Should Our Company Layer Our WAN with SD?

You’re on your way to a business meeting and lots of things are crossing your mind. Let’s assume you work in the IT field and you are heading the companies’ team to put the business into global markets. One of the things that you are concerned about is that you can provision the WAN connections as fast as the inventors are rolling out the new app. And if you can, can marketing generate product demand and allow cost reduction to be brought to the table?

Feeling stress as an IT manager is not uncommon in today’s world. Part of this stress can be solved using Managed bandwidth services. As fast as things stabilize they suddenly change. What’s here today certainly may be gone tomorrow. Take for instance the WANs that everyone has learned to love and hate all at the same time. These ingenious creations allowed people to remote in from any location that they could compute from. However, just as soon as they became popular, the errors that existed within them suddenly became all too real.

Like the IT manager, teams that make new and exciting technological advances felt the heat from the industry regarding the insufficient WAN services. If it wasn’t the congestion problems then it was the lack of security making headlines. There was issues with people connecting at once, especially if there was many of them. Let’s also not forget the costs of engineering services. WAN uses private lines that are costly to maintain. There is also the need for routers and boxes and all sorts of other gadgets to make it all work effortlessly. While it was good for its time, it is clear that it is out of date and needs help to make it work more efficiently.

Introducing SD-WAN to the mix was the fix. The only problem with this is that the technological users are weary of any new product. When you start talking about security and their precious data, people start clamming up about spending any money to change what is already working. Even though there are problems with the WAN, it is working for the most part. However, the difference between fresh bread and bread that has been sitting for a week is quite different. The same can be said of WAN and SD WAN.

SD-WAN is software based whereas WAN is hardware based. These differences don’t sound like much on paper, but it’s huge in the real work. Hardware means a machine or some sort of technical piece of equipment must be utilizing the services. Software based means it is installed on already used equipment. It means it takes up less spaces because you don’t need routers. It also means that it costs less overall.

The longer these Cloud innovations are out, the more people are turning to them for the answers to their long awaited problems. Sure, there is something about being efficient in an IT world that has its perks, like job security. Avoiding taking a company to the next level for fear of security breaches or cost is just asinine at this time. So many have already made the switch, and it’s time to update that old outdated way of doing business with one that will revolutionize the way companies do remote business.