As someone who has been following enterprise WAN architectures for decades, I find their evolution fascinating, especially the number of new technologies that have been deployed in isolation. For example, WAN optimization and SD-WANs are often discussed as separate solutions. From my perspective, I can’t fathom why a business would deploy an SD-WAN and not implement WAN optimization as part of it. If you’re going to go through the work of modernizing your WAN architecture, then why wouldn’t you integrate optimization technologies into your deployment right from the start?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Almost all enterprise-class organizations are sitting atop a pile of existing network infrastructure, dealing with the headaches of a complex hardware lifecycle. Many would like to find a smooth path to a virtual networking future in which hardware is no longer a barrier to change, but instead a gateway to flexible network options. Ask enterprise IT decision makers these days to select from a menu of connectivity options and odds are the top choice will be an “All of the above” response. They want bandwidth on demand, a manageable number of connectivity options to suit a distributed workforce, scalability, and the lowest cost. That networking nirvana may not be as far in the future as you once thought.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Most of the discussion to date on the benefit of SD-WANs has focused on how an SD-WAN enables a network organization to reduce or eliminate its spend on expensive MPLS circuits.That is clearly an important benefit. However, as many early adopters of SD-WANs can attest to, SD-WANs have other important benefits.I am going to use this blog to summarize an interview I recently had with an IT professional who is in the midst of rolling out an SD-WAN solution. As described below, the benefits of the new solution include better performance, better visibility and the reduced cost and complexity that comes from removing Cisco routers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Setting up and managing an IT infrastructure isn’t what most small and mid-sized business owners signed up for when they opened their doors. At least not voluntarily. After all, IT is an intimidating field filled with fragmented components, esoteric expertise, and expensive hardware. That may be why the most powerful network solutions have felt out of reach for small businesses, only approachable by larger enterprises with deeper pockets.Whether they have the resources or not, though, every business is a digital business in today’s economy. They all rely on a functional IT framework on some scale. And for the 83% of small businesses that don’t have any dedicated IT staff, the ultimate responsibility of running the company network often falls to the person with the most at stake: the business owner. So too do the related concerns of cybersecurity, network reliability, malfunctioning equipment, employee access, and so on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Analysts agree that SD-WAN is the way forward for enterprises supporting cloud-first initiatives. Everywhere you turn it seems someone is writing about SD-WAN, the trends and how to select the right solution. For example, Andrew Lerner from Gartner recently wrote a blog about SD-WAN going mainstream. I’ve also spent time talking about lessons we’re learning from our customers. In fact, earlier this summer I authored an article that ran on Network World that highlighted key SD-WAN solution evaluation criteria.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We are excited to announce today that Silver Peak has joined MEF. With 130+ members, MEF’s new SD-WAN initiatives are intended to address implementation challenges and help service providers to accelerate managed SD-WAN service deployments. Some of this work involves defining SD-WAN use cases, and a key use case revolves around connecting distributed enterprises and users to cloud-hosted SaaS applications and IaaS.Enterprise CIOs continue to accelerate the pace of corporate digital transformation initiatives, often including plans to migrate enterprise applications to the cloud. Cloud-first is often the preferable choice for hosting new applications, enabling enterprises to securely connect users to applications from anywhere and across any type of WAN service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Software defined WANs (SD-WANs) have gained market momentum so quickly because their value proposition is multi-faceted. Some enterprises have looked to SD-WAN as a way to dramatically lower network transport costs, while others are building SD-WANs to automate network operations. One of the more common use-cases I have seen is to shift toward an “active-active” architecture.ACTIVE-ACTIVE WAN ARCHITECTUREHistorically, WANs are built on the concept of “active-passive”, where a branch can be connected using two or more links, but only the primary link is active and passing traffic. In this scenario, the backup connection only becomes active in the event the primary connection fails. While this might seem sensible, it’s highly inefficient as enterprises are paying for far more bandwidth than they are actually leveraging. This inefficient architectural design is driving increased interest in active-active configurations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When SD-WAN first began capturing the media spotlight in 2015, many carriers initially viewed SD-WAN as a potential threat to their business.Fast forward two years and it’s become clear that SD-WAN provides a new way for service providers to address the changing connectivity needs of the enterprise. As enterprise applications migrate to the cloud, a new set of opportunities has emerged for advanced managed service offerings.Recognizing SD-WAN’s Many BenefitsWhile some of the initial messaging around SD-WAN focused on the potential cost savings of using broadband connectivity, there are in fact many other and more important drivers for SD-WAN that include:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When SD-WAN first began capturing the media spotlight in 2015, many carriers initially viewed SD-WAN as a potential threat to their business.Fast forward two years and it’s become clear that SD-WAN provides a new way for service providers to address the changing connectivity needs of the enterprise. As enterprise applications migrate to the cloud, a new set of opportunities has emerged for advanced managed service offerings.Recognizing SD-WAN’s Many BenefitsWhile some of the initial messaging around SD-WAN focused on the potential cost savings of using broadband connectivity, there are in fact many other and more important drivers for SD-WAN that include:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SD-WAN is gaining tremendous traction among enterprises owing to the benefits it offers — cost savings from efficient use of low-cost Internet and wireless links, centralized control and management, network agility, speed to deployment of new sites, and optimized cloud connectivity—to list a few. And while a DIY model provides enterprise IT managers unprecedented flexibility and control over their WAN, a managed SD-WAN service may be better suited for businesses that prefer a turn-key service due to factors discussed in my previous blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The concept of the “thin branch” enabled by simplifying infrastructure has been around for as long as there have been branch offices. Branch offices are typically a microcosm of the company headquarters, but without the necessary IT staff to run them. It’s common to find a myriad of network and security equipment in a branch including a router, firewall, WAN optimizer, VPN concentrators, along with almost anything else you can think of. This, of course, results in an operational nightmare as network administrators must deal with multiple devices in dozens, hundreds or even thousands of branch locations. In small networks it can be extremely challenging to track all the different hardware components and related software versions across the various locations. In large networks, this task is impossible as the number of possible combinations of hardware and software grows exponentially in relation to the number of locations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On June 3, 2017, Andrew Lerner, vice president of research for enterprise networking at Gartner published a new blog: SD-WAN is going Mainstream. In this blog, Andrew offered two key takeaways:1. SD-WAN is real and has real and tangible benefits.2. At the same time, SD-WAN has downsides and/or challenges affiliated with early deployments. The downsides are mainly around gaps many vendors have for features like IPv6, WAN optimization, etc.I agree with Andrew’s assessment that there are downsides to many offerings, and want to underscore the key considerations for distributed enterprise when selecting the right SD-WAN solution. It’s reflective of carefully listening, learning and adapting to our more than 400 production customers around the world who evaluated multiple SD-WAN solutions before selecting Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In my previous blog post, I described the trends that are driving continued growth in the SD-WAN market, and the potential it presents to managed service providers. In this blog, I share insights on factors that are influencing enterprise choice of managed SD-WAN services.MANAGED SD-WAN SERVICESManaged SD-WAN services are similar to a number of existing managed services offerings (managed LAN/WAN, managed router, managed firewall, managed VPN, to list a few) that network service providers (NSPs) offer in the market today. With managed SD-WAN services, the service provider installs and manages the edge CPE devices, procures and manages access links from multiple NSPs, and manages all day-to-day network management aspects of the solution.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SD-WANs have garnered a tremendous amount of interest from companies both large and small as they can significantly lower the costs and complexity of running a WAN. As businesses migrate applications to the cloud, they are increasingly embracing the cost advantages of broadband connectivity to connect users to applications. This is being driven not only by the high cost of private WAN circuits, but because backhauling applications’ traffic to the data center is negatively impacting application performance, resulting in frustrated users and sub-optimal productivity. The combination of high costs and poor performance seem like a perfect recipe for market disruption.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SD-WAN is taking off.A year ago we announced 100 paying, deployed EdgeConnect SD-WAN customers. Earlier this month, we announced our 400th customer deployment, representing a quadrupling of our SD-WAN customer base in just 12 months.We are seeing our Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution deployed globally, across a wide range of industries including financial services, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and transport. Our customers are simplifying and consolidating their WAN edge infrastructure, reducing operating costs and delivering an improved IT experience to their distributed workforce.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Many of you are already aware that an SD-WAN enables distributed enterprises to connect users to applications with the flexibility to use any combination of underlying transport technologies (MPLS, broadband, LTE), bring branch offices online quickly and become more agile, all while saving money.THE VALUE OF CHOOSING AN SD-WAN MANAGED SERVICEHowever, finding the right SD-WAN solution for your business can take time and may not always be the highest business priority, given other digital transformation project priorities. The accelerating pace of technological change within the SD-WAN segment can also lead to confusion. It’s no surprise that many enterprises considering an SD-WAN to simplify their branch WAN deployments are turning to managed service providers to deploy and manage an SD-WAN as a managed service. As I wrote in my previous blog, there is tremendous value in working with a managed service provider for an SD-WAN.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s my belief that we will look back at 2017 as a tipping point for the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT has certainly been something that most business and IT leaders talk about, but to date, deployments have been limited to key verticals that have been connecting things for years, although we called it machine-to-machine (M2M) before it became cool to say IoT.I’ve long felt that one could tell when a technology tipping point is happening when it no longer seems like a big deal. Remember the early days of virtualization? IT leaders had to explain why it was better to run workloads on VMs and had to prove it wouldn’t impair application performance. Today, no one thinks about these issues anymore because it’s now the norm. In the consumer world, people used to “ooh” and “ahh” when they saw an iPhone. Now, no one bats an eye, as they are pervasive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In my last few blogs I’ve talked about the journey from the Software Defined WAN to the Self-Driving WAN. Applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to the WAN might seem futuristic, but it’s already happening with our Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution. A great example is our revolutionary First-packet iQ application classification technology which we announced at the end of March.Traditional Application ClassificationTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When it comes to WAN architecture, there has been a debate that has raged on for decades. Hub-and-spoke or fully distributed mesh, which is better?Hub-and-spoke networks are certainly simpler to design and manage, but the downside is that all branch traffic needs to be backhauled through a central location. Consider a U.S.-based company with a branch office in Japan where a user is trying to access a local website. The traffic would need to go from the branch, back to the United States, back to Japan, and then back to the United States, only to be sent off to Japan yet again. This clearly represents an enormous waste of bandwidth and resource, not to mention impaired user productivity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With the move to the cloud, and the increasingly hostile threat landscape, protecting the enterprise network using positive user authentication is more critical than ever. However, as security threats multiply and morph, and user devices and locations diversify, multi-factor authentication (MFA) has emerged as a trusted method for preventing misuse.While adopting and deploying MFA solutions requires a careful and thorough approach, with most challenges also come opportunities and potential new benefits. We reached out to influential IT leaders to understand their views regarding adoption of MFA in the cloud era. Here’s what they said:The User Comes FirstTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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