In a nutshell, Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) is a transformational approach that assures optimal application performance and simplifies the branch office networking.
SD-WAN is somehow related to Software-Defined Networking (SDN) based on the principle of abstracting the network hardware from the control appliance. Unlike traditional WANs, SD-WAN increases the network agility and reduces its cost.
Advantages of SD-WAN
Simplify Branch Network: SD-WAN overcomes the latency in access of branch offices with simplified configuration, automated zero-touch deployment, and on-going monitoring using centralized troubleshooting tools. It also simplifies the branch infrastructure and is capable of offering network services at branch edge in both the cloud and the data center at the regional and enterprise level.
Deliver Branch Agility: SD-WAN attains the agility by enabling multiple links, devices, services, and let them interoperate with incumbent solutions. APIs can be integrated into different management and reporting systems that are pretty important for today’s enterprises.
Optimize Application Performance: SD-WAN optimizes the application performance by Internet links with direct, secure access to enterprise, and cloud applications. SD-WAN offers stable monitoring and visibility over different WAN links and service providers.
Reduce Costs: SD-WAN delivers Hybrid WAN with ease and allows branch offices with ordinary broadband like enterprise-grade WAN. The hardware-delivery cost can be reduced by choosing the deployment options such as virtual machine (VM) on an existing x86-based router, VM on a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) device or a purpose-built VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud Edge device.
SD-WAN Features
Hybrid WAN is a feature that enables you to Turbo-boost your Hybrid WAN with SD-WAN. Hybrid WAN offers shared use of both private and Internet circuits at every business location. An SD-WAN exposes the additional efficiencies.
Cloud WAN is just a plug-and-play business-class WAN. SD-WAN by the cloud distributes the WAN architecture for delivering increased branch office agility and app performance.
Branch Office Deployment helps us to connect thousands of sites, effortlessly. SD-WAN provides a centralized seamless branch office connectivity at very reasonable ownership cost.
Green SD-WAN is a cloud-delivered SD-WAN that shrinks your carbon footprint. It uses virtualization techniques and deployment of a few branch office devices to lowers carbon footprints.
MPLS & SD-WAN a reliable new technology that is very popular nowadays. It is a more reliable and secure technology that is used to build a fixed-path VPN over an IP network between data centers and branch offices.
Segmentation & SD-WAN secures data at both ends with policy-driven segmentation. SD-WAN extends network segmentation from remote locations to the data center and cloud to enable business-critical data prioritization.
SD-WAN Deployment
For branch offices interconnection, traditional WAN uses costly links, complicated network architectures and multiple boxes per site. SD-WAN provides a centralized seamless branch office connectivity to any number of network edges interconnected by a virtual network.
Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN figures out the complexity, abundance of boxes, and complicated configurations. An SD-WAN allows you to establish the business, security policies, application access, and resolve the problem of the worker and the application location regardless of physical devices or networks that are connecting them at the moment of access. The SD-WAN transport the traffic directly between source and destination, independent of location (mobile-worker or remote office, to SaaS server) to provide the appropriate end-user experience where the traffic is prioritized and bandwidth is allocated.
Conclusion
By deploying an SD-WAN solution, you can control costs, enhance your business agility, and accelerate your cloud initiatives with confidence. But when it comes to choosing a network environment, you need to be very conscious about your network security, it must be secure. Forcepoint Secure Enterprise SD-WAN helps you to extend your network from your data centers to your remote branch offices and into the cloud, safely and efficiently. It also grants you seamless control access over web content and you can decrypt traffic while safeguarding privacy. Forcepoint Secure Enterprise SD-WAN enables such distributed enterprises that are looking forward to enhancing their performance and scalability without compromising their security to connect their people to the data and applications they need simpler than ever before with protection.