To keep pace with the evolving market trends, ever-changing customer demands, and growing competition, today companies and businesses need to embrace digital transformation and move ahead.
The traditional network architectures were not developed to handle the complexities and load of most of the digital transformation initiatives.
Moreover, most of the important business services are spread across multiple clouds that can lead to a compromise in network performance, especially at different branch offices.
Therefore most of the tech-savvy companies have started turning towards software-defined WAN (SD-WAN).
For companies and businesses having more than one branches or locations, SD-WAN helps in managing costs, increasing efficiency and developing greater dependability.
More and more businesses are adopting SD-WAN to reduce their overhead expenditures and support new applications and services as a result of digital transformation.
SD-WAN technology not only helps in simplifying the management and operation of a WAN but also offer a number of business benefits.
What is SD-WAN technology? What does SD-WAN mean?
A WAN (wide area network) helped in connecting users at various locations to applications hosted on servers inside a data centre.
The data centres were required to leverage dedicated MPLS circuits to ensure consistent connectivity, uptime, and security.
However, with the growing number of businesses moving to cloud computing, this outdated approach is no longer justifiable for cloud-first enterprises.
Over the last few years, businesses have started adopting Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) applications across multiple clouds.
While adopting these services the IT departments started realizing that the user experience on these applications is not perfect.
The fact is that the traditional WANs are not designed or suitable for the cloud era. The sudden growth of traffic leads to issues that cannot be managed or handled in the traditional WAN setup.
Secondly, there is an issue of compliance, when businesses start using the cloud they can be prone to a number of cybersecurity threats.
By migrating to the cloud, the networks and data of business are accessed by different people including employees, vendors, contractors, business partners, customers etc.
With so many people accessing the networks, protecting sensitive business data becomes very difficult.
This migration to the cloud has forced traditional WANs to become obsolete. A new network model called Software-Defined Wide Area Network or SD-WAN has replaced the WAN.
In simple words, an SD-WAN is a virtual architecture enabling businesses and large organizations to use any combination of network connection services like LTE, MPLS, basic broadband internet etc. for securely connecting users to different applications.
SD-WAN uses smart routing for providing appropriate optimized bandwidth for each application.
Businesses can manage migration to cloud applications by intentionally routing the traffic from each branch or location directly to the cloud without having to pass through the data centre.
What are the SD-WAN benefits?
Below mentioned are some of the top benefits of SD-WAN.
- Enhances performance:
Network traffics are not equal for all applications or different locations. Luckily, SD-WAN provides the option to configure and prioritize important business traffic and real-time services like Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
Thanks to SD-WAN, the IT teams can facilitate critical applications through dependable, high-performance connections thereby reducing packet loss and latency issues.
This helps improve employee productivity and boost their morale. Overall it has a strong positive impact on the business and application performance.
- Improves security:
Though the digitalization of a business can help improve customer satisfaction and increase market reach, it can also cause significant security risks to the organization.
The best part of SD-WAN technology is that many SD-WAN solutions offer built-in security features.
Look for SD-WAN solutions that provide a number of integrated security features like NGFW, IPS, encryption, AV etc.
That help in preventing data loss, unwanted interruptions, regulatory violations and legal obligations.
- Reduces complexity:
Digitalization of a business application can end up complicating the network and making it complex. The complexity of the network results in a risk of poor network performance.
It can also cause overburdening of the IT teams and the need for placing onsite staff at remote sites for managing the local IT infrastructure.
Thankfully, SD-WAN can help in easing the IT burden by simplifying the WAN infrastructure.
It uses broadband for off-loading less important business apps, automating the monitoring tasks, and handling traffic through a localized controller.
- Allows usage of cloud services:
More and more organizations are adopting cloud services today. SD-WAN allows direct access to the cloud from even the remotest location or branch office.
This helps getting rid of the backhauling traffic by routing all the cloud and branch office traffic directly through the data centre.
This means that the workers can have direct access to the various cloud applications irrespective of their location without loading the core network with added traffic to manage and secure.
SD-WAN helps in improving cloud application performance by prioritizing the applications that are critical and allowing different location offices or branches to directly connect to the Internet.
- Cost Reduction:
As organizations start deploying more and more applications over the cloud, the amount of data travelling over the WAN rises exponentially whereby increasing the operating costs.
SD-WAN helps in reducing these costs by leveraging low-cost local Internet access and giving direct access to the cloud. By routing to the local internet, it helps reduce the amount of application traffic over WAN.
An IDC survey showed that almost 25% of survey respondents expect SD-WAN cost savings of around 39%, while around 66% expect modest savings in the range of 5-19%.
Integral Choice is a Telecommunication and Cloud Agency focusing on strategic areas of customer migration to hosted and contact centre IP services.
SD-WAN from Windstream Enterprise helps in creating a customized hybrid WAN solution that utilizes the best available access options by combining smart, dynamic traffic routing of SD-WAN along with consulting and professional services.