Welcome back
In today's segment, I'll describe some of the benefits companies are realizing by deploying
an SD-WAN And these benefits span: End-users, the IT
staff and the C-Suite who look for investments that increase revenue, lower costs, accelerate
return on business investments, and reduce risk to protect the company's brand and image
There are many more benefits than I can cover here in this video so I will group them into
five broad categories: Increased application performance and availability, Enhanced agility
and responsiveness, Simplified WAN edge architecture, Improved WAN security, Lower WAN costs. First Application Performance and Availability. An SD-WAN enables the use of multiple WAN
transport services like MPLS, broadband and LTE. Some more advanced SD-WAN platforms enable
use of multiple transports, even to carry traffic for a single session - like a phone
call, video conference or a business transaction. Adding bandwidth can increase the performance
of an application. Using multiple transport services for the
same app, improves availability because even if one transport service fails, the remaining
ones continue to carry the application session - the business keeps running, uninterrupted. Now This means better productivity, and a
better quality of experience for both employees and their customers. For IT, this means fewer calls to the help
desk, freeing up more time to spend on more strategic digital initiatives. And for the C-Suite, this means a reduced
cost of downtime, improved customer satisfaction and ultimately, increased revenue. Now let's look at Agility and Responsiveness. Three key capabilities of the best SD-WANs
are centralized orchestration, zero-touch provisioning and the ability to reliably and
securely use internet services. This means that a new branch office can be
brought online much more quickly and without the need to send specialized IT resources
into the field. An office manager simply plugs in the SD-WAN
appliance at the branch, connects the LAN and WAN ports and then it's hands off; zero-touch
provisioning takes over to authenticate the device and configure it remotely. And While MPLS services might take 60 to 120
days to provision, broadband internet services are available almost anywhere in a matter
of days. A new branch can be brought online far more
quickly than previously possible. And the same goes for adding a new application
or changing a QoS or security policy. For the business, this means faster Time-to-Revenue
for a new branch location or perhaps a new business unit that was added as the result
of an acquisition. Let's move on to WAN Edge Architecture Simplification. The right SD-WAN choice can unify all essential
WAN edge network functions in a single platform, including Routing, Firewall, Visibility and
Control, WAN Optimization, and of course SD-WAN. Besides reducing the hardware footprint and
power consumption at every branch, centrally orchestrating all of these functions greatly
simplifies WAN infrastructure management for IT and provides more consistent QoS and security
policy enforcement across the enterprise. For the C-Suite, this means reduced risk. And of course, reduced WAN capital and operating
expense. Improved WAN Security
Now, you might think that by adding the internet as an active transport for the enterprise
WAN can compromise security. And with the wrong SD-WAN solution that WOULD
be true. But the right SD-WAN can provide end-to-end
segmentation that can separate or isolate voice traffic from point of sale traffic from
HVAC applications and guest wi-fi. This robust end-to-end segmentation could
have prevented many of the security breaches we've all read about. We are also seeing the rapid adoption of Cloud-hosted
security services that provide more comprehensive, more consistent security enforcement vs. on
premise security solutions. Security delivered in the cloud is easier
to keep up to date with the latest threat and vulnerability protection definitions and
this is in contrast to the traditional model where every firewall must be updated daily. An SD-WAN vendor that seamlessly integrates
with cloud-hosted security services can provide better cloud application performance without
any compromise in security protection. For the CISO and the rest of the C-suite,
this means reduced business risk and increased brand protection - remember the huge drops
in stock prices of companies that have suffered security breaches! And our last benefit today, Lower Overall
WAN Costs Three or four years ago, reduced cost was
often the first benefit customers looked for when considering SD-WAN. Fast-forward to today, where other benefits
such as increased application performance, business agility and improved security are
far more important considerations for companies looking to adopt SD-WAN. Still, the ability to use lower cost broadband
to augment or even replace MPLS and the ability to simplify WAN architecture and security
can drive substantial cost savings over time. And lower costs benefit everyone in the business! Thanks for watching, and we'll see you again
soon on another segment.
