The Journey Towards SD-WAN

Today’s network has evolved over the years. Modern networks use software defined technologies to enhance service delivery, build in consistency, and lower costs. We’ve seen this happen in large part in the data center. While the data center is one area of networking where we incur a high cost, especially during initial deployments, the WAN is quite possibly an even better area to address these issues.

The Long And Winding Road

It’s amazing that today’s “modern WAN” got its start with ARPANET back in 1969. Commercialization began in the 70s and from the mid 80’s on many large organizations deployed TDM-based WANs. We’ve seen Frame-relay, ATM, and the emergence of MPLS. Each technology that was introduced was primarily driven with the goal of lowering costs, and they did. We’ve also seen VPN-based WAN connectivity over the Internet increase the flexibility of WAN. However, VNP comes with a new set of concerns, especially around security. Where private WANs involve the concern of cost, and latency, the internet WAN comes with the concern of Security and Uptime.

Trade-offs have been made and many organizations have attempted to use solutions such as policy-based routing (PBR). Internet traffic can be taken off the expensive MPLS networks and sure, you have control. But this control comes at the expense of a very complex configuration.

Transformation To The Software-Defined Wan

A transformation to a software-defined WAN can address the above mentioned concerns and many more. Brown-outs, latency issues, outages, performance issues, security, underutilization of expensive WAN links, and Mean-time-to-innocence are all addressed by a deployment of SD-WAN, and Viptela has done it the right way.

To Be(Lieve) Or Not To Be(Lieve), That Is The Question!

We’ve seen a number of presentations from SD-WAN vendors and they all look great on an overhead. It’s easy for a vendor to define the problem, and claim to solve it in a slide deck. Experience with Viptela proves that they don’t just claim to solve the problem, they actually do it. Customers such as Gap Inc, who overhauled 860-sites with SD-WAN over Internet provide the proof that Viptela has what it takes. I have yet to see a customer that is disappointed with a vendor solution spend so much time lauding the solution in public forum. Gap Inc has spoken out on many occasions about the solution and their experience with it.

Additionally, a comparison of Viptelas solution against Cisco’s IWAN exposes the fact that a Viptela solution is relatively simple and streamlined whereas the Cisco solution is complex and more difficult to deploy. In my opinion this is a huge area to consider. Should my deployment be something that is so complex that I need to bring in vendor engineers to deploy and tune or do I prefer a solution that’s much easier to deploy without a large learning curve? Today’s networks are getting away from complexity and lean much more to the side of Automated GUI-based simple deployments.

This Stuff Is Important!

The WAN is such an part of the network that IT organizations can’t afford to remain comfortable with existing solutions. Latency, jitter, and packet loss associated with the WAN causes application and performance issues. The WAN is often overlooked from a security perspective and can become a vector for attack. Price versus performance in a WAN don’t make sense in todays environments, not to mention that having sites go offline because a service provider is having an issue can certainly have a huge impact on an organization. The WAN needs to be done differently.

Take A Hard Look At The Viptela Solution

Viptela has a outstanding track record in this emerging market. It pays to take a hard look at what Viptela can do for you. Viptela aims to meet desired WAN outcomes by decreasing complexity. They’ve considered reliability, scalability, cost. They’ve also pioneered new ideas around the adoption of cloud architecture, service insertion, and security. You can add the Viptela solution to your network right now and get immediate results. A simple proof of concept is where you should begin. While this area of networking is still in the early stages, Viptela has done much to bring a mature offering to the table that addresses customer concerns and provides real world results and happy users.