Five reasons why SD-WAN makes the life of network administrators better

Oh Dae-su, the protagonist of 2003 Korean Film ‘Oldboy’, offers viewers a bitter reflection: “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone”. This particular piece of popular culture resonates interestingly with how the job of a network administrator actually looks like: when everything works just fine, nobody bothers about it. But when things go south with the network, all hell breaks loose and you suddenly find yourself in the eye of the storm of tickets and complaints.

That has never been more evident than it is today, in the era of Infinite Enterprise and digital transformation across many areas, but most importantly cloud, IoT and networks. While diverse network connectivity is of the essence, problems with performance, flexibility, and growing security concerns around remote working persist.

But just as every cloud has a silver lining, network administrators can turn to SD-WAN technology to address many of their connectivity and cloud challenges. And here are five reasons why!

Even before pandemic, network admins were under constant pressure to balance a myriad of on-site and remote workers, clouds and data centers, legacy business applications and “rogue” mobile apps. And since COVID only accelerated the migration to a mobile, remote workforce, there’s only so much you can do.

To address the challenge of shifting demand, many network administrators have resorted to using MPLS technology. As many of us know, this solution has its drawbacks, mainly in terms of compromised quality of experience (QoE) and higher costs.

SD-WAN solutions, on the other hand, allow network administrators to strategically upgrade their legacy network and manage a hybrid network through a single interface and orchestration tool. That means more control over QoE. For example, Ipanema's SASE ecosystem provides increased performance and improved quality of experience, even under diverse conditions across various types of cloud-managed WAN connectivity!

It costs about one-third less to deploy SD-WAN circuits versus MPLS, which can add up to a significant chunk of money across an enterprise. But circuits aren’t the only savings to be found with SD-WAN solutions. There are also fewer appliances needed, less management overhead, and more efficient scalability available with SD-WAN solutions.

SD-WAN also means less manual intervention, and lower costs because, well, time is money! Depending on the solution you choose, it can give you more time back to focus on other projects. The right SD-WAN technology, for example, can be dropped right into the network without complex reconfigurations to start delivering immediate value.

Better network performance at a lower cost? Yes please!

Admittedly, adding SD-WAN circuits to an existing MPLS network doesn’t always go smoothly, especially if you’re not working with the right partner. There are performance and security issues that can arise with SD-WAN that may not have been a problem with MPLS. And nobody wants interrupted business data flow, degraded customer experience, and less security in their network, even if they’re saving money.

To avoid these snags, a solid SD-WAN “mimics” the MPLS-based WAN to support visibility and manageability across the entire network. No reconfiguration of the legacy network is required to support the additional SD-WAN circuits, which are incorporated into the existing network infrastructure through a simple edge-based appliance. The result is a smooth migration path with no negative impact to network performance or security.

Users just want a network that works – whenever they need it, wherever they are. They don’t care (or are even aware) that “the network” is really a combination of many different networks including the cloud, MPLS, Wi-Fi, 4G/5G, and so on.

An SD-WAN solution can make a network admin a true hero by seamlessly connecting users across all these different technologies while ensuring that the most important applications have the best performance levels. With the right SD-WAN, you can easily assign network bandwidth to specific applications based on their priority by centralizing and automating network resource management.

Think of it as service level agreements (SLAs) for your applications. Users will be reassured that you’re always there for them!

Because SD-WAN networks connect to non-secure networks like the Internet, they require some additional security mechanisms. Encrypted virtual private network (VPN) connections, secure gateways, and security policy automation are some of the ways that Extreme ensures your network remains tough on security. In addition, we give you the visibility you need across your network to detect and block threats, whether they’re being targeted at the corporate level or the local branch level.

And there you have it: five ways that SD-WAN technology can improve the quality of your network and, just as importantly, the quality of your life as a network administrator!