The world has been pushed back due to the Coronavirus pandemic. While we make our way back with the navigation of the ongoing challenges, technology has been playing our backbone of operations.
Besides the ever-increasing demand for new and better applications to bridge the gap between remote communication, SD-WAN adoption has been shifting gears to settle at an accelerated breakneck pace.
As a matter of fact, many companies that are now left with minimal or no employees at branch sites due to the lockdown and are focusing more on accelerating deployments. Now, if you are pondering over the thought as to why this is happening, it is because of the rise in the SD-WAN era. Organizations have finally started recognizing the efficiency that WAN transformation can put on their tables to realize maximum value from all the investments that they have made over previous as well as future cloud investments.
SD-WAN (Software-defined Wide-area Network) technology can be an immensely powerful tool for companies of any size as it adds up to long-term benefits. However, SD-WAN for IT can be complex to deploy if you are not getting it done from the right vendor.
For many IT teams, the solution often leads to an SD-WAN vendor. However, here arises another question, how to consider before choosing a good one?
While there might be a lot of criteria to thin the herd, here are these tips to help you select the best SD-WAN vendor for your business.
The SD-WAN vendor should utilize different forms of transport
While you are planning to upgrade to SD-WAN for IT, you should select a service provider that can provide you with lower cost and consumer-grade broadband. The broadband should be able to provide you with the highest application performance and availability without any trouble with the SLA tradeoff. To serve this functionality, your SD-WAN provider must be effective in overcoming the obstruction caused by packet loss, which happens due to network congestion.
Besides handling the congestion, your SD-WAN provider should also be able to provide a sub-second failover in real-time, following the events of WAN transport brownout. Your ultimate objective should be to achieve incredible WAN performance over multiple channels.
1. Should have an ecosystem of best-of-breed partnerships
While it might sound complicated, this simply means that you need to do a quick check over the methods that your potential vendor uses. The common methods of best-of-breed ecosystems include technology partnerships with some of the technologically advanced vendors that provide the latest solutions for the cloud-delivered security services.
One quality provider you can consider is Lavelle Networks. Being a complex security network, WAN is based out of cloud infrastructure. Your vendor must provide you with the flexibility to engage your channel with multiple solution providers to enhance a seamless pace to your operations.
2. Aged and industry-grade service and support
One of the most essential factors that an IT manager should consider while selecting the SD-WAN vendor is the type of support provided. You should always look up for a premium service support experience since facing issues over your network is very common.
Your ideal vendor should be able to provide you with 24×7 support that not only provides immediate assistance over call but also comes with a global network of spares depots. Besides that, the spare depots should also be provided with an automated RMA process to quickly resolve hardware failures in real-time.
The SD-WAN vendor should always address the technical failures as first priority and come up with real-time solutions to troubleshoot problems..
3. Security of your network
It’s not a hidden fact that the industry is prone to cyber-attacks. As per reports by Purplesec, in 2018 itself, there were 80,000 cyberattacks per day or over 30 million a year. 21% of all files are not protected in any way. 41% of companies have over 1,000 sensitive files, including credit card numbers and health records left unprotected.
Looking at the numbers, security should be a necessary check for your next SD-WAN vendor. You should always go after security reforms that can prove advanced security profiles and be able to detect intrusion and prevention (IDS/IPS).
4. Focused on introducing the latest updates
Any SD-WAN vendor that relies on traditional ways and does not inject new upgrades into the system will lead to a collapse of the entire architecture in the long run. Your ideal vendor should always focus on ‘continuous adaptation’ by monitoring a seamless performance of application and network to simultaneously changing conditions.
Having an upgraded technology manifests better links for the moving traffic. Besides that, the upgrade also helps maintain peak performance in case of a brownout or outage.
Secondly, having an upgraded performance means that the SD-WAN platform should be able to provide periodic as well as daily updates over the SaaS application and the TCP/IP address tables that are used to keep up with the pace of operations for the ever-changing cloud.
5. The vendor should have a proven SD-WAN history
For those who have little or no idea about the SD-WAN system, it is very differently operated from the LAN or data center networks. To ensure that you receive the end-term benefits of switching over to SD-WAN, ensure that your vendor has a proven history of serving in the suggested areas.
Having a vendor who is focused on WAN has a vivid idea of working around the nuances of MPLS besides the other compelling services, like the internet and LTE. In some cases, there might also be hindrances at the satellite and microwave. Therefore, your vendor should be able to cover you up at the suggested places. The vendor must be able to segregate the different data packets and curate new ways of optimizing cloud connectivity that can be used to find the best ways to deliver a premium cloud application experience.
Now that we have successfully come across some of the effective guidelines to look after, before choosing our next SD-WAN vendor, it is necessary to understand why it is a leading technology that helps us not only enhance our output but also save on costs.
While having the idea of SD-WAN for effective networking has been a sought-after move, we need to get deeper and understand how it helps in the overall improvement of a firm.
Let’s take a look at the top benefits of adding SD-WAN to your network.
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Significant decrease in the WAN OPEX and CAPEX prices
Once we invest in something, we do expect a good ROI over the long term. The same is the case with Software-defined Networking (SDN) that is present in the campus LAN. However, when it comes to SD-WANs, the ROI is significantly major and immediate when compared to traditional forms of communication.
SD-WAN solutions help augment and even replace the existing MPLS connections with the traditional broadband connectivity services to help the firm connect with applications. This effective move helps in lowering the WAN costs by up to 90%.
Considering the framework that is set, SD-WAN induces a more simplified and centrally-managed architecture that also helps reduce the load over the OPEX. Another interesting highlight about the product is the rapid branch deployments that initiate zero-touch provisions, making remote solutions possible. This setup is not only efficient for the wireframe architecture but also proves handy to pair with a remote location in a matter of minutes.
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Greater reliability of operations
Switching to an SD-WAN boosts the reliability of operations. The speed of business gains an upper hand in terms of technology and starts accelerating. While the business market today is fiercer than ever; your business can provide the best of services to meet the rising customer expectations.
Considering the fact that a major number of businesses rely on applications and connectivity for the execution of their everyday operations, SD-WAN helps in easy expansion as not much investment is needed to expand your network.
Geographically distributed organizations that are known for running operations throughout the day across the globe need to be well connected with their numerous branch offices and ensure a stiff connection with their main hub or headquarters’ sites. Considering the fact that these cloud-based applications are always backed by firewalls as a form of security, users can easily perform their operations without losing data packets or falling short of seamless connectivity.
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Gain visibility across channels and assure business with improved operations
One of the major benefits of adapting to SD-WAN is that the businesses are provided with visibility into the traffic that is running across the channel. Visibility ensures the first step of gaining control over operations. A large number of SD-WAN vendors provide their customers with deep application intelligence and enhance their businesses with the IT application priority. This way, enterprises, and large scale businesses have improved levels of visibility to help them assign different measures and ensure control over the entire WAN traffic.
By providing the businesses with visibility, SD-WAN provides its users with control over the business. By providing the businesses with a robust packet inspection engine, the WAN technology can also be used to identify applications that are based out of the first packet, allowing the setup to make real-time decisions, based on the nature of the data. Interestingly, once the system is successful in identifying the packets, the Dynamic Path Control optimizes the WAN data path.
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Increased application performance
Every business relies on applications as the backbone of their operations. The fact is that if businesses face any problem with connectivity, it is majorly due to the network and the applications that initiate life into the system.
On the other hand, if the essential applications that are responsible for the smooth running of the business lose their efficiency and start exchanging decreased data packets, their speed tends to deteriorate. Besides that, employees’ productivity also drops due to the lag in the network and application. Considering cloud-based technology to be the core of the effective business, securing a reliable SD-WAN gives way to increased application performance.
SD-WAN, the go-to technology for businesses
Considering the effective operation that SD-WAN brings to the table, WAN enables the businesses to set their own pace of operations. This connection-based system focuses on providing solutions that are extensible and tend to improve business operations on every ground.
Considering the improved interface, where users don’t actually need to rip and replace existing infrastructure, it is a very cost-effective solution for the leading businesses as well. SD-WAN helps users ‘migrate at their own pace’ and also adds to an improved and fresh approach by working over the legacy routers.
With 60+ vendors that have built their niche around SD-WAN marketing and services, it can be a mammoth task to sift through the noise and get your services from the right vendor. While there are many SD-WAN service providers, you can try the services of India’s leading platform, Lavelle Networks ScaleAOn SD WAN for your organization.
To know more, feel free to get in touch!
Opt for a centrally orchestrated SD-WAN solution to improve user experience and to simplify operations today with Lavelle Networks ScaleAOn SD-WAN Solutions.
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