CV_Fall20_2

Y ou don’t have to look far to be reminded that today’s economies are globalized. The world is shrinking. Local markets, once separated by culture, distance and time, are expanding nationally and internationally. Those challenges continue to withdraw, as market enablers accelerate a rapidly converging global economy. In the 20th century, network commu- nications took global economic conver- gence to the next level. However, in the 21st century, communication networks are undergoing sweeping changes. Technology-driven markets and societal changes are creating new industries, expanding customer reach, and enabling amazing efficiencies and opportuni - ties. Every digitally enabled business depends on the internet for commerce and communications. Economic inhibitors In our world, there are myriad factors out of our control that impede commerce. Catastrophic weather can inhibit ships and airplanes from reaching their destina- tions, and global health issues, such as a novel coronavirus, can quickly bring world economies to their knees. Politics and wars disrupt strategic sea lanes and canals; highways become damaged by water and earthquakes. But, within the world of network communications, network congestion that slows traffic, as well as legacy technology and human errors that cause networks to fail, are certainly within our ability to control. We all know communication networks have problems. A list of issues, including long-unplanned outages, congestion caused by network traffic spikes, slow perfor - mance from latency induced by long distance, bandwidth hogging applica- tions, packet loss, and configuration errors caused by humans all contribute to network problems. While we cannot fully prepare for the onslaughts of Mother Nature, disrup- tive pandemics or the consequences of political unrest, we do have the capability to improve our communication networks. While many enterprises strug- gle to keep up with growing demand, there are many highly effective solutions that solve network problems. SD-WAN drives business Enterprises must eliminate business impediments brought on by network connectivity. Traditional network architectures can’t adequately accommodate today’s diverse connec- tivity demands. The need to connect clouds, IoT devices, mobile workers and diverse applications requires a new network design approach. Today’s business-driven networks are built for digital business initiatives. SD-WAN has quickly proven to be an exceptionally efficient solution to support digital transformation. Enterprises are deploying SD-WAN to help cloud-enable their businesses. SD-WAN can strength- en network security and simplify network infrastructure, while enabling huge advances in network agility and visibility. SD-WAN reduces and eliminates the need for expensive and rigid fixed circuits, branch offices that are bloated with single-function devices, and the considerable resource overhead needed to manage everything. Applying SD-WAN functions at the network edge enables IT to dynamically mix and match connec- tivity options, strengthen security and improve application performance. A cloud-native SD-WAN advances the needle further, enabling a zero-trust architecture, giving enterprises visibility into the traffic traversing their networks between users, applications and devic- es, regardless of location. This provides complete visibility throughout the extended perimeter of the enterprise. SD-WAN identifies users, flows, packets and applications, while monitoring and automatically adjusting based on threats, vulnerabilities and changes in network conditions. There has been much written about the drivers for SD-WAN, but conversely, SD-WAN is at the forefront in driving business. Business today is extremely dynamic; markets are fluid, and enter - prises must respond quickly to business opportunities. There are many business challenges that require WAN connectiv- ity: to seamlessly support mergers and acquisitions; expand into new regions and countries; and move workloads and applications among branches, data centers, clouds and mobile users. Network perimeters have radically changed from rigid, private network archi- tectures to agile software-defined archi - tectures. SD-WAN enables business to break free from the constraints of the past and focus on new flexibility to accelerate business forward. Throughout time, new technolo- gies have improved the economies of commerce. Today, software-defined architectures are improving the reliability and performance of business networks that power our global economy. o Enterprise Global Networks Enable theWorld’s Economy VIRTUAL REALITY Biggest WAN Resource/Time Consuming Issues Poor user experience for remote/mobile workers 47% Poor user experience in branch offices 43% Accessing/Integrating cloud and SaaS application origins 41% Security breaches 38% Managing telco/service providers is a nightmare 34% Issues caused by shadow IT 12% Source: Aryaka survey of enterprise IT and network practitioners By Avi Lonstein , CEO AireSpring 60 CHANNEL VISION | September - October, 2020