devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Author: Christian Gilby

  • The Biggest Motivators and Barriers for SD-WAN Adoption in 2021

    The Biggest Motivators and Barriers for SD-WAN Adoption in 2021

    The SD-WAN market has exploded in 2020, driven by the need to support increasingly remote workforces, the emergence of the AI-driven WAN and the requirement to deliver branch performance that matches campus networks. As enterprises look at the year ahead, support for the distributed workforce remains a top priority, and SD-WAN is a crucial technology that businesses need to invest in to thrive in the “new normal.”

    As we head into 2021, these are the biggest motivators for the enterprise to adopt SD-WAN:

    • Increased demand for robust video quality: The days of in-person conferences and meetings have been traded with back-to-back Zoom calls. Though lags and connectivity issues are understandable, they can be frustrating and ultimately lead to decreased productivity. Experiencing these issues has increased the demand for more robust and higher bandwidth network connectivity, which is critical for video communications. This increasing demand is expected to continue to rise—although some businesses are planning to return to the office, many are adopting a hybrid work model that will require at last part-time remote work.
    • Boosting bandwidth without breaking the bank: Outside of video calls, the surge in remote work has increased pressure on overall network bandwidth. The solution for organizations is, of course, to add more bandwidth, but doing so can be expensive. SD-WAN is an attractive option for increased bandwidth pressure because it’s a solution that can meet bandwidth pressure demands while remaining cost-effective.
    • Centrally operated networks needed for distributed sites: Once enterprise video quality and bandwidth needs are fulfilled, the next step is to ensure that IT teams have the resources they need to effectively operate remote networks and deliver a great user experience from client to cloud. SD-WAN is a useful IT tool for network management because it provides full visibility into what’s happening across the network. And with the recent emergence of AI-driven WAN solutions, IT teams have more tools than ever before to get insight into user experience, enabling them to proactively and remotely resolve issues.

    Despite the many benefits of SD-WAN, there are still a number of barriers that are keeping enterprises from adopting this technology, including:

    • Concerns about quality of service (QoS) for applications across WAN: With SD-WAN solutions shifting traffic away from dedicated private circuits towards the public internet to reduce cost, businesses are often concerned about their ability to assure QoS for their critical applications. These businesses should look for solutions that provide insights into the experience from client to cloud as well as leverage data science and AI to detect anomalies. They should also automate the root cause determination and resolution through self-driving or IT actions.
    • Lack of insight into user experience: Many SD-WAN solutions lack the insight into both user and app experience from wireless to wired to WAN, whether due to the use of link-based VPN connections rather than session-based protection and/or the lack of rich streaming telemetry from the network devices to a modern cloud-based AI system. New AI-driven solutions and session-based technologies are now available that can improve this insight to simplify network operations and assure great user experiences from client to cloud.
    • Securing remote sites from potential security threats: By further extending the threat surfaces with a more distributed workforce, many organizations are concerned about the potential security threats that a distributed network could introduce. To mitigate this, it is critical to look for solutions that embrace a connected security paradigm that delivers insight into threats across the network while automating mitigation and enforcing security policies at the edge.
    • Limited technical skills and knowledge: A common perceived barrier to SD-WAN adoption is the concern that there is a significant learning curve for the technology and not enough existing skills to plan and manage it. This is a valid concern, though there are solutions. First, some SD-WAN providers offer managed services and can oversee deployment for customers through an outsourced or hybrid IT model. Second, organizations can invest in closing the skills gap via training. Though the latter option can be more time-consuming, investing in employees to learn the skills can help enterprises save money in the long run and move the industry forward by up-leveling important technical skills that are increasing in demand.

    Though there are notable barriers to SD-WAN adoption, there are also solutions for each one. If enterprises can overcome these barriers, implementing SD-WAN has the potential to improve scale, bring agility, unify policy and boost security efficacy through a collapsed and integrated AI-driven network. Deploying SD-WAN can be a significant investment for companies, but in the long run, the technology is an important step in moving enterprises into the next generation of networking.

  • How SD-WAN Is Driving Business Continuity in a COVID World

    How SD-WAN Is Driving Business Continuity in a COVID World

    The coronavirus outbreak has thrown the economy into flux, creating changes to entire industries that would have been unpredictable a few months ago. While demand for travel has decreased dramatically, other businesses such as grocery chains, financial services and retailers are under immense pressure to serve customers in new ways. Enterprises with thousands of employees have been forced to work from home on a moment’s notice. For the IT departments powering these industries, SD-WAN will be key in increasing visibility for newly remote companies, ensuring company data is heavily guarded and managing demand for products.

    As stay at home orders made their way across the U.S., companies with thousands of employees had to immediately start working from home, many for the first time. In other words, companies were forced to navigate a completely remote workforce with little opportunity to put the infrastructure and tools in place to support its employees. Without adequate time to prepare for a smooth transition, a number of issues arose, such as realizing that IT departments didn’t have insight into the user experience of business applications for their employees’ home networks. As a result, they were unable to monitor performance and usage patterns to anticipate potential issues for employees. IT workers were unable to remotely troubleshoot and fix networking issues, increasing pain points across teams and decreasing overall productivity.

    SD-WAN Becomes IT’s Saving Grace

    This is where an AI-Driven SD-WAN can play a major role in managing remote enterprise networks to deliver better experiences and ultimately boost productivity. By providing full visibility into what’s happening across the network, AI-driven SD-WAN solutions can ease the burden of a remote workforce by proactivity responding to real-time issues. The sources of problems across the network can be vast. Intelligent SD-WAN systems not only find the root causes of problems, but also provide solutions. This can save IT departments significant time and effort in troubleshooting an issue, improving the remote IT operational experience as well as the employee work from home experience. 

    Doubling Down on Secure SD-WAN

    Security is another network concern that comes into play when employees work from home. There is an overwhelming amount of confidential data flowing across each network, and in this new environment, enterprises must take extra precautions to ensure data is heavily protected. As employees move out of the office, they’re relying more on home and public networks, moving sensitive corporate data to insecure spaces. 

    IT teams are increasingly relying on SD-WAN to help improve network security by encrypting traffic and segmenting the network to minimize damage if breaches do occur. Secure SD-WAN incorporates security solutions including firewall, anti-spam and web filtering. These solutions work together to prevent remote employees from accidentally leaking data or causing network security disruptions that can affect the rest of the workforce. SD-WAN is critical in improving a company’s overall security posture. By implementing a secure SD-WAN solution, companies can have more peace of mind, and employees can focus on their task at hand.

    The Role of SD-WAN in Evolving Supply Chains

    As employees spend more time working and living at home, their new consumer behaviors are quickly changing overall demand and forcing supply chains to evolve accordingly. Companies have scrambled to get a handle on their supply chains, and SD-WAN has become a key component in managing the demand for products; by shifting to the cloud and integrating SD-WAN into product inventory, companies can have access to cloud resources to power their inventory systems. For example, by integrating SD-WAN into grocery store chains, individual stores have been able to communicate with each other and support constantly changing customer needs. An increased demand for yeast at one store can be balanced by a decrease in demand in another. Enterprises can use the inventory system to allocate their products accordingly and record patterns to provide restocking guidance that is up to date as consumer behaviors continue to evolve.

    The Bottom Line

    Ease of management, security and visibility are the key pillars to ensure business continuity for enterprises in a COVID world, and by doubling down on SD-WAN, organizations can benefit from all three.

    SD-WAN is quickly becoming the unsung hero in this shift to remote work by giving organizations the network visibility IT managers require as well as extra security precautions that are more critical than ever. And as businesses and our ways of working continue to evolve with the times, SD-WAN will enable employees across organizational networks to communicate safely and securely.