3 Secrets You Won’t Hear From MPLS Providers
There is an optimum solution for today’s cloud-fueled, mobile world, but MPLS providers aren’t interested in telling you what it is.
Cassette tapes. Flip-phones. Fax Machines. And now, MPLS.
Decades ago, MPLS was the gold standard in secure WAN technology — an innovative, powerful means of helping businesses and their employees stay connected. But the internet has changed since the 1990s, and MPLS hasn’t. At 30 years old, MPLS hasn’t been able to keep up with the rapidly changing needs for today’s global enterprises. In today’s knowledge-based, cloud-fueled and mobile world, enterprises need an network that is agnostic, quick to deploy, affordable to own, and easy to manage.
MPLS is none of those things.
Of course, MPLS providers will tell you a different story. They’ll tell you that MPLS is cost-effective, easy to manage, and still the best option for your global enterprise. But as a business leader or an IT leader, you’ll learn just as much from what they don’t tell you.
Here are just a few examples of what MPLS providers don’t want you to know.
Secret #1: WAN OPTIMIZATION HARDWARE IS RARELY “OPTIONAL”
The Internet of 2017 moves exponentially more data than it did in 1997, and WAN optimization is required to overcome congestion, speed up file transfers, conserve bandwidth, accelerate application delivery, and more. MPLS service providers will tell you that some organizations “prefer” to optimize for WAN. The truth is, most large enterprises have no choice.
Secret #2: MPLS WITH SD-WAN IS MORE COMPLEX THAN YOU THINK
You will have to deploy, pay for, manage, and maintain your SD-WAN hardware separately. That means more money in both cash outlay and resources within your IT team — not to mention the many hours in lost productivity while the team troubleshoots complaints both from remote workers and from customers. Or the lost hours while the entire enterprise waits for new systems to deploy.
Which leads to…
Secret #3: MPLS TAKES WEEKS AND SOMETIMES MONTHS TO DEPLOY
Your MPLS implementation guide will give you a week-by-week how-to to help you setup the hardware. Sounds great to have a guide, but there are alternatives to MPLS that take do not weeks but days — sometimes hours — to deploy, thereby saving you money, time, and frustration.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Download our latest paper: What MPLS Providers Don’t Want You To Know, to learn about real costs, the myth of the ‘last mile” and the direction of the industry.
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