What Is SD-WAN and What Are Its Benefits?
Countless organizations are in the midst of a digital transformation to keep up with emerging trends in the market, increased market competition, and fluctuating customer demands. Migration to the cloud plays a central role.
To do so, many are moving away from the traditional WAN to SD-WAN. In this article, we’ll go over what they are and the benefits of SD-WAN.
Continue reading and see why teams are making the switch!
What Is the Difference Between WAN and SD-WAN?
The traditional WAN (Wide Area Network) is rooted in providing access to data centers. It wasn’t built to handle such complexities and workloads.
SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) is the modern solution that focuses on the application. This innovative technology simplifies the management and operation of a WAN while delivering benefits to businesses.
What Are the Benefits of SD-WAN?
Using SD-WAN comes with these 5 advantages.
Prioritizes Traffic to Improve Performance
Through a technique known as traffic shaping or traffic steering, SD-WAN can be configured to prioritize business-critical traffic and real-time services by driving them through the most efficient route.
SD-WAN also meets the needs of each business by separating or combining WAN lines by business goals, limitations, traffic type, and the characteristics and quality of the traffic. Combining can improve speed and redundancy.
In relation to SD-WAN, redundancy is when an additional or alternate point of connectivity is installed on the network infrastructure. This way, if the main point fails, there’s another means to keep running. You’re prepared in case your network were to go down.
Boosts Security
The Internet is a slow and unsecure WAN transport method. As such, many organizations choose to not transfer business-critical data over the Internet. To get around this, they would backhaul all traffic to the core network, compromising their application performance and speed in the process.
With SD-WAN, you can securely connect users to the application while improving access to the cloud.
Traffic segmentation strategies isolate unsecured connections. For instance, new segments can be made for networks that connect from unknown devices or locations. Plus, SD-WAN can connect with a SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) for security.
There is a range of these integrated security cloud-native services, including:
● FWaaS (Firewall as a Service),
● IPS (Intrusion Prevention System),
● NGFW (Next-Generation Firewall),
● RBI (Remote Browser Isolation),
● ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access),
● and more!
These reduce the chances of cyberattacks occurring.
Lowers Complexity
Digital transformation initiatives can make the network complex. The result is overburdened IT teams. Fortunately, SD-WAN eases the IT burden by:
● simplifying WAN infrastructure,
● using broadband to off-load non-critical business apps,
● managing traffic,
● and monitoring tasks.
Enables Cloud Usage
SD-WAN enables direct cloud access, eliminating backhauling traffic. Workers, regardless of their location, can then directly access cloud applications without burdening the core network.
Additionally, SD-WAN improves cloud application performance by making business-critical applications a priority.
Reduces Costs
As organizations use more applications and services, the amount of data that travels over a WAN increases. So does the price. The good news is that SD-WAN can reduce costs by:
● leveraging low-cost local Internet access,
● providing direct cloud access,
● and reducing the amount of traffic.
Implement SD-WAN Today
You can’t run today’s business on yesterday’s network. At CC3 Solutions, we offer secure and reliable solutions for businesses of all sizes. Keep up with the digital transformation by implementing SD-WAN. Contact our team to get started!