With a projected market of more than $7 billion by 2024, automation is becoming a big business for telcos, vendors and enterprises.  

A report by Global Market Insights said that the growing adoption of SDN and NFV, the commercialization of 5G networking technologies and government projects were driving the adoption of automation across several verticals.

While SDN and NFV bring a lot to the table in terms of telcos and enterprises modernizing their environments and networks, they need automation to truly reap the rewards of virtualization. There's no shortage of automation technologies for telcos and enterprises to choose from, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and robotic process automation  

SD-WAN pulled in more than 67% of the network automation market last year. The report said that the automated provisioning of SD-WAN allowed enterprises to send data packets to branch locations without having to configure changes. SD-WAN has the potential to reduce deployment costs by approximately 40%, according to the report.

Global Market Insights said the virtual network infrastructure segment, which allow businesses to communicate within the same network, was slated to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 29% over the forecast timeline.  

While U.S. telcos scramble to put their 5G trials in place this year, Japan's leading telecom providers have invested roughly $45.5 billion into boosting their 5G infrastructures, according to the report. Those investments are pushing Asia Pacific network automation to a record high CAGR of more than 24% over the forecast range.  

The banking, financial services and insurance sector pulled in a market share of more than 18% last year as those institutions and businesses look to digitally transform their front and back office operations. The adoption of automation in the banking industry will lead to banks automating their IT operations, increasing productivity and efficiency by around 60%.