The beancounters latest report predicts double-digit growth over the next three years and cloud LAN revenues expected to surpass $12 billion by 2029.

Dell’Oro Group enterprise wireless LAN research director Siân Morgan said: “Vendors who sell Public Cloud-Managed LAN solutions are able to generate higher levels of recurring revenue.”

She added: “Despite the challenging market, 2024 is the first year we’ve seen signs that enterprises are willing to increase their spending to get more advanced Public Cloud-Managed features.”

That shift is fuelling a land grab by startups including Nile, Meter, Join Digital, Ramen, and Shasta Cloud, all of whom are scaling up CNaaS deployments as customers warm to the idea of paying monthly for their own networks.

Morgan said: “This willingness to incur recurring IT charges is positive news for startups such as Nile, Meter, Join Digital, Ramen and Shasta Cloud, who are ramping up deployment of their Campus NaaS (CNaaS) offers. CNaaS is a market segment that grew 65 percent in 2024.”

The report flags HPE’s Cloud-Managed offering as outpacing the market, noting: “The company’s pace of development seems unaffected by the pending lawsuit aiming to prevent HPE’s acquisition of Juniper.”

CNaaS revenue is also “accelerating thanks to increased traction with MSPs and Systems Integrators,” the Dell’Oro report said.

The firm classifies CNaaS into three buckets: Enabler, Turnkey, and LAN-as-a-Utility, noting that they “will be subject to different market drivers and suitable to different verticals, and are expected to grow at different rates.”

The report measures CNaaS and Public Cloud-Managed LAN markets by revenue and shipments, compares them to traditional WLAN and campus Ethernet sales, and includes vendor snapshots and regional outlooks. It’s the kind of thing execs love to cite just before jacking up licence fees.