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Software Defined-WAN (SD-WAN) is transforming the way enterprises approach WAN deployments by increasing performance and capacity while reducing complexity and costs. In recent years, new enterprise use-cases and traffic patterns have exposed limitations of traditional WAN solutions. SD-WAN is enabling companies to leverage the internet and the cloud to deliver enterprise-grade WAN in a way that simplifies branch office deployment while increasing the performance of both private data center apps and public apps such as Office 365, Salesforce, and AWS.
Traditional WANs do not provide the dynamic architecture required by today’s IT organizations to deploy and support private and public applications in branch locations. Furthermore, network costs continue to rise as more applications, bandwidth, locations, and hardware are added to the mix. Even more frustrating to IT personnel is the inherent complexity of traditional WAN solutions. With multiple vendors and numerous single-function devices located inside each office, managing these resources becomes increasingly difficult and costly. Combine these issues with degraded cloud app performance – due to hairpinning through the data center – and staff are working more to solve problems than driving IT initiatives that move the company forward.
SD-WAN technology provides numerous advantages that help IT organizations overcome the challenges associated with a traditional WAN solution. Here are just a few:
- Simplified Branch Networking: The box-by-box configuration of wide area networks across multiple locations is complex and requires significant resources to provision, deploy, and support. SD-WAN provides IT departments with centralized monitoring, visibility and cloud control enabling branch offices to be provisioned faster with zero-touch deployment while also delivering automatic business policy and firmware updates, link remediation, and increased capacity.
In doing so, businesses can activate new branches in minutes using cloud orchestration, which offers a significantly automated installation, configuration, and maintenance capability. This simplified configuration approach – along with single-pane-of-glass monitoring tools – provides a more streamlined approach to WAN management and decreases the resources needed to manage branch office networks. In doing so, businesses can activate new branches in minutes using cloud orchestration, which offers a significantly automated installation, configuration, and maintenance capability. This simplified configuration approach – along with single-pane-of-glass monitoring tools – provides a more streamlined approach to WAN management and decreases the resources needed to manage branch office networks.
- Improved Application Performance:
Public cloud applications – such as VoIP, video, and desktop sharing – are putting new pressures traditional WAN architectures, which weren’t designed to provide predictable and consistent cloud app performance. In response, SD-WAN auto-detects the fastest network path on a sub-second basis to optimize branch-to-cloud application performance. Automatic per-packet link steering and on-demand remediation provide Application Assurance while forward error correction (FEC) and jitter buffering ensure that QoS policies are achieved for voice, video, and other applications.
- Reduced Costs: SD-WAN enables you to significantly reduce the costs associated with traditional WAN solutions. First, using the public internet to create enterprise-grade WANs enables many companies to reduce or eliminate costly MPLS networks. Furthermore, an SD-WAN Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) deployment eliminates CapEx, as well as technology obsolescence and hardware sprawl. And, by increasing application and network performance, businesses minimize costly downtime associated with throttled bandwidth and slow-running applications.
Finally, companies can deploy SD-WAN in minutes, not days or weeks, with “zero-touch” capability. A single-pane-of-glass orchestrator greatly increases management and control while eliminating the need for other costly NMS platforms and unnecessary truck rolls for maintenance and configuration. Finally, by shifting network functions out of the branch, companies significantly decrease the cost of hardware for each office and the need for onsite technical personnel.
Software-Defined WAN is more than just another IT buzzword, it is a paradigm-shift in WAN technology. Cloud-delivered SD-WAN is enabling IT organizations to tackle new use-cases and traffic patterns that traditional WANs cannot adequately support. Enterprises have realized they can also solve for complexity, performance, and cost using SD-WAN.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of SD-WAN, give Mosaic NetworX a call today at 800-688-3770.
