Importance of SD-WAN to Boost Your Business Efficiency

Having multiple connections helps ensure that in the event of an outage or even service degradation, other connections can be leveraged to keep the business running.

How does SD-WAN work?

SD WAN typically utilizes different types of internet access to ensure optimization of all IT application needs such as UCaaS, SaaS, VoIP, email, etc (any application).

Using diverse internet circuits allow you to take advantage of public broadband alongside MPLS, instead of relying solely on expensive dual MPLS  connections from multiple providers.  This network architecture provides lower costs AND increased network performance.

Importance of SD-WAN for Your Business

In today’s fast-paced digital world, SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) is crucial for businesses. It optimizes network traffic, enhances security, reduces costs, and simplifies management. Let’s explore the importance of SD-WAN and how it can transform your network infrastructure and drive business growth.

SD-WAN enables the business to:

• Easily perform remote installations since the hardware can be remotely configured and sent to the location as “plug-n-play” for a branch or office manager to simply install which enables faster, less expensive network roll-out.
• Manage the performance of the network from the SD-WAN single pane of glass software
• Overlay the SD-WAN technology on the current network topology or replace it
• Save costs by migrating from expensive MPLS to multiple broadband internet access services
• Actively load balance applications

In addition to being more affordable, SD-WANs have many other benefits. If you intend to switch to SD-WAN it is always advisable to keep certain SD-WAN migration considerations in mind.

SD-WAN provides intelligence that:

• Leverages multiple circuits to the internet to provide optimal performance for each application.
• Analyzes the services and will provide charts of the performance at multiple layers.
• Analyzes the patterns and data traffic flows that each application may require.
• Helps IT manage the policies to help properly guide application flows.
• Optimizes the application traffic to the best path which delivers the best results for the branch location.

SD-WAN software puts the power in your hands so that you’ll have less to manage and can better focus on high-priority projects rather than the latest IT “fire”.

You’ll have the tools to simply track your priority services to ensure the best experience for your customers and employees which adds to the businesses bottom line.

Traditional WAN Design Vs. SD-WAN Network Topology

Traditional WAN designs struggle to meet the demands of modern applications and cloud services. SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) offers a flexible, high-performance alternative that enhances efficiency and reduces costs. Let’s compare traditional WAN design with SD-WAN network topology, highlighting why many businesses are making the switch.

Challenges of Traditional WAN:

• IT typically must travel to new sites for setup, programming and installation.
• Single outages (Hardware or circuits) take down connectivity to the site and stop normal business functions such as sales transaction processing.
• MPLS is more expensive than today’s broadband technologies due to increased price competition among providers.
• More difficult to manage and view application level status.
• Limited ability to redirect traffic flows if a circuit slows down and degrades.
• Router management requires higher cost IT staff
• When deploying Microsoft Office 365 most businesses find that their legacy network design introduces performance issues that can severely impact end-user employees’ productivity. For example, Office 365 can demand four times the bandwidth as compared to on-premises exchange servers while SD-WAN optimizes your Office 365 deployment.

The advantages of SD-WAN over the other similar technology are as follow:

• Allows seamless integration with cloud infrastructure applications and platforms such as AWS, Azure, Office 365, and Salesforce. To know more read our detailed guide on how SD-WAN connects to the cloud services.
• Reduces network complexity compared to legacy WAN architectures
• Actionable analytics a provided regarding the health and performance applications, circuits and networks drive the self-healing capabilities and also provide true visibility.
• SD-WAN provides an encrypted internet connection and increases data security for your network.
• Two-times to Five-times hardware cost savings
• Ability to monitor failures/errors, transaction times, fingerprints, CODEC’s, and MOS scores.
• Utilization by application
• Application success and failures, TCP failures
• Link Loss, jitter, and latency
• Simple QoS management
• The SD-WAN software learns typical traffic profiles to better optimize them
• Allows integration with 3rd party security services in the cloud