SD-WAN
First off, what is your goal?
Are you looking to simplify the management of your Wide Area Network? Then a centralized, cloud-based WAN framework can be a easier way to scale endpoints across all of your locations. These types of SD-WANs give administrators a single interface for managing the many pieces of your network.
One of the more popular uses for a SD-WAN would be enhancing your employees experience with the many software solutions you empower them with. It does not matter how useful these solutions are if your data and your WAN can not properly deliver them to your people. WAN optimization can bring in the best cloud application from a variety of cloud offerings to your users despite geographic location.
Information security officers love the increased security some SD-WANs provide. With these solutions threat prevention can be enforced at the branch level. This mitigates data traveling back to HQ or data centers for some truly robust network and software performance.
And of course, all companies are looking at the bottom line by mitigating un-needed expenses. For those of us running a MPLS network, we know it can be hard to rationalize that type of cost. SD-WAN technology can replace the costly MPLS while still keeping it a private, secure network.
The big R-word in our industry. REDUNDENCY!!! Pretty much all SD-WANs can help here. Bring in two, or heck even three carriers to your office and allow your new SD-WAN to manage the best path for your data to take. What if you have a carrier outage? Well, your SD-WAN will see this and make your other circuits carry the load. Your people won’t know but you just avoided a major network crisis.