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. According to Kentik’s data collection reports, within 24 months, it is expected that 95% of enterprises will have been transformed by moving to SD-WAN from the traditional WAN architecture due to all the above-mentioned key factors. That is why we have seen such a rapid increase in the adoption rate of SD–WAN, which can be seen in its projected sales. According to Gartner’s projections, sales growth of SD–WAN is expected to reach $35 billion by the year 2022.
Cloud technology has managed to amaze the world with the wonders of cloud computing. It has provided end users with advancements including unlimited access to data, applications and services. However, no matter how efficient the cloud architecture is, the performance of the network is prone to bottlenecking, which can effectively reduce the effectiveness of the cloud and hence overall application performance. Furthermore, applications are also being moved to the cloud. Now, enterprises are using multi-cloud solutions comprising both private and public cloud platforms and services. SD–WAN provides support for an enterprise’s ever-growing application requirements with a high-performance solution that delivers high-end cloud connectivity and hence a state-of-the-art user experience.
Software – defined WAN can prove its worth for optimisation of the network by providing intelligent routing techniques capable enough to use multiple paths for accessing remote destinations, for example, the cloud. SD–WAN selects and prioritises paths based on lowest latency rate, bandwidth of the available link and minimalistic packet loss. It connects remote locations of organisations efficiently with the cloud. SD–WAN service providers are now offering an application driven strategy for wide area networking, which directly and securely connects users to cloud services. It highly optimises the user experience with direct cloud access, while lowering the cost. SD–WAN has provided the best performance for cloud computing services like IaaS and SaaS without any compromise on security.
Direct Cloud Access
Organisations around the globe are increasingly embracing cloud-based services. As we know, the future of networking technology lies in the centralised cloud. That is why organisations and enterprises of almost all sizes are rapidly shifting towards cloud technology due to its widespread benefits. Even the future of network security is considered to be in the cloud. SD–WAN has played a vital role in this regard by optimising secure and efficient access to the cloud. It has enabled direct cloud access to the remote branches via which workers are able to access cloud-based applications anywhere in the world regardless of their location. It also does not over burden the central network due to incoming additional traffic. Direct cloud access eliminates backhauling traffic by routing all the traffic through the data centre coming from branch offices and the cloud. Prioritising business-critical applications, it also enhances the performance of cloud-based applications.
When we come to counteract the different types of applications requiring different service levels, it becomes necessary to effectively balance the load. Some applications are latency sensitive, and some might work well without network straining. SD–WAN provides a flexible solution in such cases by enabling different pathways for different applications depending upon their individual requirement. This ensures reliable transfer of data through the prevention of congestion caused by traffic diversion to alternate channels, which causes data loss, drop or blockage.
That is why, in the days of the pandemic, working from home has also become very easy to manage for major companies by enabling branches and home-based personnel to directly communicate with the Internet. It has not only managed to provide remote working capabilities to enterprises but also enabled them to transform their existing infrastructure and networking architecture into a highly scalable solution, which has proven to be organisation-friendly in these unfavorable days of the pandemic.
Multi-Cloud Services
Today, enterprises have almost totally embraced multi-cloud due to its huge flexibility. Many organisations prefer to work with multiple cloud providers for the host of benefits, global coverage and leveraging best of breed solutions. SD–WAN simplifies multi-cloud challenges very effectively. It removes inconsistencies through a uniform policy-defined infrastructure while simplifying management and optimising infrastructure cost. SD–WAN eliminates backhauling traffic by providing direct access to the remote branch. Users working from any remote location can access the cloud applications without affecting the core network due to the removal of additional backhauling traffic by SD–WAN.
SD–WAN for multi-cloud is the new approach to maintain secure and high-quality connections between laaS workloads running on multiple clouds. It automates the network across different cloud networks, reducing complexity and increasing agility to save time. While optimising the application user experience, the SD–WAN solution provides connectivity and security across diverse cloud infrastructures. Now, campus-to-cloud, datacenter-to-cloud and cloud-to-cloud cost effective solutions are securely delivered by SD–WAN
Conclusion
A cloud scaled network is the permanent requirement of a cloud scaled world. In today’s world, which is highly cloud dependent, users need a highly secure and reliable solution for seamless connectivity to the cloud regardless of their location. SD–WAN has proven to be another solution in networking technology to help users, even from far-flung communities, by connecting them to the cloud directly and securely. SD–WAN intelligently optimises all the network routes to any of the endpoints for secure and efficient access. This is how SD–WAN has connected end users with a highly cloud-scaled world, giving them a seamless networking experience. It has also proven to be an easy-to-deploy and highly cost-effective solution for organisations and enterprises around the world.
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