Let’s say you start work at 09:00 – what are the first few things you do to kickstart your day?
Open your laptop and log in to a remote desktop? You are using the Cloud.
Next, you’ll load up your email? That’s a Cloud application.
Need to use Microsoft 365, Photoshop or Google Documents? Searching for a saved file from a central database system? These are all applications and technologies that run from the Cloud.
So your day began at 9am and by 9:05 you’ve done nothing but use the Cloud.
This has made the life of a network manager difficult. An ever-increasing number of applications are traversing the network and ensuring the quality of experience to every user and application is a challenge.
Cloud technologies promised to make workforces more efficient – a promise that can be delivered easily with the help of a Cloud-ready network, built through Software-Defined Wide Area Networking.
How SD-WAN can make your network Cloud-Ready.
Building a Software-Defined Wide Area Network can quickly deliver the benefits that Cloud technologies promise.
How? Let’s look at this in a few different ways.
Utilising the best connectivity at each site
All Cloud technologies need a high-speed, low latency internet connection to perform at optimal levels. For businesses using traditional WAN technologies such as MPLS, connectivity was tied down to whatever fixed-line connectivity their MPLS provider could offer – usually expensive Fibre Ethernet, unreliable Fibre Broadband or sub-standard traditional broadband.
With SD-WAN, businesses are not tied down to one provider, instead, they can use a variety; selecting who has the best coverage to each site and taking advantage of new Full Fibre and Mobile LTE technologies alongside the tried and tested Fibre Ethernet – immediately boosting cloud performance and also presenting huge bandwidth cost-saving possibilities.
Bringing Cloud providers on-net
With traditional MPLS & WAN networks, all traffic would be sent back to a central HQ in a hub and spoke network design. This was an effective strategy for a “pre-cloud world” as applications such as email were housed on email servers at HQ so traffic was backhauled to there. However, with Cloud bringing applications to the internet, a more direct path was needed.
SD-WAN allows local breakout of internet traffic to critical Cloud applications and does so in a more cost-effective manner than MPLS ever could.
Improve application performance and employee production
With all these cloud applications on a network, there is an inevitable strain on the internet as it is responsible for a greater workload. With SD-WAN and using Artificial Intelligence (AI), network managers can prioritise bandwidth to certain applications in just a few clicks of a button. AI automates application performance across the network based on service level metrics such as jitter, round trip time, packet loss and utilisation.
Was this possible with QoS on MPLS? Yes. Was it as easy to perform? No – you were reliant on your provider to make these changes which resulted in increased expenditure and lengthy time delays.
Want to find out more about SD-WAN and Cloud-Ready networks? Talk to us now on 01635 884170 or drop an email to sales@stream-networks.co.uk