Moving Beyond MPLS: A Global SD-WAN is the Future of the Digital-First Enterprise

“Organizations with digital-ready networks are realizing two to three times the revenue growth as compared to organizations whose digital initiatives are resting on legacy networks.”
-Nikhil Batra, Senior Research Manager, AP Telecom Practice, IDC Asia/Pacific

Every organization that has begun or plans to embark on a digital transformation journey needs to undergo a network transformation first. Legacy connectivity solutions like MPLS or the Internet have become a bottleneck for organizations, preventing them from reaching the full value of their digital transformation initiatives.

We recently hosted a webinar showing the business case for moving beyond MPLS, featuring Nikhil Batra from IDC and Aryaka’s Solutions Architect Paul Boniface, in which we discussed how organizations in Asia-Pacific (APAC) can evaluate and implement a viable, agile, reliable, secure, and cost-effective network solution.

Here are the top four takeaways from the webinar:

1.  Networks are now more critical to the business than ever:

Businesses in APAC are growing quickly and are in need of solutions that address priorities like improved customer engagement and experience, operational efficiency, market expansion, cost-savings, and innovations.

The need to create a “digital-ready” network has become non-negotiable for any IT leader who wants to remain relevant to the business today. And no digital transformation can be successful without a network transformation.

2. Enterprises need a viable MPLS alternative:

MPLS is hindering digital initiatives because legacy technologies were not designed to address the exploding bandwidth usage or the diverse user and application portfolios of today.

MPLS provides limited cloud and SaaS connectivity, takes a long time to deploy, is expensive (especially for overseas connectivity), and is difficult to scale on-demand. Many businesses turn to the public internet to deal with some of these issues; however, the public internet is riddled with challenges like unreliable latencies, congestion-based packet loss, and security concerns for mission-critical business applications. Managing hybrid (MPLS + Internet) cloud-centric WAN environments with legacy approaches to branch connectivity is both cost-intensive and cumbersome, while retaining the problems of both approaches to connectivity.

3. SD-WAN offers a new way to connect:

The foundations of SD-WAN were built on the idea that, as organizations undergo digital transformation, they will need a networking solution that is intelligent, optimized, secure, agile, and reliable.

Your WAN should be able to reduce your network’s operational cost and complexity while enhancing application performance especially for cloud-based applications. A stable and agile network that can scale on demand, be deployed quickly, and provide uninterrupted application access to all users, irrespective of their location globally, is the keystone for a successful digital-first organization.

4.  Give SD-WAN a global private WAN:

Most of the SD-WAN solutions available today are limited to extracting the network control and management interface from the underlying hardware. The caveat is that enterprises will have still to rely on either MPLS or the public Internet for connectivity and, thus, will be restrained by the inherent drawbacks of both these mediums.

Aryaka’s global private network can help organizations bypass the need for MPLS or public internet for global connectivity. Aryaka’s global SD-WAN solution combines an enterprise-grade global private network with application performance optimization capabilities, direct access to the largest cloud service providers, the MyAryaka™ visibility portal (a network and application monitoring tool), and world-class 24x7x365 customer support — all in a bundled managed service available on a subscription-based pricing model.

Watch the webinar for additional insights into some key evaluation criteria for choosing the right SD-WAN partner. You’ll also find out how global companies like Havas and Platform Specialty Products achieved superior application performance, improved productivity, and reduced network cost and complexity with Aryaka’s global SD-WAN. Watch now.