The Evolution of SD-WAN: From Turnkey Solutions to Smart Edge Computing
SD-WAN solutions have evolved over the years. It has become an integral part of the IT landscape to transit to the cloud. The WAN adaptation is crucial for the ever-changing IT environment. When MPLS became an expensive proposition for small and medium enterprises, a cost-saving WAN infrastructure became the need of the hour, and SD-WAN fit the bill perfectly. Today, SD-WAN is affordable and comes with features like cloud, SaaS, edge computing and other IT requirements necessary to scale up or down your network based on the demand & supply situation.
SD-WAN is much more than just connecting locations. The demand for mobility, cloud, and business agility has made SD-WAN a smarter networking solution. It provides security, intelligence, better reach, and optimisation. SD-WAN can be broken into three phases, reflecting its adaptation over time to meet business demands.
SD-WAN stage I
During the initial stages, SD-WAN was seen as a solution for last-mile bandwidth and availability. Earlier, enterprises paired MPLS with a backup internet connection to enhance site availability. The backup connections are used only during an outage. The predecessors used link bonding that helped aggregate internet services with different technologies like xDSL and 4G. The technology used a link layer that improved last-mile connectivity but compromised the middle mile. It was at this stage that the groundwork for SD-WAN began. It proved to be a solution for the ever-changing needs of the enterprise network.
SD-WAN stage II
The predecessors to SD-WAN improved the last-mile availability of bandwidth with link bonding, but the routing needed along the path was pressing. It was felt that something more than just link bonding was required to solve the current requirements of the enterprise, and this led to the rise of SD-WAN. The rise of SD-WAN startups came to the forefront, and with that came features like virtualisation failover capabilities and application-aware routing. With these features came improved performance and agility. The installation and deployment delays that marred MPLS were not seen in SD-WAN. The virtualisation allowed network administrators to manage their service or path from a centralised control panel. With SD-WAN optimisation came application performance, whereas MPLS required SLA-backed connections. SD-WAN enhances WAN performance by selecting the optimum connection for an application using application-aware routing and dynamic link assessment. SD-WAN delivers the right performance loaded with uptime features required by application users.
SD-WAN stage III
Today, SD-WAN has moved beyond connecting branch offices. Its reach has extended to all enterprise resources for seamless network connectivity. SD-WAN helps create a unified infrastructure for mobility, as-a-service, and cloud technologies. Moreover, as a service, SD-WAN can offer a full enterprise-grade network security stack ramped up into its global SD-WAN backbone to protect all location types, such as mobile users.
SD-WAN and edge computing
The modern IT environment caters largely to a distributed workforce where hundreds of devices are accessing the corporate network from remote locations, placing stress on the reliability, security and performance of the workplace. In order to make the resources available to the remote workers, edge computing, an outer perimeter of the network, is used to connect to devices for quick and seamless access to data. Using edge computing data is processed close to the data center or cloud.
Legacy WAN is not suitable for a distributed environment. Here, internet traffic from remote locations is backhauled via the corporate data centre, which lacks centralised visibility and control. Whenever a deployment is needed, the network administrator has to personally visit the location to handle the changes. On the contrary, in SD-WAN, the approach is far more centralised, giving enterprises the flexibility to create a hybrid network with multiple transport types like broadband, LTE 4G, satellite, etc. The application-aware software makes policy routing decisions automatic depending on the workload and real time network conditions.
Various traffic types can be prioritised according to the needs and management of a centralised console, which provides agility to accommodate the demands of the work environment.
SMOAD SD-WAN offers both turnkey solutions and smart edge computing that abstracts networking and deployment complexities. SMOAD smart edge provides last mile transport using DIA, broadband, 4G LTEs and 5G. Storage and computing resourcing can be accessed from a geographically closer location to the end user. For increasing the speed, a built-in AP with dual-band is used. Using SD-WAN you can stay connected even during a circuit failure. For more information on Smart Edge contact us for a demo.