ChannelVision Sept-Oct 2017

the distant horizon, according to net- working provider Cradlepoint, which found that elastic and economical WANs that provide pervasive con- nectivity for people, places and things across the enterprise and beyond are a foundational requirement. And these are best enabled at gigabit speeds. In its State of the Network study, Cradlepoint found that 77 percent of IT decision-makers surveyed – from businesses of all sizes – cited their top concerns as WAN bandwidth limita- tions, reliability and cost. “These are the very operational fac- tors that get stressed with the adoption of cloud, mobile and the internet of things,” it said. Other research backs up this as- sessment. IDC expects that 75 percent of the U.S. workforce will be afforded a mobile workstyle by 2020. IoT is poised to make up the largest constitu- ency of endpoints in the coming years, and Gartner forecasts that more than 7.5 billion connected devices will be deployed within U.S. enterprises by 2020. And already, 47 percent of sur- veyed enterprises are grappling with deploying IoT initiatives on their cur- rent WAN, according to a 2016 study by Enterprise Management Associates. Comcast Business is positioning for this reality. It recently launched an SD- WAN offering for mid-market and enter- prise customers based on its virtualized ActiveCore platform, which is rolling out in tandem with its gigabit internet offer- ing. The service takes advantage of the agility of software-defined networks to enable better application performance, centralized network policy management and more effective cost controls for multi-location businesses and enter- prises – and Comcast is the first cable company to tackle this space. “To put it in perspective, most homes get 50 to 100Mbps, and that’s more than the typical bandwidth running to branch locations today,” O’Toole said. “SD-WAN provides a se- cure vehicle that allows us to provide lots of bandwidth to these types of locations, cost-effectively, which allows them to adopt more bandwidth-inten- sive applications.” When paired with gigabit broad- band, SD-WAN, which allows enter- prises to earmark bandwidth for certain mission-critical applications, becomes a powerful business enabler. “I think what enterprises of all sizes need to know is that the con- vergence of SD-WAN with gigabit transport is a generational moment in data networking,” O’Toole said. “Every year, IT departments get told to do more with less money, and they’re used to a scarcity mentality that involves decisions like, ‘Can we afford to add another meg and a half of bandwidth to support a new cloud application?’ But now, they can shift into an abundance mentality where they have lots of capacity at a cheaper cost than before. They may not even know what to do with it all. That’s a wonderful position for an IT person supporting a company in this very competitive world.” o Zettabytes Purpose built for Zero-Outage Performance and Wrapped by Security, Compliance and Global Deployment . FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.onestreamnetworks.com sales@onestreamnetworks.com 1-877-877-1220 (option 2) September - October, 2017 | Channel Vision 43