Hybrid WAN FEATURED ARTICLE

Life in the digital era is a far cry from just a few years ago. With growing massive adoption of the cloud and the sheer volume of enterprise applications coupled with performance requirements the network is tasked with more than ever – forget about the upcoming onslaught the Internet of Things (IoT) will offer. Having said that, the WAN of yesteryear is not up to the task at hand, and as a result a popular solution is the Hybrid WAN.

A Hybrid WAN is a means in which an enterprise can connect a WAN spanning multiple branch locations by sending traffic across multiple connections to ensure network versatility and agility to support growing network demand. Multiple connections at each branch location allow for the ability to make accessing and leveraging a real time application from a branch office as easy as point and click. Critical applications can benefit from the best performing network connection at all times and can be protected from a degraded user experience.

The value in deploying a Hybrid WAN solution is quite real. Touting reduced WAN costs, simplified and improved management and orchestration, upgraded security and unified visibility for starters. Taking an all-in-one approach, orchestration is a user friendly experience, which promises the balance of cost, security and performance rolled into one.

IT departments are challenged with numerous new mission critical applications during the digital transformation taking place in their business. Typically, with a legacy WAN solution, IT is forced to dramatically increase bandwidth, agility and service availability but an unfortunate common consequence is, put simply, an overwhelmed and costly network. With a Hybrid WAN solution, such as Ipanema from InfoVista (News - Alert), IT can answer the network demand with dynamic orchestration, and optimized application performance, empowering digital transformation.

In terms of use cases, this type of solution will minimize UCC, SaaS (News - Alert) and ERP rollout hurdles. In addition, it improves quality of service (QoS) and SLA compliance, which results in optimized business application performance and an optimized user experience.

When taking part in this digital transformation make sure to do your due diligence to provide the level of performance required in this era of growing network demand. Hybrid WAN is no passing fad, and neither are real time applications. Make sure your network is ready for what’s coming.

What type of WAN are you working with?