This is part 2 of our 5-part blog series on SD-WAN and how businesses who have multiple office, branch or retail locations can achieve significant cost and performance benefits by replacing current Wide Area Networking (WAN) technologies with Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN).need to manage data and communications through Wide-Area Networks (WAN) can achieve significant benefits by introducing SD-WAN technology. Our first post on the basics of SD-WAN can be found here.
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Managing the ever-increasing flow of data being transferred between a company’s headquarters, branch offices, data centers, and the cloud applications or infrastructure is a major of paramount concern for IT managers. Many are implementing a Software-Defined Wide-Area Network (SD-WAN) as a cost-effective, and flexible alternative to traditional WAN solutions to improve the performance of applications both on-premises and in the cloud.
Prospective customers often ask me to explain the overall benefits of adding switching to SD-WAN to their business and operations. help manage the flow of data. This is a conversation that I love as prospective customers have usually spoken to many different SD-WAN vendors and received many different answers to this question. My answer is that the best fit for each customer depends on the use-cases and business and technical requirements they are trying to address.
In starting that discussion I like to cover off some and the answer may be slightly different each time since the utilization of the SD-WAN will vary from vendor to vendor.
However, there are some “universal” truths, and here are the top six benefits that SD-WAN offers our customers:
Cost: At the top of the list, and virtually everyone’s first concern, is cost savings. Will SD-WAN implementation save my company money? Those who implement an SD-WAN solution will find both hard and soft cost savings. Hard costs are the savings you will derive from canceling carrier-grade MPLS connections which typically involve long provisioning times and expensive contracts. Our customers will also find significant savings in soft costs which are found in improved productivity and performance. And while these savings aren’t immediate, the speed of deployment, capping MPLS expenditures and ease of support and maintenance have an impact over time.
Performance: SD-WAN technology provides superior load balancing and congestion management, while eliminating the backhaul penalties imposed by MPLS networks.
Security: Security is often the paramount issue for any IT Director. How important? A Gartner study found that worldwide expenditures for information security will reach $90 billion in 2017, and top $113 billion by 2020. Traditional WAN solutions require that each branch office manage security at their respective locations and pay a premium for the security of MPLS connections from telecommunications carriers.
SD-WAN has built-in security protocols that offer improved network security by allowing the encryption to deliver on network security requirements by encrypting data WAN traffic as it moves throughout the network. When multiple circuits are deployed at each site, security is also provided by distributing data packets across many connections, making it harder to intercept data flows. And,n SD-WAN also allows for centralized connectivity control, which gives the IT department better visibility into the amount and type of traffic, so any illicit data can be readily identified and shut down. It’s also more efficient to deploy centralized next-generation firewalls at the core of the SD-WAN, as the investment can be leveraged across multiple sites.
Reliability: Companies need to ensure that their network has a 99.99% or greater uptime. SD-WAN can provide this by having to deploy and using multiple active internet links from different providers to avoid any internet disruption. Same IP failover across these multiple links ensures telephone calls and other session-based applications don’t fail if one of the links goes down. And the ability to incorporate fixed wireless or LTE/4G as backup also provides for extra reliability.
Flexibility: It’s easy to deploy a network based on SD-WAN. Internet circuits are fast to order and cheaper than enterprise-grade fiber. Multiple Internet circuits provide built-in carrier redundancy. It’s easy to configure a new site in the Management Portal and send a very cost-effective device to be plugged into the Internet by the customer. SD-WAN technology allows rapid deployment without the need to send skilled, and expensive personnel to each location. And SD-WAN networks can be deployed alongside MPLS networks, replacing connectivity to remote sites with more affordable and often higher performance secure Internet-based links. routers can be scaled up or down as needed making the SD-WAN solution highly agile. SD-WAN technology also allows the rapid deployment of WAN services to a remote site without the need to send personnel to the location.
White Label:Turnium provides a White Label SD-WAN service platform for our customers. They are not reselling our branded SD-WAN product; they are selling their own brand, their own network, determining their own pricing and bundling and building their own value. a network that can be implemented quickly and without the cost of time and money that would be needed to develop their own product. An example of how our white labeled SD-WAN has benefited our customers was recently shared with us by QX.Net and discussed in our new case-study.
As I mentioned before, every client has their own unique concerns and applications. I would love the opportunity to explore your needs and use-cases to offer insights that are specific to your organization. If interested in learning more about how the Turnium’s SD-WAN solution can benefit your company, please fill out the form below. One of our expert staff will contact you to discuss your needs.
To learn about how Turnium can be the best selection for you fill out the form below and our team will provide you the answers!