There is no greater force than an Idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo
2017 is the year when Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) advanced from being a curiosity to being accepted by the networking community. While 2 major acquisitions of SD-WAN vendors validated the technology, almost all major Service Providers worldwide announced their plans to support SD-WAN for their enterprise customers.
Many large and small enterprises also began their SD-WAN journey with both DIY and MSP based deployments. The technology is well positioned to disrupt the enterprise networking space in coming years.
While the SD-WAN technology has gained customer mind-share, the technology remains dynamic with new trends making a significant impact on the feature development and deployment plans.
In this article, we analyze the major trends, new requirements, and applications which will influence the market and deployments.
1. Cloud Connectivity
The Cloud Migration of the enterprises is continuing in full swing. According to leading experts, more than 75% of CIOs will be pressured by business management to evaluate migrating their data centres to cloud IaaS. While many enterprises are moving to Cloud-based IaaS offerings like AWS, Azure/Office 365, other enterprises are consolidating the applications on Private Clouds hosted in data centres.
The Hybrid Cloud concept (with applications using public cloud to handle bursts) is also a trend making inroads into the enterprise application space. According to Gartner by 2020, 90 Percent of Organizations will adopt Hybrid Infrastructure Management.
SD-WAN solutions are directly impacted by the cloud deployment strategy of the enterprise. A Virtual Private Cloud branch deployed in the cloud should be no different than a physical branch providing SD-WAN and security services for the cloud-deployed applications. The deployments in private clouds should interwork with Virtualized Infrastructure Managers (VIMs) like OpenStack.
Enterprises are moving extensively to SaaS applications like Office365 and Salesforce. These applications for performance monitoring and optimization by SD-WAN benefits the enterprise.
2. Integrated Security
The continuous barrage of security incidents in 2017 highlighted the importance of secure connectivity once again. As branches face increased bandwidth demands (which according to Gartner is doubling every 2.9 years), the need to connect the branch directly to the internet is becoming inevitable. However, this exposes the branch to a bigger security threat.
Network Security is a multi-dimensional solution. Network Segmentation and isolation of network traffic, Policy Separation as well as Network Visibility provides the first level of defence. With multi-tenant capable SD-WAN, the isolation and configuration are automated using tenants and templates.
SD-Wan allows administrators to have visibility in individual segments for traffic patterns and threats. NextGen Firewall capability, Unified Threat Management, and DNS Security provide added layers of security for the branch traffic. The traditional model of deploying a security, however, increases the appliance sprawl increasing both the power and configuration complexity.
A holistic approach to WAN and Security is required.
3. Managed Service Provider
The requirement for deployment of SD-WAN from enterprises is resulting in demand for Managed Service Provider. Compared to a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach of SD-WAN deployment which is attractive to tech-savvy enterprises, many enterprises are looking to the service provider to provide SD-WAN as a managed service. The Service Providers have varied strategy to upsell value-added Services by integrating Monitoring, Service Bundling, and Centralized Management into the mix. This allows Service Providers to differentiate and provide an upselling opportunity (e.g. Managed Security) compared to the present where the service provider is limited to selling connectivity service.
4. Unified Communication
The VoIP and Video Conferencing trends are consolidating with the advent of Distributed Enterprise Environment. These collaboration applications are critical for an enterprise directly impacting the business.
SD-WAN enables Application Performance Monitoring and SLA based Application Routing ensures an Enhanced User Experience for the Voice Calls, Video Calls and Video Conferences. Enhancing the application experience over under-performing underlay using Forward Error Correct, Packet Striping and advanced application-aware monitoring using MOS Score further ensure the applications critical to business work seamlessly.
Conclusion:
In 2017, enterprises gained experience via the initial deployments and validations.This has resulted in the next wave of technological requirements. With the above trends, a business can extract more value from the SD-WAN deployment. The SD-WAN technology itself will benefit by enhancing user-experiences for the enterprise applications.
About the Author:
Versa Networks is an agile startup known for a strong foundation in NFV, Virtualization, Routing, and Security. Versa’s SD-WAN and SD-Security solution provides industry-leading performance and functionality.
The Versa Solution is multi-tenant, provides flexible deployment models (from Whitebox small form factor to Public Cloud), has inbuilt security and has application detection and acceleration capabilities. Please visit versa-networks.com or contact us to see how Versa Solution can benefit your network.
There are a variety of SD-WAN network products that you can purchase which include dedicated servers, routers, wireless connectivity equipment and the latest products, which include the software application which can also connect to other computers within your network. You are curious to know more about sd-wan providers, head over to the website.
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