Using SD-WAN to Facilitate Intelligent Branching
Expansion of your enterprise comes with an additional responsibility of expanding your IT solutions to diverse locations. Enterprises are embracing cloud-based applications to serve branch offices and work-from-home users. With the pressure to control costs, they are replacing legacy MPLS with SD-WAN. The benefits of SD-WAN do not end with just saving on cost; it improves QoS and security and reduces the challenges in managing complicated networks. IDC has estimated that around 80% will be cloud-based applications by 2030, and the network traffic from remote offices will double every three years.
SD-WAN can be customized to meet your branch requirements. It is easy to integrate with corporate infrastructure, and the vendors can personalize based on your business model. Branch offices are confronted with a need for more space and technical skills to support network infrastructure. It is here that SD-WAN comes in handy with virtualization. Your IT department can now plan for a branch in a box at any location with a central management console delivering network functions and security with a simple configuration.
SD-WAN for your branch office
SD-WAN runs parallel with other virtualized services like routers, WAN optimization, WiFi controller, next-generation firewalls, and session border controller. It integrates multiple connectivities, like broadband, 4G, 5G, and MPLS, to deliver a superior user experience in all branch locations.
The Universal Customer Premises Equipment or the uCPE helps adapt to Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs). It offers a remotely controllable platform where multiple VNFs are managed at a lower operational cost. Mission-critical application speed at the branch level can be improved with this uCPE. The combination of SD-WAN and uCPE can make your network agile.
Benefits of SD-WAN
SD-WAN brings multiple functions under one umbrella; SaaS, security firewalls, and routing improve performance with less maintenance and support. Overall it saves on enterprise networking costs. SD-WAN offers both scalability and agility. The advantage of SD-WAN is that third-party services can be added quickly without any requirement for hardware and software configurations. Moreover, with SD-WAN, you can quickly scale up and down your performance by modifying the processor allocations. Integrating SD-WAN can improve application performance and security, thereby delivering a quick return on investment.
Enterprise SD-WAN facilitates centrally managed branch offices from a single portal. When it comes to security, SD-WAN offers layered protection and control. Network segmentation is added to improve the cyber resilience of your organization.
SD-WAN and intelligent branching
SD-WAN simplifies your branch network function. Managing workloads and whether they are processed from the edge or cloud is essential. SD-WAN takes the least congested route for routing mission-critical applications. The major hindrance to providing real-time computing is the time taken for data to travel to the cloud. This can be overcome with intelligent edge computing. It enables critical data to be processed at the edge, and not-so-critical data can be sent and processed at the cloud level. The benefits include low latency, better reliability, and lesser bandwidth requirement.
The future of SD-WAN
The role of networking is to deliver connectivity and bandwidth, along with security and network services, to optimize the application performance. A new development in SD-WAN is intent-based networking. It doesn’t stop with advanced features like visibility, assurance, and automation but a platform on which new machine learning-based network management functionality is built. The future of networks will use Artificial Intelligence and machine language to adjust to the changing environment making it self-driven, proactive, and cognitive.
With enterprises looking for reliable and affordable alternatives for software-defined networking solutions, SMOAD SD-WAN is undoubtedly an option that enterprises’ branch offices should consider.