Just recently I was chatting with a friend of mine who works at one of the Casinos in Lake Tahoe.
"How's your day going", I asked.
"It's a disaster," she replied, "the Internet has been down for two hours, and all of our machines, pretty much everything relies on it."
"That's crazy, how did it happen?"
What I really should have been asking is "How could you let that happen?".
If your business is like most others today, the future of networking is now. Your customers, vendors, and staff operate on the assumption that your network will be connected and fast 100% of the time. And, when that expectation doesn't get met you lose business, vendors get frustrated and employees lose precious time.
Affordable and reliable solutions are available today that provide fast, secure, and bulletproof connectivity for just about any business. If you operate a Casino, two-hours of downtime is simply cash flowing out the door … not having the right network in place, simply unacceptable from a business standpoint.
What the Casino needed was an SD-WAN implementation with at least three internet providers and a proper failover configuration. Given that SD-WAN often reduces networking costs and improves network performance it's a wonder not every business relies on it today.
SD-WAN 101
SD-WAN stands for Software Defined Wide Area Network. This means that instead of just using hardware routers, switches, and cabling, your network traffic gets managed securely by software which routes it intelligently across a variety of devices and connections. You can think of it as a way to logically create a secure network regardless of how your locations are physically connected.
While one of the main benefits of SD-WAN is to enable WAN using a common broadband internet connection, the technology can also manage a hybrid environment that combines traditional MPLS WAN, Layer 2 WAN networks, dedicated internet access, and readily available internet services such as wireless 4G LTE/5G together.
Additionally, SD-WAN provides cloud-based monitoring of the network, automated failover rules, and a number of tools to configure the network for your ideal needs. This means that you can monitor and control the state of your network from just about anywhere.
How do I know if I need SD-WAN?
If you haven't implemented SD-WAN today and can answer 'Yes' to any of the items below, you should probably be looking seriously at implementing it:
• I'm operating a multi-site enterprise with legacy MPLS WAN connections
• My existing environment requires manual intervention to failover between WAN carriers
• My business is adding or planning to add locations rapidly
• More and more of my employees or contractors requesting VPN connections to work remotely
• My remote users drop VPN and VoIP calls intermittently
• Our office(s) have multiple internet connections in case one fails but it often still takes a while to get back up and running
• Critical software applications are hosted in a central location and need to be accessed from satellite offices or locations reliably
• More and more of our vertical business applications are moving to the cloud while many of our digital assets remain within the business perimeter
SD-WAN will prepare your network for the future
While it might not feel essential to implement SD-WAN today, as the business environment continues to change, you'll want a network that can quickly adapt. SD-WAN provides the flexibility to accommodate the trends currently changing the way businesses operate:
• Increasing use of cloud applications as opposed to on-premise software drives the need to support more broadband consumption
• Providing a flexible road map to integrate existing infrastructure with more advanced cloud based architectures without having to rip and replace
• Changes in work patterns such as remote workers and new and different work locations require more complex networking approaches
• Customer and partner expectations for network uptime means you'll need higher standards for reliability and monitoring
• New regulations and compliance requirement will force improvements to security and access protocols
The network of the future
There's little expectation that existing MPLS WAN connections will be replaced any time soon with SD-WAN. However, as cloud usage, remote work and security expectations grow SD-WAN will play an essential role in bridging the gap between rigid, legacy network approaches, and a flexible, reliable future model.
Newer and quickly growing companies without fixed infrastructure will likely adopt SD-WAN entirely due to the lower costs, speed of implementation, and flexibility. Meanwhile, it's expected that businesses that rely on dedicated WAN infrastructure will mostly expand with SD-WAN based connectivity using a hybrid model.
At Capcon Networks we're dedicated to helping companies simplify their network connectivity so they can focus on what they do best. We provide expert services for any SD-WAN implementation or support requirement. Or, we can do it all for you with our Managed Connectivity Service which offers guaranteed 100% network uptime, simplified billing, and 10x customer support.