Over the past few years, the ‘work from anywhere’ mandate has cemented its place across the business landscape, with organisations more dispersed than ever before. Alongside this, network architectures now incorporate everything from data centers to the cloud and the emerging edge. Meanwhile, thanks to a growing IoT market we’re seeing an explosion of devices connected to corporate networks.
With increasing network complexity and an influx of new users and devices connecting outside of the traditional security perimeters, IT teams are facing rising cyber challenges. At the same time, both businesses and employees are demanding more and more flexibility and accessibility.
In the face of such changes and demands, traditional network infrastructure and security architectures – based on MPLS, routers, and firewalls – are struggling to deliver. Their cost, rigidity, and complexity was never designed for the emerging technologies of today and the ways of working we now find ourselves in.
In response, some organisations have attempted to manage these changes by stretching out their legacy router and firewall-centric infrastructures, however these simply aren’t flexible enough for modern applications that are primarily hosted in the cloud. This leaves an increasing number of organisations seeking out new solutions for both wide area networking (WAN) and security, hence the growing demand for advanced SD-WAN.
Simplifying local operations and unlocking business benefits
WAN architectures based on old school, traditional routers require customer’s IT teams to deal with a vast array of network and security equipment that has built up over the years. In many cases, this hardware must be configured manually. Local branches often lack experienced IT staff to install and maintain all this equipment, meaning that expensive onsite visits are required for any issues or updates.
Advanced SD-WAN solutions integrate all necessary WAN functions such as routing and WAN optimisation, and some now also include built-in next-generation firewalls so that organisations can streamline their network equipment into a single appliance. These advanced solutions can be configured once and deployed with zero-touch provisioning to thousands of sites, getting rid of the need for experienced local IT staff or call-outs.
What’s more, advanced SD-WAN solutions can go above and beyond next generation firewalls and SASE by enabling the implementation of zero trust network segmentation. Based on identity and role-based access control, this ensures that only approved users and devices can access specific areas of a customer’s network, consistent with their granted permissions. With SD-WAN automation and intelligence, the network becomes self-driving, which in turn simplifies processes and drives efficiencies that ensure business leaders can focus on more strategic business actions outside of their security woes.
This shift in approach offers a huge opportunity for channel partners, for example – particularly those who have sold traditional networking previously. Now, instead of talking to IT leaders about network ‘products’, partners can speak to business leaders about security transformation that will enable them to deliver on their broader business goals. A strong approach to security is integral to any customer transformation journey, and with the right security in place, IT teams will be able to help deliver on whatever transformation customers are seeking out.
Supporting cloud-first organisations
Customers across every sector are being pushed to accelerate their cloud migration roadmaps, but this is underscored by worries about complexity and disruption. SD-WAN eradicates those concerns, for example, it’s now possible to extend the network into AWS, Azure, Google or Oracle with a few mouse clicks, meaning businesses don’t need to worry about embracing a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy.
But there are also user experience benefits to be had from supporting cloud migration with an advanced SD-WAN approach – making it an even more attractive proposition for customers. Traditionally, when customers hosted most business applications in their own data centers, the model of routing application traffic from branch locations back to the data center for security inspection was expected. However, as more and more applications have moved into the cloud, sending traffic back to a data center is impacting application performance… and not for the better.
By deploying an advanced SD-WAN, customers can improve end-user quality of experience by automatically steering traffic to the internet based on a business’s specific policies. Trusted cloud applications can be sent straight to the cloud over the internet, while less trusted ones can be directed to a cloud-delivered security service or back to the data center firewall in the absence of a cloud security service. All of this means improved performance of key applications that increases productivity and end customer satisfaction.
Bringing security benefits to hybrid working
SD-WAN offerings are not just for enterprises. In the age of hybrid working, it’s not just large branches and campuses that are being put under security strain. Home and small remote offices also need automated, policy-based management and cloud-based security. As organisations continue their digital transformation journeys, the need for agility and security at the Edge and across distributed locations will only accelerate.