How an SD-WAN enables cloud business applications

Almost every business today is running a cloud application of some sort in their business. Some are fully supported as company business application while others are not. In 2014 a CIO.Com article talked about the use of cloud applications as 'shadow IT', as clearly it was seen as a negative by IT departments. Some cloud application vendors, such as Webex before it was acquired by Cisco, focused on department heads who were frustrated by the perceived lack of flexibility and responsiveness of IT. Clearly the two sides didn't see eye-to-eye.

Today, cloud applications are an even greater aspect of business infrastructure. IT heads are more concerned about security and performance of cloud applications than whether they should 'control' who uses them.

A big challenge then becomes the burden on the network, both internal and external, to support those applications, regardless if they are fully endorsed or not.

For multi-site organizations this is exacerbated by the fact that WAN bandwidth is limited, expensive and does not deliver the performance required. Worse? Many legacy WANs, such as MPLS, are on long-term, fixed contracts.

Whether a single or multi-site organization, there is a solution available. SD-WAN technology. SD-WANs offer a more flexible, simpler to manage solution for multi-site organizations. First by allowing lower cost broadband and/or LTE to supplement the existing WAN infrastructure and eventually replacing the more expensive legacy WAN as contracts expire.

An SD-WAN from a vendor like VeloCloud has several significant advantages that solve the WAN problem for multi-site customers and cloud application performance for single and multi-site organizations.

By leveraging bandwidth from two, or more, different suppliers and analyzing network performance on each service or link on a packet by packet and application by application level, SD-WAN technology can predict link performance. This can result in traffic immediately being re-routed over the better performing link or even duplicating the packets and sending over two links to ensure that the packets get through effectively.

Applications can be prioritized. Real-time applications like voice, especially cloud or hosted voice can be prioritized over something like email or other file transfers. Not only are phone calls not disrupted but the IP phones continue to stay 'registered' to the host server. Without this, the telephones may re-register to a backup server, dropping calls, taking the telephone out of service for anything up to 5 minutes and generally disrupting service.

For multi-site organizations cloud applications add an extra challenge. All the cloud traffic is generally back-hauled across the WAN to a regional or corporate head office. Traffic can be secured and managed but it also hogs precious and expensive WAN bandwidth when that traffic could have been routed locally over low cost broadband. With a VeloCloud SD-WAN, cloud gateways, managed as part of a single network can offer that capability.

The beauty of a cloud managed SD-WAN is that the solution can be tested fast. With zero-touch deployments, low cost gateways (part of the cost of service) are pre-configured and deployed by simply plugging in the local connectivity. The entire network can be managed from anywhere using a simple, browser based console. Traffic performance is completely visible at all times, providing IT the ability to immediately respond to internal users.

So lets sum this up. If your business is using or thinking of using a cloud application, network performance is going to be the limiting factor. Broadband and LTE offer inexpensive alternatives but on their own do not offer the required peformance. Nor does a legacy WAN based on MPLS, expect that is much more expensive to deploy and maintain. By leveraging VeloCloud SD-WAN lower cost broadband and LTE can offer the required performance at the lowest cost.