SD-WAN For Enterprises Is Preferred Over Traditional WAN

For the success of any company in this connected world having a fast and reliable network connection is very important. Essential applications like ERP, CRM, Video conferencing apps, cloud applications etc. are used by most of the companies. They need a reliable network connection to keep the process running smoothly and in efficient manner. Increasing amount of data can be transferred among data centers and offices. This high traffic needs network optimization to avoid downtime, slow response, poor connectivity or other unexpected results. Let’s find out what is traditional WAN technology and what are its disadvantages.

Traditional WAN Technology

Traditional WAN technology is deployed by most of the solution providers to set up a network. That includes leased lines, Circuit-switched networks or packet switched networks. Traditional WAN design is based on multiple devices stacked in the branch office with siloed management and disparate WAN links connecting them. It has some disadvantages that should be seriously considered:

• Complex infrastructure and time-consuming process to implement.
• Unpredictable application performance.
• Datacenter dependent with no direct access to cloud resources.
• Expensive Bandwidth.

These are some of the issues that make traditional WAN an improper solution. In fact, most of the specialists say that traditional WAN is broken because of the risks associated with its implementation. Also, these WAN connections often use technology that requires special proprietary hardware. The SD-WAN movement seeks to move more of the network control into the “cloud,” using a software approach. Now, let’s discuss why SD-WAN for enterprises is preferred.

Why SD-WAN For Enterprises

The software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN or SDWAN) is a specific application of software-defined networking (SDN) technology applied to WAN connections, which are used to connect enterprise networks including branch offices and data centers over large geographic distances. Such Software-defined networking virtualizes the networking hardware that brings added agility and cost savings. SDWAN makes branch networks work in a better and reliable way. Here are some reasons that make SDWAN the best solution for enterprises.

Cloud-optimized:

Cloud applications are very reliable and efficient to handle the increasing number of traffic. A company no longer has to worry about the hardware and expensive network infrastructure. The elastic nature of this technology is good enough to handle the traffic increase while reducing complexity.

Improved transport options:

The SDWAN is not restricted to use a specific transport protocol. Its virtual nature allows it to use any transport protocol like 3G, 4G LTE, MPLS, Internet, Ethernet, Serial or Wi-Fi. This transport flexibility is itself a great plus point to opt for SDWAN.

Greater agility and responsiveness:

By using SDWAN the speed of the applications continues to accelerate resulting in increased business and customer satisfaction. With the growing competition, the agility and responsiveness are the key factors that provide the great user experience.

High availability and uptime:

SD-WAN solutions bring a new level of high availability to applications. Previously, traffic for a specific application was mapped to a single WAN service. Silver Peak’s tunnel bonding technology pools connectivity from multiple sources to create a single logical connection from one, two or more different WAN links.

Better security:

Security has been one of the most important concerns for any kind of business either if you are a freelancer or a tech giant. SD-WAN can integrate with a cloud web content filtering service and offer malware defenses and botnet command-and-control intervention for every branch and remote devices. That results in increased security.

Intelligent pathway control:

This is one of the most important aspects of this technology that answers the question of why SDWAN for enterprises is the best solution. Basically, it can provide intelligent path control that steers traffic based on application. This traffic-prioritization capability can be set in place at the centralized controller level and then pushed out to all SD-WAN devices.

Automatic provisioning:

SD-WAN enables businesses to send SD-WAN devices to branches un-configured. The device then can download its policy, crypto certificate and keys and automatically start to learn traffic patterns. Provisioning is dramatically easier with SD-WAN.

Pay as you grow:

Cloud-based services have one amazing feature in the form of pay as you grow that helps save a lot of money which would otherwise be required to purchase the hardware for data. Cloud-based services providers like AWS and Google cloud charge money only for the amount of space you use. The servers are always ready to tackle the increasing traffic and data as discussed above to avoid downtime and up-gradation time. At the end, you would only pay for the resources you use.

There are many other benefits of using SDWAN instead of traditional WAN, but we have tried to mention the most valuable and essential information to give an overview and understanding. You can watch this video for more information. Connectra SD-WAN Video.

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