Top 4 Reasons CIOs are Driving to SD-WAN

Enterprises of all sizes are in the midst of the largest and most disruptive technology revolutions today. The advancement of cloud, SaaS, and mobile computing are set to reshape how organizations and enterprise IT work with data and applications.

This trend is most noticeable with companies moving from hosting mission-critical applications exclusively in their corporate data center to adopting cloud-based or SaaS applications. The performance of these mission-critical applications has a major impact on business productivity and execution. As a result, a massive transformation is taking place regarding the role of global connectivity.

For many CIOs, it is becoming more clear their legacy networks are not suited for the demands of modern connectivity. Many are turning to SD-WANs to step up their game for this new “marketplace.”

IDC Expects $6 billion in sales by 2020
SD-WAN revenues are expected to be over $6 billion by 2020, according to a recent report by IDC. This increase over 2015-2020 projects a growth rate over 90%, and indicates a need for advancement in WAN technology today. The opportunities it opens up for businesses are based on the growth of cloud, the need for simplified branch office management, and business initiatives to reduce MPLS costs.

However, the main question to ask is, “What is the most compelling reason for your organization to adopt or consider SD-WAN?”

There are several answers to this question. Here are the top four reasons why CIOs are considering an SD-WAN implementation for their companies and enterprises:

1. Agility in Deployment:
   Legacy network technologies like MPLS are very inflexible, and in some cases, deploying a new site or location can take 60-120 days, drastically impacting business expansion and productivity. Enterprises that are considering an SD-WAN deployment need to look at providers that can enable global connectivity in the shortest time possible.

2. Cost Reduction
   SD-WANs helps businesses reduce cost in the form of bandwidth savings compared to MPLS. A global SD-WAN, provided as a fully-managed service, will ensure CIOs they save not only on network maintenance and management costs, but enable IT resources to be free and focus on more strategic business initiatives.

3. Network Security:
   It is critical for organizations to ensure their networks are secure and in compliance within each geographical region, especially with their business applications moving outside the corporate firewall and into the cloud.An SD-WAN, where the provider owns the network, has the ability to deliver a multi-layer security model with enterprise-grade network security, physical security, and access control.

4. Application Performance:
   Most SD-WANs today fall short in delivering fast and reliable application performance because they rely on the public internet (in the absence of MPLS) for connectivity. In some cases, SD-WAN-based hybrid architectures use MPLS for performance, and this results in the solutions inheriting legacy network shortfalls, such as long deployment timelines, high cost, and lack of optimized cloud access support. Conventional SD-WANs that do not rely on MPLS, must depend on congested public networks, which are known to deliver poor application performance due to high packet loss and fluctuating latencies.

Your Business is Only as Good as Your Network
Whether in the cloud or on-premises, mission-critical or peripheral, the performance of your applications and ultimately your business is only as good as your network. While 2016 has been the year most enterprises have taken a step towards SD-WAN, 2017 will determine which SD-WAN solutions are best suited for enterprise connectivity, especially on a global scale. For CIOs and IT managers, the focus must be on building a network designed for modern data and application delivery, and the right SD-WAN could deliver their enterprise the performance they are looking for.

Looking for more information about SD-WAN? Download our latest white paper, “Top 5 SD-WAN Myths Busted” to learn more.

About the author

Feroz Zaveri