FINAL WORD
providers and keeping the network up and
running 24x7.
For most businesses, this option isn’t
suitable. Instead, they benefit from adopting
a managed service with an experienced
partner who can help seamlessly integrate
the new SD-WAN service with their
existing infrastructure and provide support
throughout the service lifecycle.
Working with a managed service provider
means that firms don’t need to invest the
considerable time, money and effort to
source and retain the required niche skills
for managing the SD-WAN, nor build up
an internal organisation to offers of 24/7
support for the network. By adopting this
model, they would also benefit from the cost
efficiencies of a large provider network, who
also leverage existing relationships with
third-party access providers to ensure that
their customer receives the best possible
service, end-to-end.
Overall, choosing a managed service
ensures fast deployment, network
performance guarantees and assurance that
the business-critical application requirements
of the company are met by the right access
options on the underlying network.
Once the type of service is decided, the
next step is to identify what features and
capabilities are most critical to meet the
requirements of the business. Does the
business rely upon multiple cloud-based
SaaS and IaaS applications from different
cloud service providers? If so, look for
a service that offers support for multicloud
and cloud-to-cloud connectivity. Is it
key to future-proof the organisation and
fully enable all the network functions to
be delivered as an application, remotely
and rapidly? Consider a service that is
offered over self-install universal Customer
Premise Equipment (uCPE), over which
new virtualised functions can be added
and deployed rapidly without the need
for technician site visits. Other important
factors to consider are availability of
security features like next-generation
firewall and encryption, a centralised
management portal, network performance
reporting and analytics features and
availability of load balancing to reduce
network congestion.
Setting up and using your SD-WAN
After the service has been chosen, the
focus should shift to understanding the
organisation’s structure and day-to-day
network usage and how to apply SD-WAN
features to optimise performance. For
managed services, the supplier can provide
support in configuring the service to
address the organisation’s requirements and
patterns of application use, network failover
and failback settings or behavioural actions
to take place.
Equally important to setting up the
SD-WAN service with the most appropriate
configuration is continually reassess
the service throughout its lifecycle to
dynamically respond to the constant
changes in bandwidth requirements,
application usage and user experience. It
is therefore critical to take advantage of
the reporting and analytics capabilities
available on the chosen SD-WAN platform
to actively monitor performance and
respond as required.
By understanding that the network
requirements and user behaviours of
an organisation are constantly evolving
and dynamically applying the extensive
capabilities and features of the
managed SD-WAN service to react to
these changes, firms can power their
Digital Transformation to their
full potential. •
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