How businesses might be running their network today
Technologies continue to evolve and so do the way we connect to them. A typical network usually consists of DSL, Coax, fiber, or Metro Ethernet connecting to the internet, another diverse circuit to mitigate risk, and sometimes a dedicated connection from an office branch to a data center or the cloud. A business might add another protected circuit for additional resiliency and to alleviate any network congestion.
As companies expand and acquire more businesses, this typical network can get more complex and costly to manage. Because more organizations are utilizing the cloud more for IT, the risk of cyberattacks becomes more imminent with increasing numbers of circuits and connections to those cloud services. Security and networking are challenging to manage for businesses with limited IT resources and budget, but even more so with complex networking architecture.
Today, work-from-anywhere strategies are becoming more permanent as employees are dispersed over different geographic locations. This new way of working presents a different, diverse set of network challenges including prioritizing network traffic in branch offices and at home, security risks from personal, untrusted devices, sub-optimal traffic flow, inconsistent business application performance, and more.
Remote users are most affected with insufficient access to critical business applications decreasing business efficiency and productivity, particularly heavily used collaboration and video conference resources like Microsoft 365 applications, Microsoft Teams, and WebEx, along with other critical SaaS applications like Salesforce.com, for example.
What is driving businesses to SD-WAN
1.) Branch networking modernization
Business expansion can be one of the most significant company objectives. However, opening new branches and office locations can have dramatic changes to the network including latency, packet loss, or downtime. Adding more branches not only hinders traffic prioritization, but it can be costly and difficult to manage each branch, especially for a lean IT team. Older methods reliant on physical devices required having the staff with the right expertise to travel to locations to set up edge networking devices, connect them to the network and maintain them in an ongoing basis.
SD-WAN simplifies branch infrastructure by consolidating edge services into one platform with greater visibility, control, and security. Users benefit from improved bandwidth and stability of network connections, while operational costs and centralized management help improve overall user experience.
2.) Cloud adoption & transition
According to research from Gartner, enterprise IT spending on public cloud computing will increase 18% in 2021. This research further demonstrates how the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing companies to consider cloud computing as they start focusing on optimizing IT costs, securing their remote workforces, and maximizing productivity. With more companies migrating to the cloud, organizations must have the proper network in place to connect to their cloud services and support the increased network traffic.
With SD-WAN, networks can ensure the capacity and reliability to allow thin client execution and connection to cloud-based applications. Through strong encryption, application-level security politics, and data segmentation, SD-WAN can ensure a company’s network is well protected.
3.) Application performance assurance
As organizations adopt a more remote workforce, employees must be able to access critical business applications, especially when they are away from their traditional workplace. For healthcare facilities, users need to securely access patient records and doctors need to stay connected with their patients. Financial companies need to access the confidential credit card and banking information and client personal records. Educational institutions need robust, secure communication and collaboration tools for distance learning. Many remote employees are connecting from home using consumer-grade devices and limited bandwidth can impede application performance, which affects business productivity and efficiency.
SD-WAN solves this issue with real-time path selection, edge routing, end-to-end QoS, and WAN optimization, plus available LTE failover for coverage when carrier links go down. This solution increases the performance and reliability of traditional enterprise applications, SaaS applications, and virtual desktops over any network.
Why RapidScale chooses to work with VMware for SD-WAN
RapidScale partners with VMware for SD-WAN to deliver innovation and digital transformation to customers. This cloud-delivered offering enables a more agile network that better supports the transition to the cloud while supporting easier edge networking deployment and management. SD-WAN enables organizations to leverage lower-cost WAN links and to use any connection type. Users benefit from the performance and reliability that they expect from a private network.
To increase reliability, SD-WAN uses dual links to create a hybrid network and utilizes wireless links such as LTE, so that it’s able to turn up connections more quickly or to get service in areas where landline links are not available. VMware SD-WAN edge devices can replace the legacy branch routers so users can avoid doing router refreshes, along with upgrades, patching and securing, while reducing the number of devices in the branch office.
With VMware SD-WAN, it is possible to run other services on the edge device using a Virtual Network Function. The SD-WAN orchestrator simplifies WAN management, gives users a portal for management and monitoring, and provides visibility into network performance.
Through its gateways, VMware SD-WAN optimizes access and enables a seamless migration to the cloud with security for your cloud applications. Users also can chain multiple services to the traffic flow. SD-WAN ensures application performance and reliability, so you get an optimal user experience. Application uptime over the WAN is enhanced for both cloud-hosted applications and those in the corporate data center.
Better security enables the business to deploy new applications and to reach remote locations with minimal risk, while also meeting compliance requirements. It provides an always-on branch with reliable access to applications that are crucial for businesses. No single outage or poor-quality link can disrupt that access.
All this functionality is configured and managed centrally within the application. Business, network, and security policies are set once and then automatically pushed out to each site, rather than having to individually deploy to each physical or virtual device in older methodologies for WAN deployment.
For more information on our SD-WAN offering visit, https://rapidscale.net/services/technology-solutions/sd-wan. Also, check out how this construction company benefited from RapidScale’s SD-WAN.
If you’d like to speak with a cloud consultant or certified engineer, feel free to contact us today.
