What is SD-WAN?
SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide-Area Network) allows for a new way to manage WAN connections such as broadband internet, 4G, LTE, or MPLS. It connects networks of all sizes from SMB to enterprise — including branch offices and data centres — over large geographic distances.
Customers no longer need to invest in expensive, proprietary technology to get the connectivity they need. SD-WAN allows customers to a range of technologies to deliver higher values of service.
SD-WAN essentially virtualises the network and abstracts much of the complexity from the customer. It is now possible to use lower-cost links for backup (think NBN or 4G) as opposed to paying for different path point to point connections. All the management of these links are centralised, and traffic can be routed via the most appropriate path. This approach can significantly assist organisations who are looking to deploy into Hybrid and Multi-cloud environments.
Getting your design right
While many SD-WAN solutions may make it sound simple to deploy and manage, it is crucial not to miss the design phase of your overall network requirement. Understanding traffic flows, firewall rules, application dependencies and system performance needs to bring any SD-WAN project to a halt. It is also crucial to build a level of future-proofing into your design. Incorrect sizing of the equipment to meet your future business needs is a very typical issue that hits many organisations. SD-WAN allows you to scale your network bandwidth needs, but it needs to have the capacity itself for the number of users going through it, especially for things like remote VPN and FW throughput.
How can we help?
Oreta has multiple in-house resources that can assist you in understanding and transforming your network to meet your changing business requirements. Many of our resources are certified with our industry partners and are technically adept at working across several WAN technologies, routing and deploying SD-WAN.
We have a profound understanding of our partners SD-WAN applications, including VMware by Velocloud and Cisco’s full Cisco SD-WAN stack, from small to medium business products (Meraki) to large scale enterprise (Viptela). Also, we have a strong background in integrating connectivity options from Telstra, Equinix, AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Oreta can tailor your SD-WAN solutions, using the lowest cost links while giving you the highest levels of service and security.
If you would like more information, please get in touch with us here.
