{"id":17409,"date":"2019-10-17T17:30:42","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T17:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lavellenetworks.com\/?p=17409"},"modified":"2021-11-15T08:17:21","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T08:17:21","slug":"blog-decoding-the-benefits-of-sd-wan-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lavellenetworks.com\/blog\/blog-decoding-the-benefits-of-sd-wan-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Decoding the benefits of SD-WAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s no doubt that SD-WAN is the biggest leap in the 21st-century networking industry. Features like centralized management, automation, and intent-based networking make SD-WAN the beginning of a whole new world of possibilities. The benefits of SD-WAN not only include cost but the simplification of network complexities as well. With SD-WAN, enterprises can leverage as much bandwidth required meeting critical business goals. IT benefits instant network visibility which in turn helps IT to set up a robust security strategy without compromising network performance. Secure cloud connectivity is one of top most benefits of SD-WAN which allows enterprises to create secure local or regional breakouts to cloud from the edge \u2013 branches, devices, etc. It is done by enabling traffic flow to the internet from the closest available link. IT can segment and route sensitive data to cloud security providers for further inspection. Discussed below are the benefits of SD-WAN concerning your business, WAN and IT.<\/p>\n

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Cost<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Enterprises relying on MPLS can significantly reduce networking costs by implementing software-defined wide area networks. In addition to cost-saving, the benefits of SD-WAN offer enterprise automation, intelligence, and centralized management which make enterprise networks cloud-ready. Weighing all these factors into consideration, SD-WAN cost savings in enterprises can surge higher than 60%. Cloud has made traditional network infrastructures costly and inefficient. Traditional network architecture like MPLS was not built to support today\u2019s cloud-first strategy. Rigid network infrastructures hence resulted in poor application performance, business agility, and productivity. SD-WAN, in addition to its other direct and indirect network benefits, provides enterprises with indirect cost savings in the form of increased productivity, flexibility, powerful analytics, and other management tools.<\/p>\n

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Scalability<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Traditional Network infrastructure like MPLS is rigid and poses scaling challenges. With SD-WAN, continuous upgradation of IT bandwidth is not necessary to ensure a reliable connection. It\u2019s a scalable solution that allows network teams to easily add new links without having to change the underlying infrastructure. Lavelle Networks\u2019s ScaleAOn SD-WAN can scale massively. Our SD-WAN platform can scale easily to 5000+ branch locations of an Enterprise, as of today. And we are fast-moving beyond it. In our running deployments, we have a single customer running ScaleAOn SD-WAN over 1200+ sites.<\/p>\n

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Speed of Delivery (MTTR)<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Fast, efficient, cost-effective delivery of services and applications is essential to meet business demands and maintain a high-quality customer and user experience. That\u2019s equally important to enterprise customers and service providers. From enterprise operations to branches to the consumer, SD-WAN (software-defined WAN) ensures seamless network performance delivering advanced services with agility. ScaleAOn SD-WAN provides IT teams the flexibility and scalability to meet changing network and traffic conditions. It enhances network performance to deliver applications and services directly from the cloud, rapidly and securely. Brownouts and blackouts can be easily prevented with real-time network analytics.<\/p>\n

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Bespoke Network Experience
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Digital ecosystem demands seamless experience from networks with a continuous supply of Bandwidth. Not just the functions of your business are network dependent, but employees too. Most importantly customer\u2019s expectations \u2013 high speed, instant access, and 24\/7 support \u2013 also demand a fast, agile and safe new-age network. SD-WAN allows enterprises to believe in the mantra \u2013 Adapt, evolve, and be agile, by delivering bespoke user\/customer experience through a network. New technologies, cloud, and the internet requires a flexible, agile and safe network for well defined customer-first approach. SD-WAN has already divested legacy network infrastructures. Traditional Network architecture (MPLS) was no match to cater to today\u2019s traffic requirements. Moreover, with the internet and cloud being a quotidian need today, bandwidth, flexibility, and security are primary demands of IT. ScaleAOn\u00a0SD-WAN<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0allows enterprises to use as much bandwidth as required as per business demands.<\/p>\n

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Network Performance<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Traditional networks were never optimized for Cloud. Today\u2019s applications are enabled by the cloud and include mobile applications, big data analytics, and social business. These new-age applications have significantly different network requirements. As the cloud era gains momentum and hybrid clouds become a new norm, enterprise networks continue to increase in value. ScaleAOn SD-WAN is designed to route network traffic through the fastest and the best available connection. With traditional MPLS, this doesn\u2019t happen. Instead, settings are static. There may be a \u201cfailover\u201d connection with an MPLS-based network, but that redundancy usually isn\u2019t as fast or seamless as with SD-WAN. ScaleAOn SD-WAN allows enterprises to accelerate network performance and availability ensuring 99.99% uptime. This allows enterprise branch offices to take the Internet route to cloud hosting critical business applications delivering a consistent level of application performance, even in case of a primary network outage.<\/p>\n

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\"Gartner<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Network Security <\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Cloud, Internet, and devices have made security a nightmare for enterprise IT teams. Before the cloud, traffic was bypassed and stored in enterprise servers, which was filtered and monitored through firewalls. Later MPLS helped to route traffic across their network without compromising on speed and performance. However, with the evolving traffic pattern, security has become even more challenging, especially for enterprises that leverage the cloud in a distributed network ecosystem. SD-WAN has the ability to make enterprise networks more secure through end-to-end encryption, as well as device and endpoint authentication. SD-WAN is the first step towards a more secure network in the age of the cloud. With SD-WAN, enterprises also have the option to integrate third party security solutions, which ultimately forms a new age security perimeter that saves enterprises from costly information security issues. The answer to how enterprises can seal all possible security gaps is once again in the cloud. The natural strength of an SD-WAN solution is policy based on-the-fly private network overlays being created from any source to any destination. This allows an enterprise to drop in extremely simple policies to redirect the right traffic to the right SDP gateway. It\u2019s an architecture where you can deploy best of breed networking at your edge using\u00a0next generation SD-WAN<\/strong><\/a>, and you can deploy best of breed security at your cloud using SDP<\/p>\n

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Easy Deployment & Configuration <\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Traditional network deployments are hardware-centric (which involves costs) and require months to be deployed. Networking traditionally has been a complex and manual for IT. The advent of SDN changed it all. Out of all the benefits of SD-WAN, ZTP is among the top three. With ZTP, networking is automated and an intent driven process. Zero touch provisioning is a switch, that simplifies provisioning and configuration of devices automatically without any manual intervention. The switch (ZTP) downloads and runs the centrally stored configuration, which it acquires by sending a request through DHCP or TFTP. ZTP seamlessly allows IT to update OSs, deploy patches and bug fixes and embed additional features prior to connection. Using Scripts, ZTP can also connect to configuration management platforms or a custom tool. An increasing number of edge devices, the surge of the internet and cloud requires enterprises to rapidly implement and deploy network elements. Zero touch provisioning allows IT to automatically update, pre-configure initial configuration and update scripts. With Zero touch Provisioning, enterprises can cater to new emerging challenges rising due to the high usage of network functions virtualization (NFV). Only with Zero touch provisioning, enterprise ITs can configure new virtual functions.<\/p>\n

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Cloud Connectivity<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Enterprises backhaul traffic to Data centers and then connect to the cloud, wherein SD-WAN connects directly to the cloud using DIA. One of the key enablers of digital transformation, cloud computing yields improvements in the enterprise\u2019s ability to deploy and scale-up applications. This, in turn, adds flexibility, responsiveness, and improved delivery times throughout the distributed enterprise. Dependency on Cloud has compelled enterprises to re-innovate their enterprise network. The surge of new age traffic at the edge, branch, and remote locations has increased the number of break-out points to the Internet, other public networks, and private networks.\u00a0SD-WAN<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0today is one of the key enablers of the cloud. SD-WAN modernizes WAN allowing enterprises the freedom to use public cloud securely over the internet. With traditional WAN becoming a bottleneck to cloud \u2013\u00a0Public, Private and Hybrid cloud<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 more enterprises are upgrading to SD-WAN and adopting a cloud first strategy. Enterprises are optimizing SD-WAN to enable cloud networks and in turn their WAN into a powerhouse. SD-WAN allows IT to leverage secure local or regional breakouts to the cloud. Traffic, in this case, flows directly from the internet from the closest available link. If additional security is required, SD-WAN can segment (micro-segmentation) traffic and route the same to the cloud for further inspection.<\/p>\n

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It is as important as ever for enterprises to keep up with the demanding changes within the IT ecosystem. Hence by connecting directly with cloud ( like Microsoft Azure,\u00a0Salesforce, Google or IBM cloud, Oracle) using a DC, enterprises ensure flexibility in three prime areas: Usage, Cost and turnaround time to new and emerging markets. From a usage point of view, connecting directly with cloud, in no time IT can create private and direct connections (a.k.a virtual cross connects) between software defined network and cloud service provider, content delivery network (CDN) or a carrier through an internet exchange point. Secondly, when it comes to cost, enterprises pay only for services for which bandwidth is consumed. Cost being flexible not only helps small businesses that are growing but also helps bigger players save a boom out of their IT budget. Thirdly, enterprise branches or business can be extended quickly to any new market. Irrespective of the size and nature of the business, enterprises of all sorts, benefit when connected directly with the cloud. Thanks to forward thinking cloud providers and SD-WAN vendors, using SD-WAN to connect directly with the cloud, enterprises are not only benefiting in terms of IT but also are able to cater to the ever-evolving needs of the customers. Using highly customizable software defined networks, enterprises can easily set up a private connection to cloud achieving a simplified cloud migration along with Always On network with higher performance, security, and scalability. Here are the benefits of connecting directly with the cloud with SD-WAN,<\/p>\n