Choosing an SD-WAN solution for your business

The benefits of Software-Defined Wide Area Networks are becoming common knowledge among decision-makers in every industry, from hospitals to retailers. With its proven ability provide stronger network performance and control over application traffic when compared to traditional WAN infrastructures, SD-WAN technology is purpose-built for the cloud-based applications in wide use today.

Enterprises can easily manage growth in their network footprints with the right SD-WAN in place by automating traffic, quickly deploying new applications, improving user experiences, and bringing down costs. However, knowing which SD-WAN solution is best for your business is an important question to answer.

Here are five key factors to consider when choosing an SD-WAN solution and provider to help your organization prepare for the future of networking:

1. Experience. With dozens of available SD-WAN platforms offered by more than 150 providers, the SD-WAN landscape continues to expand. In this environment of numerous startups and continuous acquisitions, it’s essential to identify solutions that will be there for the long haul—companies with the people, processes, and financial stability to perform well globally, over time.
2. Performance. The best SD-WAN providers will have the engineering support to customize the solution for your specific business needs. The differentiators between solutions are highly dependent upon the ways the platforms are designed to handle traffic, cloud application flows, and security. Most SD-WAN solutions are flow-based, but VeloCloud is superior because it’s packet-based. VMware SD-WAN can protect application performance mid-flow using dynamic per-packet steering at sub-second speeds, reacting to real-time link impairments on demand. Additionally, the most effective platforms will provide cloud gateways and guarantee Quality of Experience (QoE) of SaaS applications like Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce—and even for existing UCaaS environments.
3. Flexibility. The SD-WAN solution must work with and boost the performance of your existing Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) or hybrid WAN infrastructure and provide the option for installation as a standalone MPLS replacement. Also, ideal solutions will give you the ability to deploy in both concentrated regions and global branch environments.
4. Agility. An experienced SD-WAN provider can help you assign specific policies to control and direct WAN traffic and align application priority, security, and performance with business intent. The platform will have a highly detailed level of manager visibility and control of traffic and application performance across every location.
5. Security. Along with enabling extensive visibility into both data center or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application use, the SD-WAN provider will help you apply network-wide security and business policies. Additionally, they will assist with the deployment of local, third-party cloud security services wherever needed to extend the WAN perimeter from the cloud to each branch.

We know that choosing a provider to deliver on your precise, strategic SD-WAN business goals can be a daunting task, especially in an uncertain climate for many consumer-level businesses. This decision must align the value proposition with the overall costs for implementation and ongoing support. Ideally, we want to empower CIOs with the flexibility to engineer an SD-WAN solution with the best combination of traffic management and control technologies while improving the performance and security of cloud applications across all branches and users.

For OnX, VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud gives our clients the best combination of financial stability, global reach and support, industry-leading features, customization options, and the security they need to handle the exponential growth in network traffic. Moreover, the VeloCloud solution can be deployed on existing WAN and UCaaS infrastructure to improve application performance, network visibility, and VoIP traffic while reducing branch network costs. Finally, our longstanding partnership with VMware means our clients have access to our in-house engineers and technical support experts who understand the technology and have the relationships to ensure success for our clients and their customers.

Learn more about choosing an SD-WAN solution from OnX.

To learn more about how advanced VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud capabilities like Dynamic Multi-Path Optimization (DMPO) and cloud gateways can give you a competitive advantage, download our SD-WAN Tool Kit and request a free 90-day proof of concept.