The Ultimate List of SD-WAN Benefits
SD-WAN has shifted from peripheral technology to the mainstream.
When else have we seen a technology with such profound impact?
Clearly, plenty of people are getting excited about SD-WAN benefits.
“Cato Networks provides a cloud-based and secure global SD-WAN. Cuts MPLS costs, eliminates branch appliances, and secures Internet access everywhere. “
There are also plenty of reasons already discussed for that excitement.
Heres my ultimate list of SD-WAN benefits, including a few you probably havent considered.
Align Your Business and Your WAN
For too long, our networks havent reflected our business priorities.
Business-critical applications were starved for bandwidth while YouTube and, worse, BItTorrent, got treated like royalty.
Sales calls were garbled while file transfers chugged along.
SD-WAN allows us to make order of this WAN mess and align our backbones to our business priorities.
This means more than just allocating bandwidth by the applications importance to the business.
Even with traditional wide area networks, weve been able to do that with the right edge equipment.
GetBetterApplication Performance
Applications vary in their online grid requirements.
Voice is sensitive to packet loss and jitter; bulk data transfer requires throughput.
Web applications have their own needs.
As a result, some applications may starve while others thrive.
SD-WAN lets you be smarter about how you pick your routes.
SD-WAN appliances monitor latency and loss metrics of the paths to all other SD-WAN appliances.
The upshot: companies can reach peak performance across any provided transport.
The ROI of an SD-WAN can be dramatic and immediate.
Replace MPLS bandwidth with Internet bandwidth and save 70% on bandwidth costs.
Operational expenses also become much lower.
With zero-touch provisioning, bringing up a new location can be done in minutes and without specialized expertise.
Just plug the SD-WAN appliance into the web link.
It does the rest.
Junk Your MPLS Provider For Good
Getting MPLS-free.
Its the dream of many WAN managers.
The reality is that while some applications can shift to the Internet, many cannot.
Loss-sensitive applications, for example, will underperform over time when traversing the Internet.
For those applications, organizations will still have retain MPLS or replace it with another SLA-backed backbone.
For many companies, managing their WANs this way is not scalable.
Policies drive configuration, which minimizes the configuration-drift between branch offices that complicates WAN support.
Deployment policies are also important for zero-touch provisioning and deployment.
Adding new tool services across the WAN without adversely existing services becomes much easier.
Networking teams built the WAN and had their firewalls; mobile teams had their mobile VPNs.
The cloud has given rise to its own security solutions.
And all three had their own tools and policies.
Companies ended up paying more operationally for this fragmented security infrastructure.
With the right SD-WAN, organizations can now create a holistic security posture that protects all of its resources.
Its a radical transformation that makes security simpler and, by extension, more effective.
Protect Your WAN From Itself
Everyone assumes the WAN is secure, but thats far from the truth.
All SD-WANs address two of those problems.
They encrypt traffic, preventing wiretapping.
And make no mistake, preventing lateral movement is incredibly important.
To stop lateral movement, the SD-WAN needs to be inherently secure, inspecting every packet between locations.
Some SD-WANs can deliver that kind of advanced security, while others cannot.
Whats needed to make MPLS last miles secure are active/active, redundant, dual-homed, and diversely-routed connections.
But with MPLS, that hasnt been possible for many reasons.
Bandwidth costs have been too high for many companies to afford redundant connections.
Even then, ensuring they were diversely routed has been impossible.
Running two active connections can also introduce routing loops or complicate route configuration.
Failover between them is also not fast enough to sustain a voice call or a session, for example.
SD-WANs solve the uptime problem.
Their use of tunnelling make it simple to run active/active.
The SD-WAN node load balances the connections, maximizing the available bandwidth.
The traffic policies driving the SD-WAN determine the use of one path or another.
Fast failover is an essential feature and one offered by many SD-WAN providers.
Making them intrinsically secure renders the WAN even more agile, easier to configure, and powerful.
Its enough to get any IT pro excited.
Now, do you see why so many companies are intrigued by SD-WANs?
source: www.techworm.net
