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The cloud is increasingly becoming a popular option for businesses of all sizes. Cloud-based solutions offer many advantages over traditional on-premises solutions, including scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. One type of cloud-based solution that is gaining popularity among businesses is a cloud-based phone system. A cloud-based phone system is a telephone service that is delivered via the internet, rather than through traditional phone lines. A cloud-based phone system is different from a traditional phone system in that it does not require any physical hardware or equipment on-site.

SD-WAN is quickly becoming a popular choice for businesses looking to optimize traffic and improve performance for cloud applications. However, what many people don’t realize is that SD-WAN can also help reduce the risk for cloud deployments. SD-WAN technology is growing in popularity as a way to reduce the complexity and risk of using cloud services. But what specifically does SD-WAN do to reduce cloud risk? In this article, we'll take a look at how SD-WAN works and how it can help to take advantage of the cloud while keeping the data safe.

Cloud-based phone systems are becoming more and more popular due to their many advantages over traditional on-premises PBX systems. Cloud-based phone systems are highly scalable, flexible and offer a wide range of features at a much lower cost than traditional phone systems. In addition, cloud-based phone systems offer a host of features that are simply not available with on-premises PBX systems. Moreover, a cloud-based phone system is able to grow with the business and can easily be adapted to changes in accordance with enterprise needs. However, here are some reasons why one should choose to consider a cloud-based phone system for a business.

The year 2020 has witnessed major upheavals around the globe including floods and forest fires due to climate change and spread of viruses. It has forced many organizations to organize work from home practices for employees to make sure smoother running of their businesses. As COVID-19 still dominates working life today. Office staff from around the world have settled into their working from home setups. At such a divergent point, effective communication between office employees and managing bodies becomes of crucial importance. Team managers require strong communication medium to stay in contact with their teams. That is the reason, it has given rise to a record increase in video conferencing over these years of pandemic. Many global businesses are forced to adopt the traditional face to face practices of video conferencing.

With an increase in cyber-crimes across the globe, cyber threats are becoming disastrous for vulnerable victim organisations. Whether these are phishers, scammers, viruses or even bots, they can be very dangerous to corporate data. During the days of the pandemic, corporate data had become more vulnerable to cyber attacks with orders to work from home. Hackers across the world are exploiting remote working networks during these unfavorable times, taking advantage of very minor human errors and weak network security layers.

Software defined – wide area networking (SD–WAN) is among the most dominant network technologies that enterprises are rapidly adopting. Due to its quality of services, enhanced cloud application performance, minimal architectural complexity, simple  adoption and reduced cost, it is becoming popular and rapidly transforming the network technologies. Across the IT ecosystem, tons of organisations and enterprises are rapidly shifting towards the software defined – wide area networking (SD–WAN) solution because of its provision of efficient, agile and integrated application connections resulting in a faster, better and frictionless network, which is the  priority of IT specialists and network managers across the globe.

SD-WAN is rapidly capturing the market of MPLS, which was dominating for decades. But both technologies have their limitations as well as their advantages. Though infant SD-WAN seems reliant on MPLS in some major fields, this reliance is not unavoidable. SD-WAN can still altogether bypass MPLS. But it should not be recommended. A perfect hybrid of SD-WAN and MPLS can benefit business organizations in terms of cost-saving, increased security, reduced packet loss, reduced latency, and performance enhancement.

Versa Networks and VMware are two major companies providing SD–WAN solutions. Along with other market giants, these are also in competition with each other by offering state-of-the-art capabilities to their customers. As we know,  each business has its own requirements oriented around its customers’ needs. Here, we are going to take a technical overview of the SD–WAN solutions that these companies are providing to analyse their usability for a variety of enterprises.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems are common telephony technologies for multimedia sessions and voice communication over sophisticated networks of Internet Protocol (IP), for example over Internet. These VoIP phone systems are becoming a common sight of communication protocols in enterprises. In comparison to its conventional counterpart, PSTN, Voice over IP is capable to offer many advantages. For businesses, it offers a highly verstile breadth of servives and features, highly quality audio communication, easy-to-manage services, and reduced cost for distant calls.

Wide area networking (WAN) is a traditional networking solution based on multi-protocol label switching (MPLS). In such solutions, the reliability of the connection depends upon pre-defined communicating nodes. But these high-performance networking links between the two sites face limited bandwidths along with some other physical constrains. Hardware defined pre-setup in WAN is the major reason to shift towards a software defined – wide area networking (SD–WAN) solution.

Organisations across the globe are rapidly adopting new technologies to meet customer demand during increasing market competition. It is necessary for their survival to keep pace with emerging trends in the market. Fluctuating customer demands, the introduction of new trends to the market and advancements in the technological sphere always cause big changes in the market.

Organisations across the globe are rapidly adopting new technologies to meet customer demand during increasing market competition. It is necessary for their survival to keep pace with emerging trends in the market. Fluctuating customer demands, the introduction of new trends to the market and advancements in the technological sphere always cause big changes in the market.

PBX is a business telephone system generally used to describe multiple call management features like outbound and inbound lines, voicemails, and call routings etc. It generally stands for Private Branch eXchange. PBX is based on a hardware system which is required to handle the call routings and call switching between a specified business location and adjacent telephonic network. It can be very easily understood by a simplified analogy of switchboard operator used for switching and routing. The name, Public Branch eXchange has originated from its functional operation, the way it interacts with PSTN networks. While the term 'Private' separates it out from PSTN that it is different from Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), regardless of the fact that it can also be connected to it.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, we are living in the middle of a chaotic situation. As the situation is highly ambitious and even unknown, that is the reason many organizations and businesses are moving towards remote working solutions for continuing operation of their companies. Those who have adopted the remote working solution, are able to continue their business operations as usual. Although not in the same way as before the pandemic, but successful enough to maintain the continuity of their business processes. Due to continuous adoption of remote working solution among the companies, competition is again picking the pace and organizations are trying best to adopt best remote working practices to lead their market share. That is why, it is highly necessary for businesses of all sizes to learn and adopt remote working solutions to pursue their business activities in a productive way.

According to updated reports of the Dell’Oro Group, there are five top SD–WAN vendors who are running toe-to-toe for supremacy in the SD–WAN market share. The year 2019 was seen as a breakout year for the adoption of SD–WAN when it surpassed a $1 billion market share. According to already mentioned reports, Cisco, Versa Network, VMware, Silver Peak and Fortinet are holding high ranking positions, as these top SD–WAN market leaders accounted for a 60% accumulated share in the generated revenue in 2019. But none of them surpassed a 20% share of the market, which shows a high potential for competition among the market giants for dominance. That is why these are still early days for penetration into the market.

An encrypted connection between two or more computers is called a virtual private network, commonly known as a VPN. These VPN connections are subjected to public networks, but exchange of data is private because of encryption. It becomes possible to share and securely access confidential data over public networks using VPNs. For example, corporate employees often use VPNs when they work from home or work remotely to access and share corporate files and applications securely.

According to 2016’s State of the WAN report, traditional WAN exhibits performance limitations such as latency issues and packet loss at a higher level. In this report, two of the factors among the top five were related to network performance, which is of crucial importance. This is the major reason behind fundamental shift from WAN to SD–WAN.  As we move toward SD-WAN solutions, it is necessary to understand how various aspects of SD-WAN can provide discrete solutions to improve performance of the network.

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a combinational network architecture of SD–WAN and Remote Access VPN that combines the capabilities of both and delivers them as a service. It combines functionalities and capabilities of SD–WAN and VPN with cloud native security functions, for example, firewalls, secure web gateways, zero trust network access and cloud access security brokers. SASE vendors offer these cloud-delivered functions as a service.