The challenges of MPLS networks have opened the door for a new way to connect multiple offices with Software-Defined Wide Area Networking.
Does your network suffer from any of these issues?
- SaaS/Cloud Migration Challenges – Companies are taking advantage of more and more cloud applications. This poses a challenge for MPLS networks. In a typical hub-and-spoke design, bandwidth and latency are an issue for internet-bound software and application data. Bottlenecks and multiple hops cause users to have slow experiences. Network-based firewalls provided by carriers pose administrative and single point-of-failure concerns.
- Long Deployment Windows – Whether a customer is trying to onboard a new location, or migrate to a different MPLS provider, carriers can take months to deploy.
- Complicated Redundancy – Most companies do not have the budget to purchase two MPLS networks. So network teams are tasked with building a home grown redundant network. This can be time and resource consuming.
- Budget Concerns– MPLS has been an industry standard for so long that providers have been able to charge a premium. With a growing demand for bandwidth, maintaining an MPLS network infrastructure is a costly endeavor.
Here’s how SD-WAN can help:
- SD-WAN is built with application prioritization and steering in mind. Applications can be handled and routed based on several key metrics allowing traffic that is destined for SaaS or cloud providers to take the best route possible. This makes the user experience what it should be when working in the cloud.
- SD-WAN can be deployed in weeks if not days in certain situations. Additionally, it can be deployed in tandem with an existing MPLS as a supplement until more permanent changes can be made.
- SD-WAN will build a completely dynamic redundant network all the way down to the site level. This gives network teams the ability to focus on their business instead of connectivity.
- SD-WAN deployments that we have installed have saved an average of 30% per month for our customers while drastically increasing their amount of bandwidth.
Which businesses need SD-WAN?
SD-WAN is ideal for businesses that operate multiple branch offices and retail chains. Smaller sites that need to have WAN connectivity with PCI as the highest level of importance can benefit from SD-WAN.
It is also beneficial for businesses — both domestic and international — that are looking to offload some of the expense of MPLS, or the headache of managing homegrown VPN’s. And there are several different types of SD-WAN providers that range from pure software defined networking companies to big name networking giants.
Our approach to SD-WAN is to evaluate the challenges that our customers are looking to remedy, and show them real world examples of how they can be remedied with our various providers. With the number of SD-WAN customers that we have already deployed, we can demonstrate how to overcome your challenges.
Ask us about our 24/7 any-carrier, circuit monitoring and ticket resolution service. It is a great complement to any SD-WAN solution: ISP & Circuit Management services.