ChannelVision Magazine

VIRTUAL REALITY Make no mistake, however, cost savings for all size firms, and even “cheaper that MPLS,” is and will remain a key driver. After all, cost was the number one WAN challenge among firms surveyed for Aryaka, and when asked why they were looking at SD-WAN, nearly six in 10 cited cost savings over MPLS, show Avant fig - ures, making cost a close third among all options given. Companies in the 250-500 seat range, in particular, were far more drawn to potential cost sav - ings than any other value category, named by 77 percent of this cohort. Why are you looking at SD-WAN? Auto-failure and redundancy 66.8% Simplified management 61% Cost savings over MPLS 58% Improved application QoS 48% Need more bandwidth 41% Enable cloud applications 39% Active usage of backup links 34% Decrease reliance on carriers 23% Replace firewalls 12% Replace routers 10% Source: Avant Communications Among all respondents, simplified management edged out cost savings for second place at 61 percent of respon - dents. Tops overall, and certainly an early bullet point in SD-WAN marketing, was for auto failure and redundancy. “The ability of SD-WAN to dy- namically make a decision on where to route traffic makes it an ideal solution for higher reliability networks,” explains the Avant study. “Multiple service providers can be used in an all-active configuration in order to minimize the impact of an outage.” SD-WAN allows for the simultane- ous use of the backup network, Avant executives explained, achieving more combined bandwidth availability and higher performance than any single network due to dynamic routing. Users can still configure SD-WAN solutions with backup networks that are nominally unused. And SD-WAN edge devices also are being offered with built in LTE capabilities for built in resiliency, or additional circuits can be set up intended for network resil- iency with a lower monthly fee but high usage rate. Along with handling backup duties, SD-WAN providers are increasingly incorporating other elements and at - tachments of the WAN, potentially addressing mid-market firms’ desires to reduce complexity and cost of their WAN environments. Arguably the most important, today’s offerings have many security features baked in, effectively replacing standalone security appli - ances, firewalls, VPNs and more ad - vanced security functionality. “Security continues to be the num - ber one concern that IT decision mak - ers have when considering migration to SD-WAN,” said Ray Watson, vice president of innovation at Masergy. “This ultimately favors solutions which tightly integrate and support unified threat management as well as man - aged detection and response.” Much the same can be said about corporate edge routers, as well as WI- FI access capabilities. Network products and technologies users are looking to displace through the adoption of SD-WAN include rout - ers (55 percent), standalone firewalls (47 percent) and WAN optimization tools (23 percent), show Avant sur - veys. About one in 10 surveyed even listed either replacing firewalls or rout - ers as a reason for looking at SD-WAN in the first place. Up to this point, it seems pretty clear that SD-WAN networking tech - nology’s greatest disruption has come in the mid-market and lower end of the large enterprise spaces. Avant execu - tives, however, believe SD-WAN will continue to encroach into the core networks of higher end enterprises through their remote offices and other edges of their networks. o Source: Avant Communications 20 CHANNEL VISION | March - April, 2020