SD-WAN & Internet Fiber
Software Defined WAN (Wide Area Network)
Over the past five years, there have been significant advancements in increasing the level of agility and flexibility in the data center through software-defined networking (SDN). However, one part of IT that has yet to evolve and lacks flexibility is the enterprise wide-area network (WAN).
Evolving the WAN must be at the top of every IT and business leader’s priority list because organizations can only be as agile as their least agile IT component—which, today, is the WAN. If businesses are going to ever reach the level of agility required to compete in today’s digital world, now is the time for the WAN to evolve into a Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN).
Increased changes to traffic patterns: SaaS, cloud, mobile, video and VoIP
The evolution of IT technologies has altered traffic flows within distributed organizations. Not only do remote users require significantly more bandwidth (for example, when using video), but they also need to directly access SaaS/cloud‐based applications such as Salesforce, Office 365, Lync and off‐premise storage (such as Dropbox, Evernote, and so on).
Software-Defined WAN is a must in today’s Internet.
Traditional MPLS networks that transmit all traffic from the branch to a centralized data center can’t offer low latency/high-performance access to cloud applications. In addition, the security and management requirements associated with disparate traffic flows have added to the complexity of managing branch operations – thus increasing operational (staffing) costs for many IT organizations.
SD‐WAN Benefits
In contrast, SD‐WAN provides a wide range of benefits for distributed organizations, including:
Internet economics
Internet connectivity (including cable, DSL and ethernet) is widely available, quick to deploy and a fraction of the cost of equivalent MPLS circuits. SD‐WAN provides the benefits of reliable, secure WAN service at Internet price points.
Business agility
Rapid deployment of WAN services (such as bandwidth and firewall) to distributed branch operations without the need to send IT personnel on‐site. Bandwidth can be easily added (with additional circuits) or reduced as business requirements evolve.
Optimized cloud architecture
SD‐WAN eliminates the backhaul penalties of traditional MPLS networks and leverages the Internet to provide secure, high‐performance connections from the branch to the cloud. With SD‐WAN, remote users will see significant improvements in their experience when using the cloud/SaaS‐based applications.