5 Reasons Why SD-WAN Solutions is Essential for Businesses

May 29, 2023

SD-WAN solutions provide a more reliable, scalable, and flexible network operation. It intelligently shifts latency-sensitive traffic off an MPLS circuit and onto broadband internet or mobile 5G connections, which are far less expensive.

It simplifies security management by centralizing control and visibility from a single pane of glass. And it delivers better performance for cloud and SaaS applications without costly infrastructure like leased lines.

Reduced Costs

Traditionally, organizations have spent significant money on equipment, network connections, and WAN services. However, SD-WAN eliminates many of these costs.

Instead of requiring dedicated and expensive MPLS lines, it uses low-cost internet broadband or 4G/5G connections for most data flow between branch offices and central headquarters. This lowers connectivity costs and increases performance for cloud applications.

Businesses save on administrative and maintenance expenditures with an SD-WAN solution from a company like Versa Networks that functions at the session level rather than the device or circuit level. To do this, a centrally controlled policy framework is spread among tens, hundreds, and thousands of devices.

Maintaining network uptime has never been more important to business success. Research indicates that a single hour of downtime can cost enterprises up to $300,000 in lost revenue and remediation costs. With an SD-WAN, you can ensure unstoppable uptime and deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Improved Performance

Unlike MPLS, SD-WAN allows enterprises to deploy internet connections to their branches that can be used to prioritize traffic for applications like UCaaS and cloud services. By reducing the trombone effect that can slow down branch office performance, users have a better experience, and applications run more efficiently.

SD-WAN helps enterprises deliver unstoppable network performance critical for business success by delivering application-aware routing, including security policy enforcement and quality of service. It also provides reliable backup connections to eliminate costly outages and link bonding that aggregates multiple internet connections for superior performance and failover capabilities.

Finally, because of the as-a-service consumption model that makes SD-WAN easy to implement and manage, enterprises are freed from the inflexible service contracts and large IT support teams required by traditional networking technologies. As a result, the overall cost of SD-WAN can be substantially less than that of an MPLS connection.

This is especially true when the technology is delivered as a service by a trusted managed SD-WAN provider. This can make it a smart investment for enterprises of all sizes.

Improved Security

With traditional WAN technology, keeping track of the network environment and adjusting network controls has been difficult. But with SD-WAN, IT can proactively respond to real-time network conditions and environmental shifts through automated policies that make prioritizing traffic and scale bandwidth easier.

By virtualizing and bonding network connections, SD-WAN can route data more efficiently. For example, it can prioritize data sensitive to latency and jitter over low-latency private circuits while using cheaper local internet for less time-critical applications.

It can also use multiple connections to connect a remote office to headquarters or cloud data centers, making it easy for businesses to turn up new links with zero-touch provisioning.

ML and AI in an SD-WAN solution can help detect anomalies in performance data, identify and resolve issues more quickly, and provide better visibility into network health. This means fewer outages and uptime, increasing productivity and customer satisfaction. A single hour of downtime can cost businesses an average of $300,000 in lost revenue and remediation costs.

Increased Flexibility

SD-WANs can actively divert users to different routes when links degrade, avoiding disruption. This feature makes it easier to get work done when networks are struggling, saving time and eliminating employee stress.

As WAN connectivity demands continue to grow, deploying the right bandwidth is essential. With SD-WAN, it is easy to increase bandwidth for remote offices and global headquarters through cloud-based services, providing a cost-effective solution that scales easily as needs change.

Additionally, cloud-based SD-WANs integrate networking and security functionality, delivering a single, software-defined service that eliminates the need to deploy standalone appliances at each site and centralizes management.

This approach is Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), which reduces costs by offloading traffic from MPLS to the internet and enabling advanced security inspection directly in the cloud. This approach also reduces latency and improves performance.

In addition, it helps improve scalability by allowing you to add and subtract points of presence (PoPs) as needed. This flexibility can reduce network costs, improve performance, and ensure availability during peak business hours.

And it provides a better user experience for mobile workers, enabling them to connect to the network securely and seamlessly from any location using their preferred device or operating system.

Increased Reliability

SD-WAN allows businesses to combine multiple internet connections, providing failover and business continuity in the event of a degraded connection or an outage. This means that data transmission continues uninterrupted, without IT specialists needing complex and time-consuming manual configurations.

Advanced SD-WAN solutions continuously monitor network performance and automatically redirects traffic over the best path, ensuring that applications deliver consistent QoE. This is a significant improvement over basic solutions, which often frustrate users with choppy and unreliable connections.

Modern businesses are using a variety of cloud-based applications, including SaaS, VoIP, and other collaboration tools. As management structures get flatter and teams are distributed across the globe, it’s essential that employees can connect to their business applications consistently and reliably.

Quality SD-WAN solutions like Silver Peak make this easy, enabling new connections to be established in minutes rather than weeks or months. These connections are secure and supported by advanced threat intelligence systems to ensure that data is always safe at the edge.

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