My organization was one of the early adopters of SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network). We had around 100+ retail locations with about 2000 users. Our business model was such that it requires downloading rich media content on our user machines to look at the products and review various offerings. To suffice the ever-increasing demand for high bandwidth and improve the reliability, we were looking for the available options. Our network traffic was using a traditional network technology with almost all the traffic was getting back-hauled, and we had many low-speed T1 connections. Although the MPLS (Multi-Protocol label switching) connections were reliable, they were costly factoring the bandwidth they were providing. If we just went ahead with circuit upgrades, it would have caused a steep increase in our operational cost. Still, also, there might be a challenge in upgrading the cabling infrastructure for the providers to accommodate the bandwidth increase.
Apart from the challenges listed above, we also discovered that we need to look for a solution for below technical issues:
In addition to these technical challenges, the real issue was encountering poor user experiences on a few occasions while they are navigating various network resources with a lot of rich media content. We looked at the few available options, and SD-WAN was offering a solution for many of our issues. Few key points that were looking promising were:
SD-WAN can address all the challenges while increasing available bandwidth for end users by combining the capacities of all transports and using all paths in active/active fashion
The only challenge was how to build confidence in the new emerging technology and solve the puzzle of how we should adapt to it. The open-ended questions were:
To overcome these challenges, you will need a technology partner who not only has in-depth knowledge of his area but also willing to invest in understanding your network architecture and help you in making intelligent decisions to perform a successful Proof of concept (POC). We decided to install the appliance in learning mode and get some visibility before we make the device active. On a high level, we went ahead with the below-listed steps.
The biggest challenge was the non-availability of diverse media circuits at all the locations. To overcome this, we had to quickly adapt the combination of a direct internet (DIA) and a private network connection.
The pleasant surprise was it was straightforward to make the changes on a central portal and push it to the sites as all the appliances are centrally managed.
We were able to complete the project as planned and were able to achieve some added benefits that were not even scoped during the time of engagement. I want to list some of the main benefits that we noticed.
I believe all these advantages and seamless migration makes SD-WAN selection a no-brainer for our enterprise. The future of SD-WAN looks even more promising with the available integrations of various SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) providers. This partnership will not only provide excellent network performance but will add unmatched security benefits.
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