If you pride yourself on keeping up with all the latest business technologies, then you’ll probably be aware of SD WAN (Software Defined Wide Area Network). However, you might not quite know what it means yet, or what it could bring to your business!
There’s lots of misleading information out there on the subject, and it’s not always easy to separate from genuinely helpful advice. That’s why we’re here to remove the confusion and clarify exactly what SD WAN is capable of providing!
Getting To Grips With SD WAN
You can’t really understand the benefits of SD WAN until you understand the acronym itself - so lets begin with the ‘wide area network’ part.
Essentially, a WAN is a series of devices over any geographical location, whether that’s across the road or around the world (the internet is actually a huge WAN!). You’ll likely have one in your business that functions as a hub where all of your main infrastructure devices and servers are stored, as well as branches, offices, cloud services, and more.
The locations within this WAN will likely be part of their own LAN (local area network), that become a WAN when all linked together over the internet. The provisions you have at the central hub location can then be accessed across the entirety of the WAN, allowing software, storage and other systems to be universally accessible.
Top 4 Benefits of SD WAN Implementation for Businesses
But don’t get confused - SD WAN doesn’t exist as a WAN replacement. Instead, it provides an overlay for your existing WAN from which new control options can be accessed via a piece of universally compatible software.
Because you can access these controls from any devices on the network, you can use them instead of the ones that require you to physically be touching the hardware, which then releases you (and more importantly your IT team) from having to be with devices in person!
However, beyond reducing the time and money spent on IT staff commuting, it’s unclear what SD WAN can do for your business. So, let’s go through some frequently made claims and see how many of them hold up to scrutiny.
1. SD WAN Can Improve SaaS Applications
If using SaaS (Software as a Service) applications is important to your business, then you might find SD WAN useful, as it provides a central location from which all of your satellite operations can access the same application with the same speed and priority given to the data. This is especially important if these applications are mission critical, and poor performance could result in a poor customer experience.
Because an SD WAN system lets you respond to issues without needing someone physically altering the device, you can keep important applications online at the most important times. If you don’t rely on these applications, you may not find SD WAN so helpful - if you do, then it could save you from dreaded downtime.
2. SD WAN Will Make MPLS Obsolete
Many hopeful business owners are wanting to hear that SD WAN will be replacing the expensive MPLS systems that companies are currently reliant on. Multi-Protocol Label Switching is a data carrying mechanism designed for high performance networks that dynamically reroutes data down the most efficient path in a network. This means that high priority data can be sent accordingly, reducing downtime and keeping crucial applications running.
You might have heard that SD WAN can provide a similar service with its Class of Service (or CoS) settings, that allow data traffic to be prioritised. Sadly, though, it isn’t on the level of MPLS; while MPLS is integrated into the network itself, SD WAN is only an overlay, and can therefore only alter so much within the network.
So, while it looks like MPLS will be sticking around, for now, we can only hope that one day we’ll be able to look to the cheaper SD WAN option instead.
3. SD WAN Allows For Immediate Expansion To New Sites
If you’ve ever gone through the journey of getting a new site online, then the idea of making this irritating process more straightforward will be music to your ears! But again, there’s only so much that SD WAN can really do.
As we just stated, SD WAN is an overlay rather than an integrated part of your hardware infrastructure - therefore, if you have no hardware in place, then it doesn’t have anything to overlay! If you have this in place, SD WAN can help, but without a connection, not much can be achieved.
4. SD WAN Can Manage Traffic Priority and Bandwidth
Another common claim from SD WAN providers is that the technology will allow for improved quality of service, especially when compared to older WAN management methods. However, this might just come down to some particularly good marketing…
While SD WAN may be able to assist in improving quality of service, the likelihood is that similar alterations are available without any need for SD WAN at all! Therefore, you might want to spend your time improving your existing network before you make any other major changes - though SD WAN is certainly useful, you’ll find the most effective changes usually happen on the level of hardware.
Reasons To Implement SD WAN To Your Business
You know that every business is unique - your business, and your business IT needs, are no different in this regard. Although the points above might have been completely relevant to your business, you may also have found that none of these factors really impact you or your company.
If you want to learn more about SD WAN, you should do your own research and connect with providers who are recommended in your industry. Remember, how much you get from SD WAN depends on how your network is already being run. If you already employ an MSP to stay on top of network maintenance, for example, then you may not see much of a significant improvement with SD WAN.
However, if you have an overworked and overtired IT team who are sick of traveling between sites to fix problems, SD WAN could put a smile on their faces!
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