SD-WAN Solutions in 2021: Your Unfiltered Guide

Picture this: You're video conferencing with a potential client to pitch your business to them. They have the potential to become your biggest client, but you know they're not sold quite yet. You're doing the best you can to impress them - you even wore a tie today! They ask you a question and the video freezes due to your spotty internet connection. So, you ask them to repeat it and it happens again. You ask them to repeat it again and you can tell they're getting annoyed. Your network connectivity might be costing you your best client.

Wouldn't it be nice if network connectivity was always at its peak and we were never met with garbled voice and video? The reality is, we just aren't there yet, but SD-WAN can help us get close.

What is SD-WAN?

SD-WAN (Software Defined Wide Area Network) can be described as a solution that provides a simpler, smarter, more resilient WAN. It consists of an onsite device, a (typically) hosted orchestrator, and optionally hosted gateways or points of presence. From a physical standpoint, a device will sit at each location within a company's WAN. This device will connect to the (ideally) two circuits at each site. SD-WAN can also be deployed as a virtual machine onto existing infrastructure, or in a public cloud environment like AWS, Azure, or GCP.

What does SD-WAN really do?

We've identified a few key functions of SD-WAN that will help explain exactly what it does for a company:

It's Application Aware, which means it knows which traffic is mission-critical and it can prioritize those applications over general Internet browsing, or anything else that's non-critical. No more yelling at your kids to get off Netflix so you can take a work Zoom call!
It allows for Dynamic Path Selection, meaning the SD-WAN devices are smart enough to measure the packet loss, jitter, and latency on each circuit, and then assign the appropriate traffic to each link, based on priority.
It's Transport Agnostic, so any kind of connectivity will work with SD-WAN including MPLS, broadband, DIA, LTE, etc.
It allows for Greater Visibility into the Network with a user interface that shows which circuits are up, which circuits are down, and the overall health of the network. Policy changes can also be made from this interface.

The features listed above are a few of the technical benefits a company would see with SD-WAN. Physically, this technology can also help reduce the number of devices on premises. SD-WAN can replace routers, firewalls, and other network devices such as WAN Optimization.

Most SD-WAN solutions also include at least a basic or stateful firewall. Some even include a firewall with next-generation functionality like intrusion detection & prevention, content filtering, and more. Beyond that, the term SASE comes in. SASE stands for Secure Access Service Edge. To simplify it, SASE is the convergence of SD-WAN and Security.

Current and Predicted SD-WAN Market Success

Avant Communications, a research powerhouse, produced a report on the current and predicted SD-WAN market in the next 6-12 months. Avant polled 300 US-based enterprise decision-makers and found that SD-WAN is disrupting the market even more than UCaaS, CCaaS, IaaS, and others.

Likewise, Gartner stated, "By 2024, more than 60% of enterprises will have implemented SD-WAN, compared to 30% in 2020," in their WAN Edge Infrastructure Magic Quadrant in 2020.

It's evident that SD-WAN is growing, and a larger percentage of enterprises are deploying SD-WAN, but what's changing within the market?

We're seeing two major changes: the move to cloud-based applications and higher concern for security.

While companies are migrating more and more of their applications to the cloud, that changes what kind of SD-WAN platforms they should be looking at. I'll go into this in more depth in the decision-making process section below. There are certain types of architectures that work better for companies with heavy cloud adoption and we're seeing those technologies flourish right now.

Like I mentioned above, security is more relevant now than ever before. SASE is addressing this concern by merging the network efficiency of SD-WAN with the security of a next-generation firewall, CASB, remote user VPN, and more. With more employees working from home and a new security breach every day, we believe SASE is going to be the next wave of SD-WAN. Soon, it will be the standard.

Problems with Legacy Networks + How SD-WAN Solves Them

One of the biggest problems we come across with legacy networks is the centralization of resources and internet access points. This hub-and-spoke configuration leads to frustrating latency. For someone at a branch site to access an application on the internet, they have to hairpin back to the data center. Since cloud applications are increasing in utilization, that backhaul effect leads to increased latency and decreased application performance. With SD-WAN, users can access applications and the internet directly from the edge, due to application awareness and built-in security functionality.

The next issue we see with traditional networks is management. Legacy routers have historically been manually configured using the command line interface. Now, with SD-WAN, changes can be applied for every site within one intuitive user portal that significantly increases visibility within the WAN. This portal also gives reports on network performance, something the administrator would have had to call or email a carrier to get before SD-WAN. Essentially, SD-WAN allows a company to focus on business policies for applications, instead of network protocols.

Legacy networks are typically configured to failover to a backup circuit in the event the primary circuit went down. However, that wouldn't happen until the primary circuit went completely down (i.e. a blackout). If the network is performing poorly (i.e. a brownout), perhaps due to increased jitter or latency, that primary circuit would still be used and the backup circuit (which might be doing fine) would lie dormant. Now, with SD-WAN, we can utilize the bandwidth of both circuits and send traffic down whichever link is performing better in real-time.

Benefits of SD-WAN

Some of the major benefits of SD-WAN were described above, but there are a few more worth talking about. Depending on a company's current environment, SD-WAN can lead to significant cost savings across the network. This is usually true when we're talking about MLPS vs SD-WAN and replacing MPLS with a dual internet + SD-WAN setup, but there are other scenarios where SD-WAN can have a great ROI.

SD-WAN can also simplify network management for the IT department. Policy changes for network routing, SD-WAN policies, and even firewall policies can be done for every location within a single pane of glass. Not to mention, if we converge the router, firewall, WAN optimization, and other devices into this one SD-WAN device – or converge even more with a SASE solution – that means one interface to work with, one device to troubleshoot, one support contract with a single number to call, and potentially lower cost.

Lastly, and likely most importantly, SD-WAN will increase the performance of both on-premises and cloud-based applications. This is accomplished by the features mentioned above. Application awareness allows for identification and prioritization of mission-critical applications to assure users can always access them, while dynamic path selection makes sure users are connecting to these applications using the best possible connections.

SD-WAN Decision-Making Process

Now that you know what SD-WAN can do for your company, how are you possibly going to be able to choose between the different SD-WAN providers? That's where Opkalla comes in. We will take you through a painless decision-making process that starts with understanding your current environment, uncovering current issues you're having, and determining where you want to be in the future. Then, we'll bring in our team of engineers to make SD-WAN product and provider recommendations based on that information.

Here are a few of the factors that go into those recommendations:

The applications you're using: Some SD-WAN technologies are better for clients that are heavily using cloud-based applications, while others are better for companies that have their own data centers with premise-based applications.
Whether or not you have employees working from home: Certain SD-WAN solutions can provide increased uptime for at-home employees.
What your security posture looks like: We can introduce SD-WAN providers that can replace your current perimeter security and likely increase your security posture. We can also look at SASE providers to make sure your network security is top notch. However, if you have firewalls that you like or recently invested in, you can keep those, and we will bring in an SD-WAN platform that will work well with them.
Where your locations are: If you are a global enterprise, we will want to bring in a provider that specializes in international clients, with deployments, infrastructure, and support to back it. If all your locations are in the US, again, we'll want a provider that has expertise domestically, perhaps without the price tag that an international provider might charge.
Whether or not you want managed SD-WAN services: If your team wants help with managing SD-WAN and connectivity, we have managed SD-WAN service providers that can take that off your plate by opening trouble tickets with carriers, notifying you when something is off, etc.
And more!

SD-Wan Vendors

Once we determine what kind of SD-WAN technology would be a good fit for your company, we start looking at different service providers that offer that technology. Of course, we look at the consumption model that best fits our customers. In general, there are three different service providers that offer SD-WAN:

Standalone Vendors: These are providers that have built their own SD-WAN technology from the ground up. These can oftentimes be sourced standalone and as a self-service solution. (Examples: Cisco SD-WAN, VMware SD-WAN, HPE, etc.)
Carriers: These are your traditional carriers that use the standalone vendors' technology on the backend and layer on their network and managed services. (Examples: Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc.)
MSPs/Aggregators: These are providers that simply source and manage SD-WAN with no commitment to buy network from them. Some of them do have contracts with carriers to be able to aggregate circuits if necessary. (Examples: MetTel, BCN, Granite, etc.)

As you can probably tell, a lot goes into making a decision between SD-WAN providers. We know this space like the back of our hands. We’re here to help you build an audit trail, decision-making matrix, and process that takes into account the SD-WAN technologies, providers, and consumption models that best fit your business. We are here to be your trusted advisor, advocate for you, and bring in the best possible providers to compete for your business.

If you're ready to take the next step, we can discuss your needs and get you quotes at no cost, connect with us and let's talk about IT.

About the Author: Sarah Arnstein is a Cloud Sales Engineer at Avant Communications, where she helps Trusted Advisors, like Opkalla, and IT decision makers determine the best providers for their environment in the SD-WAN, SASE, UCaaS, and CCaaS spaces. She has worked with hundreds of customers to transform their network with SD-WAN and she’s able to bring this knowledge to the forefront of the industry after years of research and training in this area.