The phrase you’re always smarter afterward could not be more appropriate for SD-WANs. To sum up the past few years, cloud computing and digital transformation have prompted companies to rethink traditional WAN technology that no longer met their growing business needs. At this point, SD-WAN became a promising new technology.

SD-WAN was developed to solve the problem of hardware traffic management and to enable software-based provision from the cloud. Many initial SD-WAN deployments were spurred on by the desire to replace expensive multi-protocol label switching ( MPLS ). In the meantime, the hype surrounding SD-WAN has subsided and the first implementations are behind us. Now is the time to look back at what we have learned in recent years and what we can improve in 2020.

It’s Not About Cost Savings

Most companies choose SD-WAN as an MPLS replacement because this can reduce WAN costs. However, cost savings can vary depending on the SD-WAN. Therefore, it shouldn’t be the main reason for deploying the technology. Instead, companies should focus on improving network agility, such as enabling faster location provisioning and reducing configuration times. The main argument for SD-WAN is to make networks more efficient. If this is done successfully, the cost savings will automatically result.

WAN Optimization Is Required

Using techniques such as protocol acceleration, deduplication, compression, and caching, WAN optimization can increase bandwidth and reduce latency and packet loss. The original idea was that SD-WAN could eliminate the need for WAN optimization. However, experience has shown that some applications require additional performance. The technologies complement each other and do not replace each other. They should be used to address various problems.

Security Should Not Be Considered Afterward

SD-WAN offers many advantages. One of these is the use of broadband internet for traffic from enterprise applications. However, this approach also poses security risks because users and their local networks are exposed to the public Internet. Security should, therefore, be part of the SD-WAN implementation right from the start. This enables companies to achieve the desired application performance and protection by positioning security solutions near branches using services such as cloud-hosted security.

Visibility Is Critical To The Success Of SD-WAN

The transparency of application and data traffic makes guesswork in network management superfluous. The best time is the pre-deployment phase, where companies define and evaluate their existing and missing functions before implementing SD-WAN. Visibility in the form of daily monitoring and warnings continues to play an important role after deployment. Organizations that understand what is going on in their network are better prepared for performance problems and can use this knowledge to avoid future problems.

The Wireless WAN Is Not Yet Mature

SD-WAN connects users to applications, including broadband and 4G / LTE, through any transport route. For this reason, mobile connectivity is increasingly being integrated into SD-WAN solutions. While companies want to use 4G as a potential transportation alternative, particularly in remote locations, the resulting costs for pay-per-use 4G services are high. Besides, 4G can be problematic due to latency and bandwidth restrictions. At this point, patience is required until service providers provide 5G with better pricing options. Throughout 2020, we will see 5G rollouts and be able to focus more on wireless SD-WAN.

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For John Maddison, Product EVP and CMO at Fortinet, “SD-WAN is not just for delegation, it is a key end-to-end enterprise-wide technology. With applications for working from home, campus, data center, or cloud, and the ability to connect clouds, Fortinet Secure SD-WAN is a technology that enhances the user experience and drives cost efficiency and saving time in organizations.

A Highly Scalable And Flexible SD-WAN Solution

Fortinet offers Secure SD-WAN as an integrated feature of its next-generation FortiGate firewall powered by the industry’s first SD-WAN ASIC processor that offers a better user experience, higher performance, and better cost-effectiveness.

To help implement network changes that ensure business continuity for an increasing number of telecommuters with minimal resources in IT staff and infrastructure, FortiGate’s broad portfolio of products with embedded SD-WAN enables flexible policies to be established from the Centralized Fabric Management Center console. These intuitive policies allow for faster, scale-out configuration deployments in minutes, providing the best performance for collaborative applications such as voice/video conferencing and SaaS applications.

Fortinet offers Secure SD-WAN as an integrated feature of its next-generation FortiGate firewall

Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN proposal is not limited to business use cases but is present in a wide range of devices, ranging from solutions that serve large data centers to equipment designed for delegations, remote sites, and even small home offices. Fortinet Secure SD-WAN’s ability to scale from home office to branch office and distributed cloud has helped the solution stand out from its competitors.

•  Home Office: A desktop FortiGate with built-in LTE, such as the FortiGate 40F, enables you to respond to ‘super-users’ who work from home and require their applications to function properly for critical business needs, such as demos video to customers. Teleworkers can have a solution in their homes to manage security and their wireless network from a single integrated platform. The key advantage of extending SD-WAN functionality to telecommuters, especially super-users, is that they can enjoy remote access on-demand as well as dynamically scalable performance regardless of the availability of their local network. In a context where other users in the organization trust these individuals to do their jobs quickly and efficiently, SD-WAN functionality can make a difference.
• Branches: Fortinet Secure SD-WAN is perhaps the best-known solution for supporting complex deployments in branches with advanced routing needs and access to cloud resources, which has helped thousands of customers to reduce the use of specific products such as legacy routers while improving the experience of using business applications
• Distributed Cloud: For organizations with distributed cloud applications, Fortinet Secure SD-WAN enables cloud interconnection for better user experience. It is available to all cloud providers and provides the highest IPsec performance in the industry: up to 20Gbps in cloud interconnect. With native applications and the cloud integration framework, as well as the fully programmable API, Fortinet Secure SD-WAN helps customers connect hundreds of cloud environments.

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