SD-WAN automates traffic steering in an application-driven way based on business intent. It helps reduce WAN infrastructure costs and increases productivity and agility.
To achieve the above, it is essential to correlate the SD-WAN overlay with its supporting underlay infrastructure. Network Performance Monitoring tool can do just that.
Cost-Effective
SD-WAN technology can reduce network costs by optimizing bandwidth and prioritizing critical applications. It also provides better security for remote branches and simplifies connections to cloud resources. These efficiencies can make a significant impact on your business’s bottom line.
When considering the implementation of a Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), choosing the right SD WAN service provider is crucial to ensure seamless connectivity, optimal performance, and efficient management of network resources
When it comes to network performance, avoiding downtime is critical. Traditional MPLS networks are prone to outages and can severely affect productivity. However, with an SD-WAN solution in place, your company can avoid the costly impacts of downtime by leveraging redundant transport methods. The self-healing features of an SD-WAN solution also help to eliminate single points of failure.
In addition, an SD-WAN solution can significantly reduce network bandwidth costs by allowing you to leverage inexpensive public Internet. This can result in cost savings of over 50% on a per-megabit basis compared to MPLS. Additionally, it can reduce the time and money needed to provision new MPLS links and provide the flexibility to connect to the cloud easily. This can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Moreover, it will allow your business to prioritize real-time traffic and boost network reliability.
Resilient
Traditional WAN networks affect all traffic when one circuit goes down until the problem is fixed. To prevent this, many companies provision backup circuits. While this can help, it’s expensive and time-consuming to manage. SD-WAN can solve this by directing traffic on an application basis over any available link without requiring additional hardware.
As a result, businesses can improve application performance and QoE for employees, customers, and partners. This is made possible by business-driven policy management and centralized orchestration. In addition, an SD-WAN can leverage xDSL, broadband Internet, or even 5G connections to optimize last-mile performance.
For example, a company can use an SD-WAN to prioritize cloud applications and connect branch offices directly to the Internet, eliminating the need to backhaul traffic to the data center. This can reduce bandwidth usage and costs while enabling remote employees to access cloud applications with optimal performance. It also eliminates the need to route all cloud and branch office traffic through the data center, which can cause network congestion and performance issues. In turn, this can lead to improved productivity and efficiency.
Efficient
One of the biggest challenges with traditional networks is their high bandwidth costs, especially per bit. This can be mitigated with SD-WAN by leveraging the lower cost of public internet circuits and routing traffic over those paths whenever possible.
Additionally, traditional networks are expensive and inflexible, often requiring specialized configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting skills. By implementing an SD-WAN solution, you can get better performance at a fraction of the price without sacrificing network security.
SD-WAN can also offer centralized management, which is much easier than the device-by-device configuration required by traditional WAN devices. This can help you eliminate mistakes and save time.
Lastly, SD-WAN can also improve network efficiency by optimizing traffic routes to minimize latency and jitter. This can be particularly beneficial for applications like VoIP that rely on consistent connections and quality of service. You can even take it further and implement application optimization, which optimizes specific applications sensitive to latency or packet loss. This can increase productivity and ensure your remote working workforce has a seamless experience.
Scalable
Unlike MPLS, which requires significant upfront capital expenditures and ongoing bandwidth charges, SD-WAN uses existing internet connections, reducing upfront costs and operational expenses. This makes it a cost-effective alternative to MPLS for companies with multiple sites, incredibly remote, and home offices.
With SD-WAN, branch offices can connect to their corporate data center securely via direct internet access. This reduces reliance on costly MPLS links for applications such as voice, videoconferencing, and web browsing, enabling them to save money while increasing productivity.
Whether you are already an SD-WAN user or looking to add it to your network, a good network observability solution provides valuable historical data and insights that allow you to predict capacity demands. This enables you to plan for and deploy appropriate capacity upgrades. Moreover, with real-time visibility into performance issues, you can deliver quality customer experiences and ensure SLA compliance. This can lead to customer satisfaction, a positive business reputation, and potential growth. Learn more about how a network observability solution can help you meet your SLA commitments.
Security
An SD-WAN can help with security as well, giving your WAN visibility. It can also optimize applications that are sensitive to latency and packet loss. This is a significant benefit for organizations that prioritize the cloud because it ensures IaaS and SaaS applications get the right experience. Additionally, an SD-WAN can handle a transport outage and provide sub-second failover to avoid business interruptions.
An SD-WAN can also deliver a higher bandwidth by dynamically selecting the best path for each application or traffic flow. This is done by monitoring the performance of network connections and analyzing traffic patterns. This enables businesses to prioritize certain data types over others while lowering operational costs by eliminating IT personnel needing to update, monitor, and scale hardware. Additionally, an SD-WAN can connect remote locations and hybrid workforces to multiple cloud platforms with unified visibility and management. It can also enable network slicing, which creates parallel logical networks within the same physical network with different quality of service and security policies for each. These networks can be used to meet other requirements, such as PCI compliance, and improve WAN performance, reliability, and cost.