If you haven’t heard the term SD-WAN yet, you soon will. It’s an industry trends that, I believe, will someday fall into the same category as Centrex for this reason: If there is a good quality, less expensive way to bring voice connections to your business, someone’s going to find it and today SD-WAN looks to be that answer. Back in the later half of the 20th century, Centrex service brought more features to businesses than standard telephone lines and it was much more affordable. Today, especially if your business has multiple locations, SD-WAN may be the answer to your voice problems at a lower cost and easier deployment than MPLS.
The software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) is a specific application of software-defined networking (SDN) technology applied to WAN connections, which are used to connect enterprise networks – including branch offices and data centers – over large geographic distances.
It can be defined as blending rapid internet deployment with the security of the MPLS. And since a 100 Mb internet connection is much less expensive than a smaller MPLS connection, it could result in big savings for companies with connected multiple locations.
Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company estimates that SD-WAN has less than 1% market share today, but it predicts that up to 30% of users will be managing their WAN through software by 2019.
One of the chief characteristics of an SD-WAN is its ability to manage multiple types of connections – from MPLS to broadband to LTE. If all this sounds too ‘techy’ for you, you may want to consider joining us for our next Seminar Series where we will discuss SD-Wan options for your business. The second in our 2017 Seminar Series will dive into the advantages of SD-Wan technology and how it can positively affect your network voice connections. If you’ve been putting off connecting your companies multiple locations, now may be the time to look into it. Our lunch seminar, MPLS Network Alternatives, will be in Louisville on March 1st and in Lexington on March 2nd.
