Today’s businesses rely more than ever on business internet services. Over the past decade, network services have become increasingly complex and often much more challenging to manage. As enterprises continue to add new services and platforms to their networks, the traditional wide area networks (WANs) are not able to meet the challenges of today’s demanding business environment. Luckily, the virtualization technologies offer an ideal solution to this problem.

What is conventional traditional WAN? 

The purpose of WAN is to connect various business locations of the same organization to its critical applications and data. A traditional WAN typically consisted of a head office, branch offices, and private data centres. Dedicated MPLS circuits help in keeping connections secure and reliable by routing all traffic to a centralized data centre hub.

While this technology was sufficient in an earlier era of connectivity, now, it presents some challenges to modern businesses. Organizations today don’t host all their data and applications in private data centres. Some of these assets may be stored on servers in co-located data centres managed by third parties or hosted on any number of cloud computing platforms. In fact, any average organization uses 5 different cloud services, which can make your WAN very complex.

Traditional WAN was not designed to scale fast enough to meet the changing needs of today’s business requirements. While it is possible to connect a wide variety of locations and services to a WAN, the network architecture is difficult to manage, and traffic is routed through the system inefficiently, creating significant performance issues. Cloud-based applications also significantly increase overall network traffic, thus posing many additional security concerns.

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What is SD-WAN?

Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) is a virtualized WAN connection that acts as an overlay and includes all existing network connections. SD-WAN simplifies the management of the network by using intelligent routing to send data packets in the most efficient and secure way. Whereas traditional WANs require all data to follow a strictly defined path, moreover SD-WAN is more result-oriented. SD-WAN optimize routing paths according to business priorities and bandwidth requirements, enabling organizations to dynamically manage traffic to ensure high levels of SD-WAN security and performance.

The benefits of SD-WAN technology allow organizations to control all network traffic from a single and easily accessible dashboard. As a virtualized solution, SD-WAN does not require expensive investments in new infrastructure. Organizations can maintain their existing MPLS-based WAN structures and use SD-WAN to manage and scale them more efficiently.

SD-WAN systems not only provide users with a superior application experience (because dynamically routed application traffic improves uptime speed and reliability), but they also significantly optimize cloud platform workflows. In addition to this, SD-WAN security and access policies can be set once and enforced across the entire network for greater visibility and security control. This becomes even more important as organizations begin to integrate more of Internet of Things (IoT) devices at the edge of their networks.

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What is Managed SD-WAN Service?

There is no doubt that SD-WAN services can offer significant advantages in terms of speed, control, and convenience, but it requires a lot of expertise to set up and manage. A typical company often needs to consolidate its headquarters, multiple branch offices, data centres (both private and outsourced), and multiple cloud computing services into a single SD-WAN architecture. There are many configuration and SD-WAN security controls to consider, not to mention the need to troubleshoot any issues that arise along the way is also required.

For many organizations, the quickest and most effective way to get SD-WAN up and running is to work with a managed service provider specializing in setting up and managing SD-WAN architectures. Building and training an entire team of network engineers to implement a new virtualized network system can be time-consuming and costly too. However, the SD-WAN managed services provider can quickly join in and start transforming enterprise networks rapidly with minimal disruption. And once the initial set-up work is complete, the same team (SD-WAN managed services provider’s team) can handle all aspects of management and improvement.

One of the primary benefits of outsourcing this service is that it frees up your in-house IT team to focus on higher-value tasks such as the development of innovative new services to support further growth of the company. In today’s technology-driven service economy, qualified IT professionals provide a crucial competitive advantage. By collaborating or partnering with a managed SD-WAN service provider, organizations can free up the resources they need to make their technology teams more productive by creating new software, technology, platform, or even applications. 

Choose the Right Managed SD-WAN Service Provider Based On Your Need

SD-WAN is a relatively new technology solution, so it’s important to carefully research potential vendors before choosing a partner. Not all vendors offer the same level of service and expertise. And if you don’t have a cybersecurity background, you might miss potential SD-WAN security gaps that lead to costly data breaches.

Spectra’s team has extensive networking, and security experience and a strong commitment to providing quality managed services. We offer a customizable SD-WAN managed service that fully manages your SD-WAN or uses a co-managed solution that keeps your team constantly up to date. Unlike many vendors who direct customers to call centres when they need support, our SD-WAN service support team gets in touch with you quickly, assigns top-notch engineers, and puts the expert resources you need at your fingertips. Contact our team today to share your SD-WAN managed service needs. Start building and managing secure, flexible networks that transform your business.

There are many reasons for adopting managed SD-WAN, like, staffing, geography, flexibility, speed, agility, efficiency, centralized management, and better security. With an SD-WAN overlay, an organization can reduce MPLS costs and optimize their WAN traffic application by enabling branch offices to connect directly to cloud services, improving user experience and streamlining business processes to be more efficient.