TALKING
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The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated Digital Transformation initiatives to offer an improved customer experience and personalised services , all while tackling increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats . More than ever , organisations need flexibility to keep pace with business change , but they are often hindered by a sluggish and rigid network infrastructure .
Below I will describe the five key benefits of implementing an advanced SD-WAN solution and how it can accelerate business growth :
1 . Improve business agility while reducing overall WAN cost
To connect branch offices to the corporate data centre , organisations have traditionally used expensive MPLS lines . As more bandwidth is required to support increasing connectivity demands , MPLS lines become cost-prohibitive , preventing organisations from fully satisfying their business needs . New MPLS circuits can take up to four months to be provisioned , greatly slowing down the ability to spin up a new branch . This hinders business changes , agility , and flexibility .
Jacob Chacko , Regional Director – Middle East , Saudi and South Africa , Aruba
An SD-WAN leverages less expensive Internet and 5G connections by virtualising and bonding network links , creating secure tunnels from the branch offices to the data centre and to the cloud .
With SD-WAN , organisations can realise the agility needed by the business while reducing costs .
2 . Increase security and seamlessly transition to a SASE architecture
An SD-WAN leverages less expensive Internet and 5G connections by virtualising and bonding network links , creating secure tunnels from the branch offices to the data centre and to the cloud .
Organisations with an MPLS router-based architecture are not able to easily enforce security policies in branches due to the rigidity and the complexity of their network , especially in hybrid cloud environments . The security perimeter is dissolving as users and devices now connect from anywhere . Traditional security measures such as VPNs are limited as a VPN doesn ’ t support enforcement of granular security policies . Indeed , once a user has been identified and authenticated with a VPN connection , they can access critical resources inside the network even if they shouldn ’ t .
SD-WAN is the foundational component to implement a robust SASE architecture . By choosing best-ofbreed security capabilities with a tight SD-WAN integration , organisations ensure maximum protection to their employees and other stakeholders accessing the network .
3 . Enable a cloud architecture
Organisations are migrating their applications to the cloud and are using software- as-a-service ( SaaS ) cloud-hosted business applications such as Microsoft 365 , Salesforce , Box , Dropbox , ServiceNow and many more instead of hosting them in the data centre . However , organisations with traditional routerbased WAN architectures continue to backhaul cloud-destined traffic from branch locations to the data centre , mainly for security reasons , severely impacting the performance of cloud applications at the branch .
SD-WAN enables organisations to embrace the flexibility of a cloud architecture while improving cloud application performance by steering traffic directly to the cloud using local Internet breakout .
4 . Simplify WAN infrastructure
Over the years , organisations have built their network infrastructure as their business grows .
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