The Future of SD-WAN: Predictions for 2023 and Beyond
This pandemic has made us understand that flexibility and digitising business are essential to survive and succeed in the corporate world. Most organisations are gradually switching their hybrid work structure and coming out of COVID-induced restrictions. Companies that had already upgraded their networks to SD-WAN compliant survived the challenges imposed by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. At the same time, those stuck to traditional networking solutions needed help organising and coping with remote working structures. If your business still relies on conventional networking solutions, you must change your business network to a more flexible and cost-effective one.
Future-proofing your business is mandatory to avoid a downfall during the next global crisis. Here are four key trends influencing SD-WAN, and organisations planning to digitise their business can consider paying attention to these emerging trends:
SD-WAN as a Service
Owing to various WAN drawbacks, most organisations switched to SD-WAN solution, which was easy to manage, safe and cost-effective at the same time. Organisations reliant on WAN saw these SD-WAN-compliant enterprises as highly productive and started demanding the same features. This was the beginning of a huge network shift; by 2020, many enterprises had migrated to SD-WAN solutions (though a few businesses had to abort their installation efforts due to the lockdown).
With the increasing demand, Network as a Service (NaaS) providers have started upgrading “SD-WAN as a Service” feature to be more optimised and manageable. Shortly, you can expect to note a huge demand for managed SD-WAN as a Service.
SD-WAN and Secure Remote Access
SASE is based on the basic SD-WAN features. But SASE is a cloud-based network security solution, unlike SD-WAN, a network virtualisation solution. Few remote access providers have started offering solutions in a cloud model. So, instead of maintaining numerous VPN devices at data centres to ensure remote access security, businesses can now buy secure connectivity as a service.
It might be clear now that this year will witness two trends
- A combination of SD-WAN solutions and secure remote access technology
- complete replacement of SD-WAN with secure remote access.
Combining SD-WAN with Secure Remote Access
There are chances that SD-WAN and secure remote access would come together, just like the SASE style. SD-WAN users could offer secure connectivity to the business location through its endpoint and connect with the internal resources. Or they could connect with an endpoint virtually in cloud architecture and establish connectivity with the resources there.
Replacing SD-WAN with Secure Remote Access
Businesses might realise how their service environment has shifted from in-house to total cloud reliance. Enterprises might have even started questioning the expense of traditional WAN or SD-WAN they must manage when they can simply choose secure remote access to meet their company needs. So, this year could experience a vast adoption of Secure Remote Access.
AI-Infused SD-WAN
In 2023, you may notice AI-infused SD-WAN solutions offered by service providers and sellers. Besides optimisation of traffic path selection, AI infusion could improvise many things such as policy definitions, better troubleshooting assistance, performance, and security monitoring. AI applications have now simplified network management when compared to the previous solutions that offered these functionalities.
SD-WAN and WWAN
You can expect an easier implementation of WWAN with SD-WAN and an increase in wireless linking solutions for connectivity within SD-WAN. Advancement in the field of WWAN has given businesses new reasons to consider this new technology:
- Path diversity can be achieved with the same carrier.
- The connection could be bought from multiple providers, thus creating carrier diversity.
- Can avoid the loss of good links getting pulled into a new site.
- Copper Cable plants would be completely replaced.
From achieving business agility and improving operation efficiency to reducing operating costs, improvised SD-WAN solutions offer numerous functionalities that have helped businesses perform better. If you plan to deploy SD-WAN for your business, consider getting help from a professional service provider. Resilience, load balancing, security, traffic management, and path selection are a few things to focus on while preparing to deploy SD-WAN. The pandemic might have temporarily stopped the deployment of your SD-WAN plans, but now you have an opportunity to resume building the network architecture of your desire.
For more queries on SD-WAN solutions, call SMOAD for a demo.