Unravelling the Mysteries of SD-WAN: Common Questions Answered
The intriguing landscape of SD-WAN has gained significant attention in recent times. As businesses continue to prioritise network adaptability and efficiency, the curiosity surrounding this technology remains prevalent. Regardless of your current utilisation of SD-WAN, or if you are stepping into this realm for the first time, here we answer some of the common questions that our customers asked when considering a SD-WAN solution, to help inform their decisions when choosing the best-fit.
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With much of the UK’s workforce now working from home, businesses must ensure they provide a secure, efficient remote working environment. Unsurprisingly, many home Internet connections are struggling to cope with the increase in bandwidth demand as well as provide the same watertight levels of security that an office network offers.
Working as an extension of your company network, SD-WAN maintains network security while maximising the performance and availability of business-critical applications, with homeworkers connected to the wide area network (WAN) via a secure overlay. This means staff can always depend on the applications they need to do their jobs – regardless of where they are working from – and employers can enjoy peace of mind knowing productivity and security are fully optimised. Oh, and families enjoy minimal disruption to their home connection!
As well as providing a better overall experience, SD-WAN can help businesses operate safely as they start to reopen offices, shops and branches. Whether you have one site or one thousand, you can deploy and configure network and security settings for every site with minimal effort or time spent. Additionally, SD-WAN gives you visibility and control of your networks, devices, users and traffic, helping you respond to changing demands and plan your business’ evolution. With the help of SD-WAN, businesses can rest assured that they can deliver a safe and secure post-pandemic environment, and deal with unexpected events or situations in the future.
SD-WAN is a key tool in the networking industry’s arsenal because it builds on the premise of software-defined networking (SDN), which we’re seeing as prevalent in the industry today. SDN allows you to implement more intuitive-based policies and rules on the network, and when you extend this over the wide area network (WAN) it allows more meaningful access to cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. As businesses rely more on cloud-based data and applications, and support a larger distributed workforce, networks need to adapt to this new reality. SD-WAN makes the network more flexible than ever before, keeping pace with new customer requirements and changing business conditions.
As an overlay to an existing network, SD-WAN is easy to implement. By overlay, we mean we don’t necessarily have to change all of the circuits and Internet connectivity, rather start running proof of concepts, putting SD-WAN technology in certain points of the network, and building out a journey with the customer on how they want to adopt SD-WAN technology throughout their entire estate.
SD-WAN enables employee productivity by providing certain sets of features. For example quality of service (QoS) around certain applications such as voice, where voice traffic is prioritised over Internet traffic or email access. This means the QoS on a voice call is retained at all costs over other traffic on the network. Additionally, primary circuits and secondary circuits can be used to direct traffic in certain ways. For instance, accounting information can be routed back to head office using the primary MPLS link, while using standard Internet access via FTTC for email and non-business critical applications. With the introduction of LTE technology into the SD-WAN portfolio, you can rely on 4G or 5G connectivity to keep your sites up and running in the event of a primary circuit failover, all of which means your employees can carry on working while your circuits are being looked after.
An ever-growing skills shortage means businesses can’t always allocate engineers to go on training courses which in turn stops them from adopting new technologies. As an alternative, they can use service providers like Daisy to complement and extend their existing IT capabilities, helping them adopt modern technologies like SD-WAN while they concentrate on the day-to-day running of their business. A Managed SD-WAN service helps bridge the skills gap over both the short and the long term, providing project-based professional and engineering resources, as well as support services around change management, incident management, and break-fix maintenance.
SD-WAN is the answer to a range of business challenges. Here are a few of the most common challenges, and how it helps:
- Network Complexity: SD-WAN simplifies network management by providing centralised control and visibilit
- High Costs: MPLS-based WANs can be costly to implement and maintain. SD-WAN allows you to leverage cost-effective internet connectivity while still ensuring reliable and secure connections. This can result in significant cost savings
- Limited Bandwidth: SD-WAN optimises bandwidth utilisation by dynamically routing traffic over the most efficient path, ensuring better performance and improved user experience
- Lack of Agility: SD-WAN enables you to quickly and easily scale your network, add new branch locations, and adopt emerging technologies without major disruptions, increasing business agility
- Application Performance: SD-WAN allows direct and secure access to cloud and SaaS applications, enhancing performance and user experience
- Security: SD-WAN incorporates advanced security features such as encryption, next-generation firewalls, and threat intelligence to protect the network and data from cybersecurity risks
SD-WAN offers several benefits for cloud and SaaS applications. It enables direct access to these applications, eliminating the need to route all traffic through a centralised data centre, which enhances performance. SD-WAN provides the ability to dynamically route SaaS traffic to the best path, enhancing end-user experience with fast and secure access to these applications.
By leveraging SD-WAN, you can optimise the user experience and efficiency for SaaS and public-cloud applications, allowing for better visibility into application performance through real-time and historical metrics, enabling you to monitor and manage your application performance effectively.
SD-WAN improves performance, enhances user experience, and provides better visibility and control for cloud and SaaS applications.
SD-WAN offers several benefits for cloud and SaaS applications. It enables direct access to these applications, eliminating the need to route all traffic through a centralised data centre, which enhances performance. SD-WAN provides the ability to dynamically route SaaS traffic to the best path, enhancing end-user experience with fast and secure access to these applications.
By leveraging SD-WAN, you can optimise the user experience and efficiency for SaaS and public-cloud applications, allowing for better visibility into application performance through real-time and historical metrics, enabling you to monitor and manage your application performance effectively.
SD-WAN improves performance, enhances user experience, and provides better visibility and control for cloud and SaaS applications.
SD-WAN does have security implications that you should consider. While SD-WAN offers benefits such as agility and cost optimisation, it introduces potential security gaps. It is crucial to choose the right SD-WAN solution to ensure the performance and security of the WAN.
When deployed correctly, security can actually be enhanced by SD-WAN. Research shows that businesses already using SD-WAN are less likely to experience security concerns compared to those who have not yet invested. This is because SD-WAN provides improved cyber resilience and enhanced policy management capabilities, enabling secure and low-risk adoption of cloud-based applications and facilitating smooth digital transformation initiatives.
To maximise the security of your SD-WAN deployment, it is important to implement a robust security framework that encompasses multiple layers of defence. This includes leveraging advanced encryption protocols, deploying next-generation firewalls with intrusion prevention capabilities, utilising secure web gateways, adopting a Zero Trust model for network access, and regularly monitoring and updating security measures. By diligently adhering to these security best practices, you can significantly mitigate the potential security risks introduced by SD-WAN and ensure a secure and resilient network infrastructure.