Uncovering the Truth About SD-WAN

Let's overcome Software Defined WAN myths

3
SD WAN Truth
Unified Communications

Published: June 12, 2017

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

Before a company considers stepping into the world of SD-WAN, it’s crucial to make sure that IT leaders understand how to customise the system for optimal performance. The trouble is that many companies are still making huge mistakes when it comes to deploying SD-WAN properly.

IT staff and leaders tend to assume that moving to SD-WAN means replacing all private WAN solutions with broadband connections. They also think that saving money is guaranteed, and starting or maintaining SD-WAN is simple.

The truth is that all of these statements are myths, and this chain of false belief comes from the original belief that choosing SD-WAN means removing the hybrid WAN infrastructure entirely. However, this isn’t the case – not if IT teams want to meet with their responsibilities to provide a better performance for critical business applications.

What’s the Reality for SD-WAN?

Ultimately, it’s true that SD-WAN offers some exceptional technologies and techniques for boosting up-time and speed using standard broadband connections. However, these solutions can only improve the circumstances up to a particular point. When those initial efforts are exhausted, your business will need to deal with the effects of degradations or service outages for a significant amount of time. Since broadband providers aren’t known for their mean-time-to-repair guarantees, most businesses simply won’t be able to afford this.

 

Choosing dedicated internet access solutions to ensure consistent performance across broadband could help to make sure that application requirements are met. However, the cost of this scenario could be a lot more than you wanted to spend when moving to SD-WAN. In this case, the money you thought you’d save when removing private WAN connections begins to slip away.

Additionally, labour and money can become issues regarding deploying SD-WAN across your network and optimising the technology. Capabilities like zero-touch provisioning certainly streamline operations, but they can only be effective if you hire a network architect to design the correct parameters in advance, so that they can be inserted into SD-WAN hardware. You’ll also need to call on those talents every time you need to make updates or configurations.

How Can You Get SD-WAN Right?

If you can get SD-WAN right, the technology might emerge as an incredible solution for your business. You simply need to know how to do it. First off, you’ll need to continue to leverage two or more different types of connections in a hybrid setting for WAN. Think of private multi-protocol label switching as the ideal option for your real-time applications, which can then be backed by broadband.

For remote sites that don’t require a lot of bandwidth, it could be helpful to combine broadband services as the primary SD-WAN function with options that are intended to support the virtual private network tunnels. This will allow for direct private network connections that permit users to track from the internet onto a global line network to ensure data integrity and good service.

The crucial thing to remember is that SD-WAN should be seen as an elegant means of leveraging various WAN links for the best performance and value. The value of SD-WAN becomes all the more significant when it’s paired with a range of deployment options, including cloud, and dynamic application control.

SD-WAN can help to make your hybrid WAN solution the most cost-effective, and flexible solution possible.

 

Service ProviderUCaaS
Featured

Share This Post