SD-WAN Explained

Timea Molnarova

sd-wan ixtelecom

Organizations worldwide are rapidly expanding. Connecting businesses, branches, and remote offices securely to the cloud and enterprise systems has become more challenging than ever. One of the best solutions to this massive growth rate is SD-WAN. Let’s take a closer look.

What is SD-WAN?
Software-Defined Wide-Area Networking (SD-WAN) is a technique for using software to make wide-area networks more intelligent and flexible. SD-WAN can leverage multiple transport links (MPLS, Fiber broadband 4G LTE) together based on customer needs. It applies a concept similar to Software Defined Network (SDN), whereby it uses software and a centralized orchestration to steer or direct traffic across the WAN more intelligently and efficiently.

Why is SD-WAN important?
Digital transformation, globalization, the use of modern cloud-based applications, and technologies are creating new business opportunities and changes across every industry. The first step for every organization is to ensure its increasingly distributed workforce has fast, safe, and constantly accessible resources. The traditional ways of connecting widely dispersed branch offices and remote offices are often unsafe and do not meet modern requirements. Nowadays, businesses need flexible and cost-effective IT solutions to maintain a competitive edge in the market. They need solutions, which are easy to implement and meet their growing needs. Companies need to be confident that the networking solutions they choose are always on and reliable.

difficulties of traditional wan

SD-WAN vs TRADITIONAL WAN
Companies using traditional WAN are working very hard to ensure that their networking tools with all the appropriate expertise can handle the connections quickly and securely. SD-WAN provides higher performance for cloud applications. This technology allows us to add new lines faster and easier to sites and it requires less capacity. SD-WAN reduces the delays that are very common for WANs. It has a lower connectivity cost and it does not require specific and expensive connections like MPLS. It offers flexibility that is not prevalent for traditional WANs.

Protecting your data is crucial for any business. SD-WAN solution integrates on-prem and cloud security delivering a full edge security stack and zero-trust access for all connections – from branches to multiple SaaS or IaaS clouds, to data centers, or to everything on the internet. It has an encrypted capability that only allows authorized users to have access to the network. With SD-WAN solution, encrypted tunnels will be created between every single site in the network, which makes the connection as secure as a VPN solution without the need for provisioning or configuration.

traditional wan vs sd-wam

How do I get started?
SD-WAN provides new approaches that also bring enterprise scale and security. This is the main reason why it’s becoming one of the most popular networking solutions on the market today. Choosing to move to an SD-WAN solution can benefit your business by lowering your costs, accelerating cloud initiatives, and enhancing business agility. To learn more about SD-WAN technology and how can it benefit your business, get in touch with us. We understand your business requirements and we are ready to help.