ChannelVision Playbook 13

plan, deploy, manage and optimize the network. Most MSPs usually can offer some level of visibility and might provide access to telemetry from edge devices and controllers (for example, telemetry from API, SNMP or IPFIX) for customers to use in their tools. Regardless of the approach, every organization will need some level of visibility to narrow down application issues and identify if it’s the service provider, network or wherever else a problem might be. Proactively debugging SD-WAN can be a challenge even for MSPs providing customers with the proper level of granular visibility to debug if it’s really their issue or that of the MSP managed SD-WAN. Without the properly visibility, issues tend to get blamed on the least visible part of the network path. Many organizations will ask their providers about how they plan to troubleshoot, what information they’ll share with them and how they handle reporting. For example, with SD-WAN users can specify a preferred transport for specific applications based on perfor- mance thresholds. A customer might be running VoIP but experiencing sub- par performance, or perhaps they’re experiencing occasional outages and want to know why this is happening. Basic SD-WAN reporting usually can illustrate the quality of the transport (is it good or bad?) but at times makes it difficult to map the exact application flow down to the reason. The reason could be that multiple transports are seeing packet drops so there’s no way for the SD-WAN to optimize paths. In order to get that level of visibility, it’s critical to utilize an NPMD solution that can actually look at that granular level, which may include packet-level analysis. Whether the SD-WAN is managed in-house or by a service provider, transport costs are expen- sive, so organizations need some way to validate the level of performance they’re receiving. How Much Control is Required? There are many features SD-WAN offers, and the amount of control a customer requires for each can be a factor when they’re deciding to build in-house or outsource. For example, with traffic prioritization, companies can create very specific topologies tailored to their unique needs. Take a financial services company for in- stance and the required policies they have for security and performance. Realistically, all their financial trans- actions should never go through the public internet, especially the banking transactions on the backend, which should only go through secure MPLS transport. Therefore, policies need to exist that follow their rules from an application and security perspective. In this case, the level of granularity required is likely only available by managing the SD-WAN in-house or through additional professional ser- vices offered by an MSP. Or, what about multi-cloud sup- port? Most SD-WAN vendors support some kind of cloud connect. Cisco definitely does. And that’s pretty important because every enterprise has a footprint in AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. Organizations deal- ing with this scenario need it to be easy, and if they have a data center, they may need it to interoperate with the cloud. Whether an organization builds internally or outsources to an MSP, whenever traffic comes out of the SD-WAN fabric, they still need to monitor it. And organizations also value other additional features such as ease-of-use, centralized manage- ment, reporting and security. All need to be evaluated based on the requirements of their business. For example, the MSP route for SD-WAN will be an ease-of-use slam dunk for a smaller business but could be less appealing for a larger company that requires high levels of control, spe- cifically for application performance or for security reasons such as the financial use case. It’s an exciting time for SD-WAN, as vendors and service providers bring new features and technologies to mar- ket that help companies take advan- tage of the many business benefits it has to offer. As customers increasingly come to the table with questions and concerns about the best way to adopt the technology, hopefully the above information gives you some insight into the challenges and mindset of orga- nizations considering a new SD-WAN deployment. o John Smith is co-founder and CTO at LiveAction. What do you consider th key starting points of your digital transformation, whether it has started yet or not? Shifting from a legacy approach to emerging digital technologies. Positioning ourselves for the next generation of partners and customers. Achieving executive buy-in on ou digital initiatives. Becoming acknowledged by our customers as a digital brand. We have not considered what would be a key starting point for digital transformation. Other 59% 47% 34% 22% 6% 1% R C De Challenges Associated with SD-WAN Adoption Source: IDG, Masergy D In % Cost concerns Concerns about the skills needed to implement/manage Concerns about interoperability with existing WANs Resistance from within IT Lack of interest or support from final purchase decision-makers None Other May-19 Jul-17 56% 51% 46% 48% 43% 51% 30% 21% 25% 27% 6% 3% 2% 5% 26 THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK