied to orchestration, assurance, and analytics reinforcing NaaS outcomes rather than driving disconnected initiatives. Broadly, analysts agreed that Mplify’s vision aligns well with where the market is heading. The differentiator now is execution: helping members operationalize that vision at scale.
Learn More
Analyst Reflections from GNE 2025:
- Appledore | Grant Lenahan: Mplify GNE 2025 – NaaS marches forward – will AI make it run?
- Disruptive Analysis | Dean Bubley: Event Report: Mplify Global NaaS Event, Dallas
- Frost and Sullivan | Steve Thomas: Reflections from the Mplify GNE 2025 Event
- IDC/ Ghassan Abdo: Global NaaS Event 2025: Transformation Toward AI-Driven Networking
- Omdia | Brian Washburn: Mplify Global NaaS Event 2025: Repercussions from the rise of AI force industry-wide organizational pivots
- TeleGeography | Greg Bryan: Key Takeaways from the Mplify GNE 2025 Event