ONE Network for the Hybrid WAN

Enterprises are evolving and so is the WAN. With globalization and cloud adoption being the two megatrends affecting network architectures today, CIOs are discussing hybrid WAN initiatives with their teams. Most global businesses use MPLS for their primary application traffic and use Internet links as both backup to their MPLS network and as primary links to smaller branch offices. The adoption of enterprise and CRM applications on the cloud has added another level of complexity, since these functions have moved from behind the firewall to outside of it. Current WAN and Data Center Interconnect models were not built to deal with the hybrid networks of today!

First of all, contrary to popular belief, globalization and MPLS do not work well together – for business reasons. While pricing for MPLS has dropped a good deal within the US and Europe in the last few years, connecting to China, India, Brazil or Australia can still be prohibitively expensive. Especially if you have a smaller branch office to turn up, it’s not worth the investment. Plus, lengthy deployment times (all the way up to 6 months) can lead to a longer time to market and undue project implementation delays. Try telling your MPLS vendor that you’re moving your office just across the street in Shanghai, and you’ll know what we’re talking about!

Secondly, with cloud adoption reaching ubiquity, and tons of SaaS vendors offering enterprise applications, CRM and BI solutions with a web front end, network managers are facing a whole new set of challenges. Since the access medium to all these cloud services is primarily the Internet, application performance takes an obvious hit. And MPLS cannot help.

According to Network World, the hybrid WAN needs a radically different approach to optimization.  Here’s what Zeus Kerravala has to say, “What would be ideal is a superset of WAN acceleration, QoS, Firewalls, ADCs, analytics, and management software. This would allow network engineers to manage, optimize, and secure the user experience on a per-application basis. My idea of a utopian solution is that it would work over the traditional private network, but then optimize Internet traffic for cloud services”.

Certain WAN Optimization appliance vendors have added Application Performance Management functionality on top of the optimization feature set. This is basically “path selection” or “dynamic WAN selection” where the appliance splits application traffic and selects the best network to route it through – depending on priorities and business objectives. Path selection mechanisms usually route site-to-site traffic through MPLS links while site-to-cloud traffic (being comparatively lower priority) often suffers the brunt of congestion on the Internet.

For cloud or SaaS acceleration, WAN Optimization vendors are trying to figure out the best routes (avoiding congestion) over the Internet to the cloud data center – either through partnership with a CDN provider or by developing their own intelligence so as to route their way around the problem. While this does improve performance at times, the Internet middle mile is still public and unreliable. Therefore, consistency goes for a toss, especially during the rush hours.

On the commercial front, MPLS and WAN Optimization vendors tend to nickel and dime enterprises for every additional functionality that they ask for. Not to mention the hard dollars that enterprises need to spend on visibility and support.

Fortunately, there is ONE network built for the hybrid WAN – that combines the power of WAN acceleration, QoS, ADCs, analytics and management software.

Aryaka ONE is the world’s first and only global, private, optimized, secure and on demand network that delivers simplicity and agility to address all enterprise connectivity and application performance needs. Aryaka ONE optimizes both site-to-site and site-to-cloud traffic over a private backbone that completely bypasses the unreliable public Internet. Aryaka eliminates the need for deploying piecemeal solutions like costly WAN appliances or long-haul private MPLS links.

Gartner considers us a Visionary as we redefine WAN Optimization across global networks.

–          Aryaka Marketing Team