ChannelVision Playbook 13

However, implementing, manag- ing, and troubleshooting an SD-WAN is complex and requires specialized expertise. This presents an opportunity for VARs and MSPs to help and sup- port SD-WAN adoption. SD-WAN implementations are often split into three key phases: planning, deployment and ongoing management. Customers find that VARs and MSPs can act as expert advisers to support them at each stage of the process and can add even more value when they are involved from beginning to end, even managing the SD-WAN directly. LiveAction has supported dozens of SD-WAN rollouts and seen a variety of problems and challenges. Helping your customers avoid them is a significant op- portunity for you to add value and a dem- onstration of the importance of visibility in successful SD-WAN implementation. Below are five SD-WAN challenges every channel partner should keep in mind and explain how comprehensive network visibility can improve manage- ment and troubleshooting: Legacy Infrastructure Issues – Most companies only upgrade certain portions of the network at any given time, rolling out SD-WAN in phases. Often, companies encounter integration problems between the new SD-WAN and the legacy environment as they attempt to coexist while the rollout is in process. Swapping a legacy router for an SD-WAN router is not an apples-to- apples switch. VARs and MSPs focus- ing on SD-WAN management need to be aware of legacy network topologies, how they’re likely to impact – and be impacted by – new deployments. Site-specific Bandwidth Deficien- cies – Some companies simply choose the wrong sites to upgrade. For ex- ample, a company with 100 sites in 100 cities might choose to upgrade bandwidth for the 20 largest cities. But, if the majority of bandwidth-intensive VoIP and video calls go to and from some of the smaller sites, those calls might experience problems because inadequate bandwidth was allocated to them. Channel partners need to have a firm, evidence-based understanding of network traffic patterns across the entire network (i.e., conduct effective capacity planning) in order to identify or avoid this common mistake. Multi-vendor and Multi-cloud Blind Spots – Many SD-WAN solu- tions offer some level of monitoring ca- pabilities, but these often pull from lim- ited data sources and only focus on the WAN. Network traffic extends across the network; obviously your visibility solution should too, including campus, WAN, wireless and the data center. For example, a hybrid network may have an application in a data center that communicates with a public cloud instance and sends the results over the WAN to a remote site. WAN-only visibil- ity is not particularly useful if the issue turns out to be between the data center and AWS. Service providers should leverage network monitoring tools that use multiple data types and provide vis- ibility into not only the data center and core network but the network edge and cloud environments as well. Time and Budget Overages – For channel partners that are responsible for the ongoing management and op- timization of SD-WANs, efficiency is key to maintaining customer satisfac- tion. Without a granular view of each site, application, traffic path, etc., troubleshooting even the most basic issues can be a long and arduous pro- cess that decreases productivity and increases costs for both the channel partner and the customer. Traffic Protocol Problems – Traf- fic protocol management can be a tricky issue for companies and solution providers alike. For instance, HTTPS traffic is the most common protocol on most WANs. The challenge is that HTTPS can be many things, and what those things are exactly can be increasingly challenging to identify across a complex SD-WAN. HTTPS is used by business-critical SaaS provid- ers, but it’s also used by bandwidth- hogging consumer sites. Some tools are only able to categorize HTTPS as port 443 traffic, which doesn’t allow administrators or solution providers to differentiate between business and non-business uses. When dealing with complex SD- WAN implementations, channel part- ners need the technical ability to dig a level deeper than port and protocol, and gain application DPI visibility in order to rate limit and deprioritize non-critical sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Hulu (while prioritizing business traffic). Network monitoring solutions must provide application level visibility. As you can see, in-depth network insights and a deep knowledge of cus- tomers’ networks can allow service pro- viders to prevent or solve a wide range of potential SD-WAN issues. Solution providers with the right SD-WAN capa- bilities will be well-positioned as these complex implementations continue to become the new normal for enterprise networks around the world. o Joe O’Connor is senior vice president of channel and alliances at LiveAction. SD-WAN ChallengesAre IT Channel Opportunities S D-WAN is quickly taking over MPLS as the key wide area net- work technology. In fact, Gartner predicted that over 65 per- cent of enterprises will have implemented SD-WANs by 2021. By Joe O’Connor 16 THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK