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In the last few years, the need to more efficiently manage multi-location networks along with the growing use of cloud-based apps, IoT technology, and the shift to remote work has inspired increased demand for SD-WAN technology. Today, the global pandemic has fueled this demand. The rise in work-from-home has driven the need to support businesses' multi-location networks from various locations securely. To meet this challenge, organizations have become critically aware of the importance of having a more agile IT network with an SD-WAN solution.

Managed SD-WAN easily solves evolving pain points.

For businesses with a hub and spoke network, all Internet traffic is funneled through a central point, and all sites connect to the hub before getting to the Internet. For cloud-based applications, this causes a great deal of latency and unexpected behaviors with the applications themselves. It's not a good user experience and is not efficient. And if the hub goes down, all your sites go down, and no users have access to the Internet, causing additional impact.

By adding a managed SD-WAN solution, with full mesh topology, all sites connect to each other as they do in a private VPN and can access the Internet directly without going through a central hub. Any disruption at any location will not affect the other locations ensuring more effective business continuity. Redundancy is also easy to accomplish as changes can be made on-demand and immediately without the worry of lost network connectivity. Built-in security can address compliance requirements in every major vertical, including highly regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, utilities, and government.

An SD-WAN virtualized infrastructure allows you to be more agile and implement changes more easily and quickly. Without SD-WAN, if you need to make changes to your network — as we all had to do during the pandemic — you would have to visit each location and go into devices to change configurations. Time and workforce costs are incurred to make all the arrangements needed to physically dispatch IT to the sites.

With managed SD-WAN, you can easily and speedily monitor and manage all sites on your network remotely for greater efficiency and security. SD-WAN provides the ability to make adds and changes and segment and securely isolate your enterprise infrastructures such as guest wireless, lines of business, business partners, and more for improved load balancing, reduced latency, improved performance, and service levels. It's a significant operational saving and enables your business to react swiftly to changing business needs.

Depending on what features and functionalities you subscribe to, you can see who is on the SD-WAN network and what websites employees are accessing. You get real-time visibility of what employees are doing during the day, which helps you manage the network to optimize where to put applications, auto failovers, etc. Changes can immediately be made as needed to save significantly on OpEx expenses.

In the long term, adding managed SD-WAN to your network can bring real benefits, freeing up valuable resources during economic downturns as well as booms. With the increased need for accessing the Cloud and collaboration tools like Zoom and Microsoft teams, SD-WAN can securely deliver these services remotely — and more cost-effectively than traditional network connections. SD-WAN will make your network more reliable and efficient and empower your company with an innovative ability to handle extraordinary circumstances remotely and adapt your business for future success.

With network needs constantly changing, it’s hard to prepare for what tomorrow will bring. Lightpath SD-WAN Next can help. SD-WAN Next is a cloud-delivered overlay WAN architecture that makes your network more agile with centralized management, quality of service, and best-in-class security. It easily adapts your network to new horizons with flexible capabilities and technical support to help your business adjust for what’s next with confidence. You can also add additional Professional Services, including network migration, configuration consultations, and on-site management support.

Click here to learn more about our new SD-WAN Next solution or contact your Account Executive or call 877-544-4872.