If your enterprise has multiple locations and relies on IaaS, SaaS, or other cloud solutions, you likely fit the profile for a business that can benefit from SD-WAN.
Centralized control means that network traffic is routed more efficiently, ensuring that performance-intensive applications receive the bandwidth they need to work well.
Improved Network Visibility
One of the most essential benefits of SD-WAN is better visibility into your network. You can identify and resolve network issues with this insight into application performance and user experiences.
It is especially true when you have multiple service providers or multi-vendor infrastructures. With a powerful monitoring tool, you can get unified visibility into your network. It allows you to monitor performance and SLA compliance from a single portal.
Visibility into your network also enables you to enforce traffic prioritization policies more efficiently. It means that you can prioritize business-critical applications during peak traffic. It also helps you avoid performance issues such as latency, jitter, and packet loss.
Additionally, SD-WAN offers a more flexible network by eliminating the need for physical hardware at each site. It enables you to scale up your bandwidth capacity quickly and easily. And because the technology is software-based, you can run it on your existing customer premises equipment (CPE) instead of purchasing expensive new hardware. This flexibility makes it much easier to maintain high uptime and unstoppable performance.
Better Security
Security is a top priority for network administrators. With SD-WAN, they can set policies that prevent data from traversing the internet without proper protection. It also prioritizes mission-critical apps to ensure they receive the bandwidth and performance they need.
SD-WAN can provide a more secure connection to the cloud than traditional VPN solutions because it uses software to control routing rather than hardware. It doesn’t require a private connection between each location, which can be vulnerable to attacks. It can also use Points of Presence in the cloud to protect against threats by keeping defenses close to apps instead of routing them back and forth through a central location.
Connecting to the cloud is vital for many businesses, especially as they shift to new digital business services like teleconferencing or VOIP. With SD-WAN, it’s easier to support these technologies than with a traditional MPLS setup because they can be automatically configured and managed by the solution. It helps improve availability, last-mile bandwidth, and reliability. It also reduces reliance on expensive MPLS connections between locations, which saves money.
Reduced Congestion
If you’re a growing multi-site business that relies on SaaS and IaaS solutions, has a strong desire to improve application performance, and has expansion plans, then you fit the profile of the ideal SD-WAN customer. These types of businesses see the most significant ROI on their SD-WAN investment.
SD-WAN devices detect thousands of apps and services and their performance requirements (like latency and jitter). By prioritizing these critical applications, the SD-WAN ensures that the business-critical traffic gets to the cloud or data center over the best path. It reduces telecom costs and improves bandwidth efficiency and performance.
A secure, encrypted overlay network protects data from cyber threats as it travels to its destination. It is significant for employees who need to access corporate data remotely, such as when working from home or on the go.
With zero-touch provisioning, an SD-WAN device can run in minutes. It means that specialized IT expertise is optional at the branch office, saving time and money. In addition, IT makes any policy changes centrally and pushes them out to all branch offices with a single click.
Improved Data Transfer Rates
When employees need to use hosted applications, they want them to perform quickly and reliably. SD-WAN lets IT configure management policies on a centralized console that can be easily replicated to all devices. Hence, the right traffic goes through the best path for optimal performance.
Traditional WANs rely on router tables to determine the route communication data should take from the source to its destination. With a new approach, SD-WAN eliminates the need to look up routing information on individual devices and instead relies on a software-based solution that automatically looks for the most efficient path between sites.
The centralized control function with SD-WAN allows administrators to prioritize bandwidth for specific applications. It helps improve the performance of critical business applications and keeps them running even if other circuits experience issues. For example, VoIP, media, and internal applications can be routed over one circuit. In contrast, low-bandwidth applications are sent across a different connection to ensure they get the needed resources without compromising the user experience.
Improved Mobility
The centralized control function of SD-WAN enables granular policy rules that steer application traffic to the best possible connections. These policies can prioritize traffic based on type, IP addresses, ports, quality-of-service markings, and more.
SD-WAN also reduces costs by utilizing low-cost broadband Internet links for most traffic and saving more expensive MPLS circuits for business-critical applications. It enables remote locations to directly connect to cloud apps without backhauling data through the central network, eliminating latency and reducing overall cost.
Secure connectivity ensures that sensitive data cannot be intercepted as it travels over the internet between locations, reducing the risk of cyberattacks. It is significant for businesses with many IoT devices, which generate massive amounts of data to and from their corporate networks.
Many SD-WAN solutions provide built-in firewall capabilities to reduce the need for separate hardware devices, often creating an impasse between security and networking teams. It reduces initial investment and enables organizations to benefit from more efficient network management over time. SD-WAN can also use link bonding to combine multiple transports at the network edge, which improves last-mile performance and availability.
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