As we start a new decade, we should reflect a little on the last. Giant leaps in technology have resulted in the shrinking of the ‘on-prem’ footprint. Businesses have taken decisions to transition to cloud-based services and embrace new technologies. Some are still in their infancy, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Predictive Analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) However these technologies are driving global digital transformation and growth in these technologies will be exponential as we press on through the next decade. There is a problem though: The Network delivering these services has stayed pretty much stagnant in the last decade with MPLS still dominating the backbones of the FTSE 100 & 250 lists of companies. To take advantage of these technologies, you need a cloud-ready network that’s agile, flexible and performs to what businesses are asking for in delivering the control, reliability and stability they demand. Welcome to SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide-Area Network).
SD-WAN Benefits
The SD-WAN market is vast in both terms of vendors and technology solutions. It can become a bit of a minefield to navigate as you will see some vendors lean more towards hybrid security-driven solutions, while some more around control and prioritisation, application acceleration and application-centric overlays. It is essential that you know and fully understand, your business requirements, strategic vision, existing architecture deployment and usage as transitioning to SD-WAN is not just a simple quick-fix on top of existing ‘not-fit-for-purpose’ infrastructure. There is an opportunity to get the future strategic roadmap right which allows you to build for long-term business objectives of introducing new and predictive technology developments thus future-proofing your infrastructure for the agile world of fast-changing initiatives and market-driven strategies.
Your business will only experience the benefits of SD-WAN if the companies’ objectives are in alignment, hence the need for a strategic roadmap. Design and deploy with precision to enable control, ease of change and operation, so the introduction of new/future technologies and applications is rapid business-as-usual deployment. One of the many gems of transitioning to SD-WAN is the greater insight and control you have over the delivery of your services. Having the ability to build-out application-centric overlays, prioritisation of specific applications at the push of a button, and real-time insight of the end-to-end performance through every hop of the delivery path is something that has been lacking with legacy network infrastructures. Total visibility is paramount in achieving ‘Smooth-Runnings.’
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Intergence has long-standing business collaboration with leading SD-WAN vendors and with our knowledge of designing and implementing SD-WAN solutions for our customers, are the perfect example of how the combination of experts from differing fields of technology can cater for our customers’ digital transformation needs. We provide our customers with the best foundation for success in the digital age. Agile businesses require an agile SD-WAN digital-ready-infrastructure, which is where we bring all our experience to bear.