Businesses rapidly adopt digital transformation to stay up with new market trends, alter client expectations, and increase competition. However, conventional network designs were not designed to support the workloads and complexity associated with most digital transformation efforts.
Worse still, business-critical services are frequently deployed across many clouds, significantly impairing network performance, particularly at branch sites. Thus, it’s unsurprising that astute network operations teams are shifting to software-defined wide area networks (SDWAN).
SDWAN enables organizations to save money while improving network performance. SDWAN solutions save costly routing and hardware expenditures while allowing your organisation to access many cloud services.
Businesses are implementing SDWAN to cut costs and enable new apps and services brought about by digital transformation. This ground-breaking technology not only improves the management and maintenance of a wide area network but also provides a slew of tangible economic benefits, such as:
Optimises performance:
Not all Network Activity is equally important. Fortunately, SDWAN can be configured to prioritise real-time services and business-critical traffic such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and then route it efficiently.
By enabling mission-critical applications through dependable, high-performance connections, IT professionals may assist decrease packet loss and delay, increasing employee productivity and morale. This is a performance that has a direct influence on the business.
Increases security:
The digital transformation process is a two-edged sword. While technology can increase customer happiness and market reach, it also exposes a company to substantial security threats. This is concerning, given that 41% of responders to the study indicated an increased frequency of cyber incidents in 2017.
The great news is that a number of SDWAN systems have built-in security. However, the fundamental firewall and functionalities supplied by most SDWAN systems are frequently insufficient, leading IT teams to attempt post-hoc security overlays across dynamic and elastic SDWAN connections.
A better alternative is to seek SDWAN solutions that combine various security features, such as IPS, NGFW, encryption, anti-virus, and sandboxing, to help prevent downtime, data loss, legal liabilities, and regulatory violations.
Reduces complexity:
Digital transformation projects can exacerbate a network’s complexity. The consequence is a danger of substandard network performance and overworked IT staff, and the requirement for onsite employees to operate the local IT infrastructure at remote locations.
On the other hand, SDWAN may alleviate some of the IT strain by simplifying WAN architecture, offloading non-critical business software to broadband, automating monitoring chores, and controlling traffic through a centralised controller. Consider SDWAN solutions that integrate with the local branch architecture to extend security and management capabilities deep into the local LAN.
Cost savings:
As businesses install an ever-increasing assortment of cloud-based apps. The amounts of information travelling over a WAN dramatically rises, resulting in increased operational expenses. On the other hand, SDWAN may significantly lower this cost by utilizing a low-cost local Internet connection, enabling direct cloud access, and decreasing traffic across the backbone WAN.
According to an IDC study (prediction), over a quarter of respondents anticipate SDWAN cost reductions of up to 39%. With the other two-thirds anticipating more modest savings of between 5% and 19%.
When SDWAN capability is correctly selected and installed, it may be extended deep into the local branch LAN. This ensures that security and network functionality safeguard locally deployed devices. And enable direct connections to SaaS apps and other online resources.
Migrating to SDWAN has several benefits, including eliminating network sprawl, security concerns, and unpredictable performance. However, this revolutionary technology may provide huge economic benefits for businesses willing to dig deeper. Including a significantly cheaper cost of ownership and assistance for bigger SD-Branch efforts.
