SD-WAN FEATURED ARTICLE

Paving the Way for SD-WAN - Identifying What You Need to Know

September 14, 2016

By Susan J. Campbell, SD-WAN Contributing Editor

When was the last time you made a purchase, sight unseen? For many of us, the answer is pretty recently as we tend to make a number of purchases online. Yes, we have an idea of what we’re buying and we anticipate that what arrives will meet our expectations. But the cost and impact of the purchase can greatly affect the steps we take before closing the deal.




The same is true when it comes to the technology we need to power our businesses. Depending on what problem we’re trying to solve, we either collect the information and try to make the best informed decision, or we trust the experts on our team to get the job done. When it comes to the SD-WAN, it’s not a simple process to make the right selection. This architecture is meant to ensure efficiency and help you drive processes. Therefore, it has to be the right one.

Fortunately, you don’t have to jump into the abyss and hope for the best. While you likely are trusting your IT leaders to guide this process, it helps to understand the decisions they are making and why. There are a number of features that may be selected in the SD-WAN or a hybrid WAN solution. It’s essential that you understand how to buy and build the SD-WAN architecture, learn about key features and know the difference between the “nice to haves” and the “must haves” before talking with vendors or making a selection.

To help in the process, Tech Target (News - Alert) is offering a comprehensive “what to know before you buy” guide to your SD-WAN architecture. This guide is a value, even if you’ve built wide area networks in the past. If you consider that traditional approaches to the network were centered on hardware and specific interfaces were dictated by the ISDN, frame relay, MPLS services and T1/E1, not to mention the physical devices on-premise, the resulting network was slow and cumbersome.

Today, you have access to the SD-WAN, or software-defined architecture. Vendors will promise you that all of your legacy technology can easily be swept away. But first, you need to understand what you need and why. You have the opportunity to leverage low-cost, high-speed Internet services and combining those services with an intelligent, cloud-based infrastructure that allows your corporate office and branch offices to link together efficiently. It’s the optimal outcome, but you have to know the steps to get there.

If you’re ready to replace a latent-heavy architecture with one that will leverage the benefits of the cloud. To learn more about the questions you need to ask and how to start the process, check out this SD-WAN resource center for more information. 




Edited by Maurice Nagle

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