How Do You Know if SD-WAN is Right for Your Business?

More and more companies are looking to implement SD-WAN to improve their remote networking issues. But, is SD-WAN the right choice for your business? SD-WAN is a hot enterprise IT topic, but does it hold up to all of the hype?

Here’s what you need to know before your business makes a decision about SD-WAN.

Use Cases for SD-WAN

SD-WAN solves a lot of complicated networking problems, but like all IT solutions, it isn’t a magic bullet. SD-WAN works best for these use cases:

  • Connecting remote offices directly to the internet
  • Connecting remote offices directly to the cloud or cloud-based apps
  • More efficient monitoring of network operations and network traffic
  • Centralized management of service-level agreements
  • Increased security for remote offices

If your organization has branch offices that need access to your organization’s enterprise software packages, SD-WAN is useful for creating fast and secure connections between those offices and your servers, the cloud, or the internet.

SD-WAN is primarily used to solve the problem of secure access to enterprise apps and packages at satellite or branch offices.

Advantages of SD-WAN

Using SD-WAN to connect different branch offices of the company provides you with five key advantages over other options:

  1. Speed
  2. Reliability
  3. Security
  4. Control
  5. Transparency

SD-WAN connections are faster and more stable than traditional WANs. Using an SD-WAN allows gives your IT team the ability to adopt a decentralized security model for branch offices, improving the speed and safety of the entire network.

One reason many enterprise IT professionals prefer SD-WAN is that it allows for centralized management. Instead of the network’s control plane being in individual branch offices or data center routers, control of the SD-WAN is shifted to a central tool.

The centralized management makes it easier to monitor the full scope of network operations and traffic. It also gives the IT team greater control so that they can improve the user experience for every branch from a single location.

Different Methods for Providing SD-WAN

There are three primary ways of providing SD-WAN services:

  1. Deployed only over the internet
  2. Implemented with a mix of MPLS and internet links
  3. Deployed via Global cloud-native private network

Each SD-WAN deployment method has its own costs and benefits. But, because there are three different ways to deploy a robust SD-WAN, your organization has more flexibility in creating a system that solves your unique challenges.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

SD-WAN is a robust tool that solves many common Enterprise IT issues. Before making a final decision about investing in SD-WAN for your company, you need to evaluate the cost of doing nothing.

If branch offices were to continue with the status quo, would that hurt productivity? Would it impact operations? Would it harm productivity?

Many businesses deploy SD-WAN to avoid falling behind more nimble competitors. SD-WAN allows businesses with branch offices to have the same IT efficiencies as competitors with only a single office.

If your branch offices are facing security issues, slow or limited access to enterprise resources, or problems managing network operations, SD-WAN may be the best way to improve the productivity of these offices.