Report: Generative AI Taking Over SD-WAN Management
Market recommendations for infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders responsible for building and managing WANs include:
- Build a WAN architecture that aligns with end users, branches and applications. This may mean a hybrid WAN with MPLS and internet, or internet only with dual internet. The architecture choice depends on how many on-premises workloads versus cloud workloads exist, the types of applications, the number of users at a site and the locations of end users.
- Determine — especially if you're a cloud-first organization that heavily uses public cloud and SaaS services — the SD-WAN offering suitability by validating depth and/or breadth of cloud provider and cloud onramp integrations.
- Lean toward SD-WAN/SSE combinations with deep explicit integration when implementing a dual-vendor SASE architecture by performing a POC and focusing on the GUI integration as well as automatic traffic redirection.
- Evaluate SD-WAN vendors by analyzing network automation and AI networking capabilities as a core requirement to improve support efficiency if your organization is operationally focused.
- Choose SD-WAN vendors to optimize application performance by evaluating performance optimization capabilities for real-time and non-real-time traffic and SaaS optimization for applications in the cloud.
- Focus on lightweight SD-WAN solutions when there are distributed hybrid work users and applications primarily in the cloud.
- Quantify the total cost of hardware, software and maintenance for an SD-WAN deployment. SD-WAN solutions more commonly have opex-friendly business models, with a strong shift from upfront capex to annual license subscriptions. To perform a proper evaluation and comparison, quotes should include all platform, license and support costs over a three-year baseline.
- Prefer SD-branch solutions to simplify the management of LAN, WLAN, SD-WAN and security for small branch offices.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.